Diamond Princess

Diamond Princess is a British-registered cruise ship owned and operated by Princess Cruises that began operation in March 2004. She and her sister ship Sapphire Princess are the widest subclass of Grand-class ships, with a beam of 37.5 metres against 36 metres for the others, and both were built in Japan by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. She was the first Princess Cruises ship built in a Japanese shipyard, and she carries her name because the two sisters swapped names during construction after a fire delayed the hull first meant for it. A diesel-electric plant of four Wärtsilä 46 series diesel generators and a General Electric LM2500 gas turbine generator drives two propulsion motors of 20 megawatts each, and a hull air lubrication system was fitted in June 2017. She cruises mainly in Asia in the northern summer and Australia in the southern summer. The ship is also known for two outbreaks of infectious disease, norovirus in 2016 and COVID-19 in 2020, when she was quarantined at Yokohama for nearly a month and at least 712 of the 3,711 passengers and crew were infected.