It’s always an exciting moment when a new expedition cruise ship joins the polar fleet. The highly-anticipated Douglas Mawson has just launched – and Swoop were invited to join its inaugural voyage to experience it first hand on a four-night shakedown cruise from Sydney to Hobart to check out Douglas Mawson, before it headed south for its first season in Antarctica.
The Douglas Mawson is the sister ship of Greg Mortimer and Sylvia Earle, two ships that are perennial favourites with Swoop travellers heading to Antarctica. I’ve sailed on Sylvia Earle myself, so I was particularly excited to be on Douglas Mawson’s first voyage so see how it matched up.
Douglas Mawson
As someone who’s used to seeing expedition cruise ships in remote environments, it was initially a little surprising to see the Douglas Mawson tied up in Sydney harbour in the warm Australian sunshine. But in a nod to its ultimate destination, the ship was christened with a huge block of ice rather than the traditional bottle of champagne across its bow. The ceremony was performed by Emma McEwin, the great-granddaughter and biographer of Sir Douglas Mawson, the Australian Antarctic explorer and geologist that the ship is named after.
Once I was on board, everything was reassuringly familiar from my time on Sylvia Earle – in fact, with the two ships wearing exactly the same livery, it was initially hard to tell the two apart. The Douglas Mawson has that same iconic X-Bow design that allows the ship to cut through the waves for a smoother ride. Likewise, the architects had again taken advantage of the shape to reproduce Sylvia Earle’s gorgeous double height glass atrium in the bow, to flood the expedition lounge with light.
Clever design tricks like this instantly make the ship feel large and spacious. Douglas Mawson has 170 berths, but will be operated with a maximum of just 130 passengers, and a guest to expedition team ratio of 1:8. What that means in practice is speedy disembarkations when in Antarctica, to maximise time exploring off the ship.
All the Sylvia Earle’s great features were present and correct: the top deck restaurant as well as the dining room on Deck 5, the gym to burn off those excess calories, a citizen science area and the Deck 8 observation lounge near the bow that puts you right in the middle of the action (and my favourite place to watch the ship plough through the Drake Passage).
Evolution not revolution
It was when we cruised down to Hobart and I had time to explore the ship that I got to appreciate where Douglas Mawson differed from its sister ships. Like Sylvia Earle and Greg Mortimer, most cabins have balconies as standard, with floor to ceiling windows to maximise views. But one thing I definitely noticed was how the ship was set up for solo travellers.
Douglas Mawson has the largest choice of dedicated solo cabins, reflecting the growing trend for travellers heading to Antarctica on their own and who don’t want to share a cabin. There are three solo cabin types, and all were unexpectedly generous in their sizes. On some ships, solo cabins can feel like an afterthought, with narrow cramped designs, but this definitely wasn’t the case here. Some had portholes, but the solo cabins on Deck 7 come with their own French balcony – a feature I know is going to be a selling point for a lot of travellers.
Other changes were more subtle, but ticked all the boxes we love as expedition ship nerds as Swoop who love getting into the fine detail. For example, the outdoor space on deck 7 has been reconfigured to give a lot more seating around the sun deck than on its sister ships. This sounds like a small detail, but it will be a great feature in the Antarctic Peninsula, where you’ll be able to rug up with a hot drink and enjoy the scenery on a sunny polar day. The expedition team told me they had a supply of extra blankets to make people extra cosy – and I can well imagine that a gentle passage through the Lemaire Channel or the Gerlache Strait is going to look particularly gorgeous from here. At the stern, the two outdoor jacuzzis also offer extraordinary views for those ‘am I really in Antarctica?’ moments.
Sustainability improvements
Douglas Mawson is also taking steps to nudge the polar fleet further along the path in terms of sustainable travel. Some of these initiatives are small but encourage you to engage more widely with environmental issues beyond the cruise. All seafood is sustainably sourced, but tuna and salmon—which come from the most environmentally problematic fisheries—have been removed from the menu completely. For cruises sailing from Ushuaia (which will make up the vast majority of Douglas Mawson’s trips), the beef served is all sourced from a local on family-run cattle farm, while vegetables are from farms elsewhere in Argentina whose supply chains have been thoroughly certified.
The innovation that impressed me the most was in how the ship was working to squeeze every mile of fuel efficiency out of its operations to reduce its carbon footprint. Douglas Mawson is the first expedition cruise ship to be fitted with CounterCurrent, a brand new piece of climate technology that has so far only been trialled on cargo ships.
CounterCurrent is a 21st century tribute to the days of sail, when ships had to work with the wind and ocean currents to cross the seas. It uses accurate, high-resolution ocean forecasts and a dynamic ship routing algorithm so that a vessel can work with Mother Nature rather than against it. A bit like the way that Google Maps allows you to drive your car on the most fuel efficient route, this allows the ship to optimise its travel time, and reduce its fuel consumption and emissions in real time.
A short shakedown cruise to Tasmania didn’t give much chance to test its potential, but it was obvious where CounterCurrent could quickly come into its own on the Drake Passage, or the long transit across the Scotia Sea between South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. The Douglas Mawson’s first voyage through the Southern Ocean to the White Continent would be the first time that the technology was being tested under real expedition cruise conditions, but after a season of trials, it’s hoped that CounterCurrent will be rolled out across its sister ships.
A bright future
The launch of Douglas Mawson has shown that the X-Bow design for expedition cruise ships that once felt so radical is firmly here to stay. There are now six in operation across the polar fleet, and as each new ship has launched over the last decade, the lessons learned from operating in Antarctic waters have been applied to Douglas Mawson to create one of the most state of the art ships it’s possible to sail on.
The only thing that felt strange for me was seeing it in such an unusual setting: no matter how hard I squinted, I couldn’t make the Sydney Opera House look like an iceberg. But I know that as soon as it’s sailing in Antarctic waters, Douglas Mawson is going to fit right in – and here at Swoop we’re excited for our guests to be travelling on board.
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