The godmother for the Independence of the Seas will be an “ordinary British woman who has done extraordinary things,” said Royal Caribbean, which will launch the new ship from Southampton, England, in April.

A low pressure system over the North Atlantic which generated huge high swells across the Caribbean forced cruise ships to leave Grenada on Thursday.

Princess Cruises announced that the Caribbean Princess will return to New York in summer 2009 for a second season of the line’s roundtrip sailings to Bermuda and the Caribbean. The ship will change directions in late summer to head north for a season of roundtrip Canada & New England sailings.

The first phase of the project to build the Sans Souci cruise ship terminal is concluding with the reconstruction of piers, new infrastructure, and with the improvements of nautical systems, at a cost of more than $50 million.

Royal Caribbean International and its sister brands Celebrity Cruises and Azamara Cruises have unveiled new online group booking and management features on the cruise lines’ travel agent website, cruisingpower.com.

Carnival Cruise Lines on Tuesday showed off Carnival Imagination’s new digs, part of the $250 million Evolutions of Fun initiative for its eight Fantasy-class ships. The first Fantasy-class ship was built back in 1990 and, anecdotally, the blueprint for this line of ships was first drafted on a piece of paper by Carnival architect, Joe Farcus in 1987 in the office of Ted Arison, Carnival’s founder.