Three long blasts on the ship's siren marked the moment at 8.35pm last night when the Aurora finally left Southampton's Mayflower Terminal on her long-awaited 'Grand Voyage'.
As she swung from her moorings, some 150 cruisers gathered on deck to wave goodbye to the city after an unexpected 10-day holiday on the south coast. Hundreds more gathered in the Aurora's dozen or so bars to grab one last free drink before the boat hit international waters and toast their 'trip of a lifetime'.
No more Jimmy Tarbuck or Paul Daniels to while away soggy evenings on the Solent. No more free excursions to the New Forest. Instead, they looked forward to long days on the sundeck and excursions in Rio de Janeiro, Sydney and two dozen other ports around the globe.
John Miller, a retired City executive aboard the P&O Cruises flagship, had agreed to do a cruise diary for Times Online during the shortened 93-day trip.
In his only entry so far, Mr Miller described the scene as Captain Hamish Reid, a popular Scottish cruise skipper, announced at 8.05pm that Aurora would finally sail. David Dingle, managing director of P&O Cruises, earned a vigorous round of applause when he stood up to thank passengers for their "patience and forbearance".
The passengers - around 1,400 had remained on board during the delay - were told that tests on the ship's main starboard propulsion motor had gone well and the ship would finally head into the open sea.
"Passengers were in tears as they rang loved ones, family and friends," Mr Miller wrote. "The emotional roller-coaster of the last 10 days had come to a climax.
"Down on Deck 7 passengers exchanged waves and cheers with shore staff as Aurora finally set sail. She let go all warps at 8.35pm. Captain Reid demonstrated his feelings with the traditional three long blasts on the ship's siren which echoed around Southampton. Passengers waved to the battery of press and media cameras."
He continued: "At 10.10pm we are well down the channel to the Nab Tower. We now look forward to a normal cruise."
The parties, no doubt, carried on late into the night as the ship steamed into the channel and veered past the coast of France. On the bridge, Mr Reid would have been monitoring the motor's performance carefully - the Aurora needed to cruise at around 22 to 24 knots if it was to get around the world on time for its next scheduled voyage.
He would have known that Aurora broke down once before in the Bay of Biscay, on its maiden voyage in 2000, shortly after the champagne bottle launched at it by the Princess Royal fell harmlessly into the water - never a good omen.
This morning, as the passengers, some nursing hangovers, got up for breakfast, they learned the bad news. A statement from P&O Cruises said tests conducted at sea during the night had shown that the repairs to the motor "have not been successful enough to allow her to achieve the required speed to complete the Grand Voyage".
Worse still, the £200 million vessel will limp back to port at far from its cruising speed, not arriving back at the Mayflower Terminal until midnight. P&O said passengers would be "invited to disembark" at 8.30am tomorrow, 12 days after their original departure date.
The cancellation will be a costly business for P&O Cruises, which faces immediate refunds of around £24 million and will offer passengers discounts totalling a quarter of their fare on their next trip. But the company hopes to get the ship back in service and earning money within a month and a company spokeswoman said the total cost to Carnival, the US parent company, would be closer to £20 million.
There is also the cost to the company's reputation - which is impossible to quantify - and the possible loss of business from those customers who felt they were not kept fully informed of the Aurora's mechanical problems.
But, as the company admits, the real problem is for the passengers, some of whom saved up for years to join Aurora's Grand Voyage, fares for which ranged from £9,800 to almost £42,000. A total of 385 passengers had left the ship by last night, including Malcolm Wilkins, a lottery winner from Reading who joked as he got off the ship: "There’s more chance of me winning the lottery again than that ship going round the world."
Some passengers due to join the Aurora mid-cruise only found out via the internet this morning that their trip had been cancelled, including Paul Nicholls, who was looking forward to arriving back home in style four decades after emigrating to Australia.
Mr Nicholls e-mailed Times Online to say: "You can add me to the list of shattered passengers as I was due to join the ship in Sydney to return to Olde Blighty after an absence of 44 years.
"Now I will only have thoughts of what it might have been like to walk down the street where I was born in Darlaston, South Staffordshire, all those 64 years ago."
Among the patient cruisers who stayed on board were Derek and Christine Ellson from Gloucester, who decided yesterday to give the Aurora one last chance while others gave up and went home.
Mr Ellson rang his son in London last night to tell him that the ship had finally left port and their dream holiday had begun. He told him: "I only hope I don't wake up back in Southampton."
