The first Lady Ship of Virgin Voyages fleet is almost here, and she’s shaping up to be quite a beauty…

If the leading lady image on the livery seems recognizable, it might be because she’s made appearances on Virgin entities before. Designed by artist Toby Tinsley, her likeness appears on Virgin Atlantic and Australia aircrafts as well as the Virgin Galactic spaceline.

Now, she’s emerging again, but this time she reappears as a mystical Mermaid – the soul and spirit behind the first Virgin Voyages ship. Her name, and therefore the name of our first vessel, was carefully deliberated and finally chosen to be…

The Scarlet Lady. There…we said it. The mermaid’s out of the bag! Scarlet is the embodiment of everything this ship represents. As our figurehead, she takes on a role historically dedicated to goddesses, important women in society, and even mermaid figures.

Though beautiful and mysterious in vision, she represents a woman of power – the leader not only on our first voyage, but also in our efforts to encourage front-facing female leaders throughout our company with our Virgin Voyages Scarlet Squad Program.

From engineers to builders, marine tech to crew captains and technical positions, this program is meant to help female leaders break through the glass ocean if you will; it’s meant to create more leadership positions for women on the operations side of the sea travel industry. This multi-pronged approach, supported by skill development, recruitment and mentoring, is something we find incredibly important in areas traditionally lacking female leadership, like marine technical and hotel management.

We are also currently celebrating construction milestones. That means we will be flooding the drydock in preparation for the ships “jumboization” – enlarging the ship by adding an entire section. This process is a long and complex endeavour which marks an important milestone in the build-out of our Scarlet Lady.

Looking ahead to our continued growth, this shipyard celebration is to be topped off with the initial cutting of steel on our second vessel, due for delivery in 2021. A maritime tradition, the Steel Cutting Ceremony carves out the first pieces of steel that will one day adorn the hull of the ship.

All in all, ship is really coming together, quite literally, and more beautifully than we even expected. We can’t wait to see her in final form, but we know that no matter where we go, on board or on land, our travel is graced by Scarlet’s presence in all of her glorious spontaneity. It’s an aura that permeates everything.

SOURCE: Virgin Voyages