Cruise guests returning to their ship after a day on land were held up for several hours when roads were closed while a 250kg World War 2 bomb was disposed of safely.

Passengers returning to MSC Preziosa in Hamburg were caught up in the drama earlier this week, with some worrying they might not get back to port before the ship sailed.

They included cruise blogger Emma Cruises, who posted on social media that ‘this really was one of the most random and weird journeys I’ve ever done’.

Emma said the normally straightforward shuttle from Hamburg to the port should have taken about 15-20 minutes but some passengers were stuck on buses for two to three hours when police closed the roads.  

As her bus reached a road block, the driver announced to passengers: “Police found a bomb from the Second World War in the harbour and now they closed all the roads and we can’t get to the ship. This is a problem.”

While Emma’s bus had a toilet on board, others didn’t and some passengers who were caught short had to go in the bushes. To make matters worse, the weather had become stormy.  

Other guests were left waiting in Hamburg for a bus, ‘queueing for three hours in the rain, not knowing when their shuttle bus was going to arrive’, Emma said.

On returning to the ship, Emma discovered the disposal had been planned in advance – leaving her to question why the shuttle buses had been caught seemingly unaware.

“The entire thing was planned and they knew they were defusing the bomb that day, before our ship got here,” Emma said.

She discovered the bomb had been found during the dredging of a dam near the port and a 300-metre evacuation zone had been set up.

“The police had released a map that showed where the evacuation zone was and where people outside of that had to stay inside. As far as I could tell, our bus was planning on going straight through that.

“This was definitely one of the weirdest cruise ship journeys I’ve been on,” she added.

You can listen to Emma’s account of the drama in a YouTube video here.