Portuscale Cruises, the Portuguese company that pulled its ship Funchal out of cruising from UK ports including Falmouth, which led to 200 people in Cornwall having their cruises cancelled, also bamboozled the Australian port of Geelong.

The company had promised to use Geelong as a base port for a series of cruises to south Australia and Tasmania in late 2014 and early 2015.

Geelong’s extrovert mayor Darryn Lyons and Rosalea Ryan, a journalist who represented Portuscale Cruises waxed lyrical about the project but in the end the company abandoned its Australian project at the eleventh hour due to commercial reasons.

The 1961-built, 244-cabin Funchal was one of four vessels acquired from Lisbon-based Classic International Cruises by Portuguese entrepreneur Rui Alegre in early 2013. It was brought back into service with his newly founded Portuscale Cruises in August 2013 after an extensive refit.

On her maiden trip to north Europe Funchal was detained in Sweden in 2013 after a routine inspection of the ship revealed 10 serious defects ranging from faulty lifesaving equipment to serious inadequacies in fire protection. The Swedish Transport Agency who conducted the inspection said that the standard of the ship was so poor that they only completed 50 per cent of the ship survey.

On the Funchal Facebook page one loyal fan said: “The project started by Portuscale was never going be easy, for starters, in Portugal, Funchal’s own country, the ship was neglected by travel agents, that today have this mentality that “the bigger the better”, well dear friends, there is a market out there for both, mega and small ships.”