More than 1,700 people are confined on board the Ambition liner, moored at the port of Bordeaux in Gironde, following a death and a suspected gastroenteritis epidemic, the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Regional Health Agency (ARS) announced this Wednesday, May 13, 2026. The ship was carrying 1,233 passengers, mostly British and Irish nationals, and 514 crew members, making a total of 1,747 people.
Around fifty passengers have gastrointestinal disorders, according to health authorities. A nonagenarian passenger died before the ship arrived in the port of Brest, the previous stopover. The link between this death and the gastric symptoms observed on board has not been established at this stage, and analyses are underway to detect the possible presence of norovirus.
ARS Nouvelle-Aquitaine indicates that the hypothesis of a food problem is not excluded, but that any link with the hantavirus is ruled out. This clarification refers to the recent death of three passengers on board the MV Hondius, a cruise ship linking Ushuaïa, in Argentina, to the Cape Verde archipelago, which had sparked an international health alert linked to this virus transmitted mainly by rodents.
The peak of symptoms, vomiting and diarrhoea, occurred on Sunday, May 11, while Ambition was in Brest, in Finistère. The ship reached Bordeaux in the following days. According to CNEWS, citing the ARS, departure from Bordeaux is in principle planned for Friday, May 15.
Ambition is a cruise ship operated by Ambassador Cruise Line, a British company founded in 2020 and merged in January 2025 with the French Compagnie Française de Croisières (CFC) to form the Ambassador group. The ship has a nominal capacity of approximately 1,200 passengers. It exclusively operates flight-free cruises departing from British ports – Tilbury-London, Liverpool, Belfast, Newcastle, Dundee in particular -, a commercial positioning which explains the predominantly British and Irish clientele on board.
According to CruiseMapper, the current cruise, lasting fourteen days, began on May 8, 2026. The ARS and CNEWS indicate that the ship left the Shetland Islands on May 6, both dates likely explained by a stopover departing from a mainland port before embarking in Shetland. The itinerary then included stops in Belfast, Liverpool and Brest before reaching Bordeaux, a port on the Garonne accessible to cruise ships from the Gironde estuary.
Built in 1999 for Festival Cruises as MS Mistral, the ship sailed under several flags and names — Grand Mistral (Ibero Cruises), Costa neoRiviera (Costa Cruises), AIDAmira (AIDA Cruises) — before being acquired by Ambassador Cruise Line in January 2022 and renamed Ambition.
Norovirus, the most common agent of gastroenteritis on board ships
Norovirus, which is suspected to be present, is the most common pathogen responsible for gastroenteritis outbreaks on cruise ships, according to data from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It is transmitted mainly by direct contact, through contaminated surfaces and through food or water. Its incubation period is twelve to forty-eight hours, which corresponds to the time window between departure from Shetland and the peak of symptoms observed on May 11 in Brest.
Containment of passengers on board constitutes the standard containment procedure in the event of a suspected epidemic on a ship, in accordance with the International Health Regulations (IHR) of the World Health Organisation (WHO).
