Eight new ships will make their debuts next year

After a recent decline in the number of new ships entering service, the pace is picking up.

Eight new ships – each carrying more than 2,000 passengers – will come on line in 2007. All but one will look familiar. That’s because seven of the eight are clones of existing ships.

Only one, Cunard’s Queen Victoria, is not a copy of another ship, though it is adopting many features of its sister royals, the 70,000-ton Queen Elizabeth 2 and the 151,000-ton Queen Mary 2.