For most of us it is hard enough to reverse a car. Just imagine what it must be like trying to reverse a luxury cruise liner costing £500 million. If she is as long as three football pitches, the task becomes virtually impossible.

This is, however, exactly what Captain Dimitrios Kafetzis had to do recently. He had to reverse the luxurious Celebrity Silhouette for 26 miles, often having only two feet on either side to play with. The Greek god of cruise liners must have been on his side, because he achieved this without so much as scratching the paintwork.

Captain Kafetzis was not practising for a new type of reverse cruise. He was taking the Silhouette from her birthplace at the Papenburg shipyard in Germany, along the River Ems to the open sea near Emshaven in the Netherlands.

It was Silhouette’s maiden voyage. Fortunately it is unlikely that she will ever have to complete such a daunting task in her cruising career again.

The geography of the shipyard and the sheer scale of the ship made it impossible to steer it out of the yard in the normal way.

To prepare for the ship’s journey, called a “conveyance” in shipping terms, railway tracks and power lines that pass over the river all had to be removed first, otherwise the Silhouette would not have been able to pass through.

The journey also had to be scheduled for high tide to make sure there was enough water in the river. In places the ship, with a width of 121 feet, had to steer through gaps of only 125 feet!