Cruise ships moored along south coast of England

Having only got into cruising in Jan 2019, this came to an abrupt (temporary?) stop in March 2020 with the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic. I had a cruise for April cancelled, so rebooked it for May, which was also cancelled. Currently, August 2020, no cruise companies are operating before November. This means there are hundreds of cruise ships moored around the world! Like airports, cruise terminals and docks charge high prices for parking, so cruise ships are moored at sea. 

Many ships under CMV which operates from the UK were moored at their home bases of Tilbury (on the Thames) and Avonmouth near Bristol. This shows the ships at Tilbury on 1st May -

And by August just the British ships were left :

Many other ships are in the English Channel. August view from Cruisemapper :

The BBC had a good article on 12 August, "Coronavirus: How ghost cruise ships became a summer tourist attraction". An enterprising man takes tourists out to see the ships.

The ships do have to go into port every now and again to refuel, as they all have a small crew onboard. 

Another interesting article from BBC, on 20 April, "Coronavirus journey: The 'last cruise ship on Earth' finally comes home". Because of Coronavirus, many ships had to curtail their itinerary and sail across the world to get home. Some were able to swap passengers with other ships e.g. if the ship was going north but had Australians who needed to get home, they would transfer to a ship going south. 

I got home from my Amazon cruise towards the end of February. Coronavirus was already big news and the Diamond Princess cruise ship off Japan had passengers affected and the ship was quarantined. 

And now it's just a waiting game for cruise companies to decide it is safe to travel and of course for ports and countries to reopen. 

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UPDATE

18 Aug several papers had an article about a British crew member stuck on the cruise ship Norwegian Jade. The passengers left in April and the ship has been docked in Naples, Italy since June. The British crew member has been onboard for almost a year. He's allowed to go onshore but hasn't been paid since April, only gets a small allowance of £7.60 each day. See Metro report.