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Although I still think that P&O would prefer to get shot of the whole ferries side of things, I disagree that it is a PR disaster for them.
If they don't end up getting all ships back into service and eventually pull the plug, they won't care and just walk away. They've treated their old staff appallingly and don't seem to mind that they've done that, so why would they care about PR?
If the ships do all get back into service, the PR side is not going to worry them at all. They won't care about tourist traffic, freight is what they will be after, knowing that they've got the country held to ransom, PR won't matter. Business is business and freight customers will use a service that allows them to deliver to the UK /Europe simple. If P&O have the space, freight businesses will use them.
We can all boycott P&O as tourists, but it will make no difference to them, the "on-board" spend that they had before never made that much, unless you were an avid fan of giant Toblerone! Not having 300 hundred cars onboard simply means that they can fit the more profitable freight onboard.
Don't forget that it's the amount of people on-board that limits them. I don't know exactly the safety numbers but say it's 2000 max and 300 cars with four people in each, plus 15 coaches of 50 people, my maths only leaves 50 spaces left, so could be as low as 25 HGV if each has a co-driver and having worked alongside this business previously, freight makes the money, tourist doesn't.
So I don't think they are worried about PR.