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Originally built as Aleksandr Pushkin in 1965 by Mathias-Thesen-Werft, East Germany for the Soviet Union’s Baltic Shipping Company for liner service between Europe and Canada and cruise service. After being extensively rebuilt she sailed for Orient Lines from 1993 to 2008 as their Marco Polo. UK-cruise line Cruise & Maritime Voyages and its German subsidiary

21,406 GRT, loa 185m, 929 passengers. Best known for the cruise service she performed for 20 years when chartered by her Russian owners to German operator Phoenix Reisen from 1988 – 2008, this handsome vessel had originally been planned as a liner/ cruise ship by the company who ordered her from Howaldtswerke Deutsche Werft, Hamburg.

Built 1985 for Carnival Cruise Line as Holiday, one of three Holiday-class ships. She stayed with the company until 2009 and was transferred to subsidiary Ibero Cruceros as Grand Holiday. In 2015 sold to UK operator CMV Cruises. CMV went bankrupt in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In October 2020 she was

Fedor Shalyapin, 21,406 GRT, loa 185m, 929 passengers. Built as Ivernia in 1955 for Cunard Line for service on the transatlantic run. Later renamed Franconia. One of a series of four vessels (the above mentioned Albatros being one of these). Sold to the USSR in 1973, she divided her days between cruising and liner voyages

Estonia, 4,800 GRT, loa 122m, 333 passengers. Between 1958 and 1964, a series of no less than nineteen small passenger ships were built in East Germany for employment in the USSR passenger fleet. The government of the USSR frequently used these vessels for military or scientific purposes. However normally they were employed on domestic routes

Ellinis, 18,163 GRT, loa 193m, 1668 passengers. In 1931 the Lurline was launched and the Matson Line placed her on the San Francisco-Los Angeles-Honolulu service. In WWII she served as a troop transport. After the war she was refitted to her former glory and redelivered to Matson Line in 1948. In 1963 she suffered turbine