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In  1951 and 1952 Messageries Maritimes ordered a quartet of combination passenger-cargo liners of the MD-type, La Bourdonnais, Jean Laborde, Ferdinand de Lesseps and Pierre Loti. Two of them would become well-known cruise ships in their later lives. Messageries Maritimes was a French Company founded in 1852 by a shipowner from Marseille M. Rostand together with […]

One of the first cruises in history is said to have departed from Hamburg in 1891. It was the Auguste Viktoria  which was on of HAPAG’s largest ships and mostly out of work during winter time as not many passengers wanted to experience the angry North Atlantic in winter time with its ferocious weather. So Albert

She was ordered in 1938 from De Schelde shipyard in Vlissingen. Planning had already begun in 1935 because of a fleet renewal program. Her keel was laid in 1939 and construction started. Little did her owners Rotterdamsche Lloyd (Royal Rotterdam Lloyd) know it would take 8 years to complete her! Construction halted during World War

All cruise ship passengers have now made it back home, as cruising has come to a halt. Because of the Corona-virus all vessels are in lay-up scattered around the globe. However it is estimated that around the world, more than 100,000 crew are still trapped on cruise ships with nowhere to go, because most ports

The World is the first private residential community at sea, at this time the only one sailing the worlds oceans. The idea of building The World came from a well-known name in the cruise-industry, Knut Kloster, known for Norwegian Cruise Line which he founded in 1966 to open up Caribbean crusing with their 1965-built Southward. NCL later in 1980 converted

She is the latest newbuilding of Regent Seven Seas Cruises, the Seven Seas Splendor. With this ship, RSSC has – as far as the onboard ambience is concerned – moved into a new direction. Normally vessels in the ultra-luxury  market are decorated with warm but slightly darker colors which, like the materials used on board, result

With their new Costa Smeralda it seems that Costa has returned to their Italian roots again, which has always been their trademark of course. But with their former flagship Costa Diadema (2014) and several vessels before with their Joe Farcus influenced and Carnivalized interiors, colorful and glitzy, they got off track a bit. But now, five years after Costa Diadema came

After the somewhat negative comments on the Norwegian Epic regarding her profile as well as some new features in her staterooms, Norwegian Cruise Line obviously decided to create a completely different ship with some interesting novelties: Norwegian Breakaway. Her name was chosen via a public contest, won by Kimberley Powell.  Built by Meyer Werft from Papenburg, Germany, she

On July 15th 1952 Barclay, Curle & Co from Glasgow delivered ss Uganda to British India Steam Navigation Company. She joined fleetmate Nevasa which had been taken into service a year earlier and was the first troopship taken into service after WWII. Both ships could be identified easily as Uganda’s funnel was taller. She was intended for the UK –

I have some fond memories of Kungsholm. In 1978 I was on a cruise to the Norwegian fjords on the Calypso of Ulysses Line and we met the Kungsholm in the Geiranger fjord. Ashore we met the cruise director of Kungsholm, a lady called Oceana as she was born at sea. She told us that many of her