Once the largest and most expensive cruise ship ever built Grand Princess was ordered February 8, 1994 as part of a $2.5 billion expansion program. She was also the namesake of Princess Cruises’ Grand Class Cruising concept, redefining this cruise concept since it debuted in the mid 1990’s. This philosophy provides passengers with unparalleled choices following […]

The world’s first purpose-built cruise ship The earliest recorded cruise was an around the world voyage by sailing ship in 1845 that was promoted by the Hamburg shipowner Rob M Sloman. Thomas Cooke later organized so called excursions, cruises to the Mediterranean where passengers often stayed in hotels during their stay in port. See the

Hospital ships are normally out of scope of this website, but the Mercy Ships organization and its ships crewed by volunteers deserve to  be in the spotlights as they bring humanitarian aid around the world to those who badly need it. From February 26 to March 15, their newest ship, the Global Mercy, just delivered and

Many thanks to Havila Kystruten for providing the photographs for this article, visit www.havilavoyages.com Per Saevik, founder and chairman of the Havila Group, was born in a family of fishermen. He started his  career at sea in the fishing industry and soon bought his own fishing boat. His company Havila Group now employs thousands of

When the Holland America Line left Rotterdam to move its offices to the US and decided to change the registry of their ships to New York and Hamilton,, a group of maritime enthusiasts, many of them former HAL employees wanted to found a new cruise line based in Rotterdam. They were led by Joost de