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I see a bit of the ferry VISBY (now Polferries' SCANDINAVIA by coincidence), a bit of Royal Caribbean. It looks more like a glorified ferry to me...
Brgds.Ralph
[ 06-26-2007: Message edited by: rd77 ]
I think she would have looked better with her hull painted white.
Neil ( Bob )
I have also this ship postcards from the project from the M/S POLONIA of 1979...
However recently when I was speaking with a friend ( from Poland, who spent all his life in Polish Ships), he told me an interesting history about this ship...
The history goes back to Gotaas-Larsen, a company which was mainly involved in tankers, but they also had an interest in Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines (RCCL). The tanker business was in decline, so cruise ships became of greater interest to them. They renamed their newly acquired company Eastern Cruise Lines. In 1972, they part-exchanged the small Ariadne with Chandris for their Atlantis, which became the Emerald Seas. She successfully operated 3- and 4-day cruises from Miami. In 1980, they acquired the Calypso for a wholly-owned subsidiary, Western Cruise Lines, operating 3- and 4-day cruises out of Los Angeles as the Azure Seas. Gotaas-Larsen then acquired a 51% interest in Sundance Cruises, who ran a single ship, the Stardancer, in Alaska during the summer, and out of Los Angeles in winter. The combined group was renamed Admiral Cruises. None of the three ships in the fleet were purpose-built for their services, so Admiral ordered the Future Seas from French builders. She was to become the first vessel tailor-made for the US short-cruise market, though she never sailed under her intended name. Gotaas-Larsen then engineered the merger of their two companies Admiral and RCCL to form Royal Admiral Cruises. However, Carnival Cruise Line was also trying to buy into RCCL at this time. One of the RCCL partners, Arne Wilhelmsen, managed to raise finance to buy out the other partners, and Royal Admiral never happened. The Stardancer and Future Seas became RCCL's Viking Serenade and Nordic Empress, and the Emerald Seas and Azure Seas were both sold.
However according to this Polish friend,before Admiral placed the order to french builders, there was several shipyards interested in this project, and Wartsila which had good professional links with Polish ship yards by the time, build this project in order to present to Sundance Cruises initially, becaming Admiral Cruises soon after...
He said that this project was to be build partially in Poland ( hull probably) and to be finished in Finland...
This would be a mark, because would be the first ship for a costumer non- USSR block...
According to him, for political reasons the project was named officially "POLONIA" as...a..replacement for the M/S STEFAN BATORY. as mentioned...non-officially, perhaps she would became the M/S FUTURE SEAS for Admiral Cruises....
Best regards from Madeira
Dimas
P.S.- This project was certainly used by Wartsila after their failure with this business with Admiral, however when the build the M/S Viking SONG & sister ship on the 80's...just compare the design...and remove the RCCL ( by the time Admiral feature)...was sucessfully build.
[ 07-05-2007: Message edited by: SHIPS AGENT ]
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