Cruise ship Astoria - a photo on Flickriver

            ASTORIA is a ship with an interesting history. She was built in 1980 in (then West) Germany as ASTOR for the newly-formed Hadag Cruise Line, owned by the City of Hamburg. She was unprofitable and was sold to the South African Marine Corporation (Safmarine) who wished to revive the liner service between Europe and South Africa. Unfortunately, Safmarine found her unsuitable for this application - designed for cruises, her engines were simply not able to sustain the kind of speeds necessary on this service for prolonged periods of time. So Safmarine went out and ordered a similar, more powerful sistership, also named ASTOR (this ship, delivered in 1987, is the present ASTOR; Safmarine's liner venture was a failure and she soon became the Soviet FEDOR DOTSOYEVSKY and then, still owned by the Russian shipping company Sovcomflot, was renamed ASTOR and chartered to a German tour operator, with Transocean taking over her charter in 1998). To make way for the new ASTOR, in 1985 Safmarine sold the original vessel to the East German state-owned enterprise Deutfracht Seereederi by way of a third party to avoid embarrassment to the communist government in East Germany for doing business with the apartheid regime in South Africa. She was renamed ARKONA, and was sometimes chartered to Western tour operators; at other times she operated cruises for "deserving socialists". After reunification in 1990, Deutfracht Seereederi became Deutsche Seereederi and ARKONA was chartered to the (formerly West) German tour operator Seetours, becoming a popular ship on the German market. In 1996, Seetours introduced AIDA (described above). This caught the eye of P&O, who bought out Seetours and expanded the Aida brand. The more traditional Arkona brand did not figure into P&O's plans for the company, and in 2001, ARKONA was retired from the Seetours fleet (subsequently, the Seetours name disappeared; by way of the P&O Princess merger with Carnival, Aida became a unit of Costa as Carnival consolidated their Continental European operations). Deutsche Seereederi, now having no use for her, sold her to the Russian shipowner Sovcomflot who already owned her sister, the newer ASTOR, and chartered that ship to Transocean Tours. ARKONA was renamed ASTORIA and in 2002 began to run alongside her sister for the very first time as the second ship in the Transocean Tours fleet.
   

Taken in: España / Catalunya / Barcelona (show map)

Taken on: December 28, 2008

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riviera

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pesca

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Sets appears in: • ships and boats

Groups appears in: • Cruise Ships • Worldwide Ship Spotters (WSS)

Camera: Nikon D50, f/10.0, 1/160 sec, 38mm (=57mm) (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Nikon D50
Aperture:	f/10.0
Exposure Time:	0.006 sec (1/160)
Focal Length:	38mm (35mm equivalent: 57mm)
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Not Defined
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Scene Capture Type:	Landscape
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Ver.1.00
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