Actually, it's really not NCL's fault about France. They took an old ship updated her, for the worse in most cases, but still. She probaly would have been scrapped. If you want to blame anybody for the France blame France(the country). They wouldn't fund her anymore.

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Originally posted by Neil Whitmore ( Bob ):
Hi all

It should be remembered that Star Cruises started life as a casino company and still run big casinos both ashore and on their own ships.

This to my mind means that they are only interested in big profits not classic ships !

If the older ships they own including the ss United States can not be converted to make money for them I would say that it is obvious that they as well as the SS Norway will be scrapped if they can find a way to arrange for it to be done.

The Australian Maritime website which is run by a person who is very enthusiastic about classic ships has now removed all information about both Star Cruises and NCL from his very large shipping website.

He also knows some of the management of Star Cruise and had been their quest on some of their cruise ships.

It is a pity other website did not follow his example !

Neil ( Bob )

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Bob ,

if I read your post correctly, cruise lines should not care about profits and only care about ship enthusiasts and clapped out old ships?

In regards to the SS Maritime site, I admire and respect Reuben Gossens greatly, but his site exists largely in part these days to promote the preservation of classic ships. However, the purchase of the United States had nothing to do with the US Government and her purchase did not 'appease' them as he states.

The US was purcahsed with the intent to return her to service as a US-flagged cruise ship. And despite what others have stated or insinuated, they didn't purchase her to 'block' other operators from getting into the US-flag cruise business. No other major line with the money, other than NCL, has ever been willing to invest in US-flag cruise ships.

And despite your insinuations of sinister intent, cruise lines do not exist to look for ways to scrap ships.

And back to your first point, it's true. Cruise lines are not interested in classic ships. They're businesses and they exist to provide their passengers what they want. If so many passengers wanted to cruise on nothing but classic ships, that's all we would have today.

The greatest case study of all is the last incarnation of Premier Cruises. When Kristian Stensby formed Cruise Holdings and conslidated Seawind, Dolphin and Premier into the 'new' Premier, they thought they had identified a rich marketplace-pax who wanted to cruise on classic ships.

Well, it turned out that these classic ships were not what people wanted, especially given the fact that pax could cruise on newer ships for about the same price.

I'm sorry, I don't see the logic in this line of thinking.

Regarding the operation of classic cruise ships
Classics International Cruises the Portugese company operate four classic cruise ships.

The oldest in their fleet now is the ex Stockholm now renamed Athena the hull of which dates back to 1947 although she was recently rebuilt to appear as a modern cruise ship.

Although the Funchal had an engine problem enroute to Australia this year, which resulted in her late arrival, she was still full on her cruises there and will next year spend an extended season in Australia as she is so popular.
She is now about 45 years old.

The Princess Danae also in their fleet started life as a Port Line cargo passenger ship in 1955 but was converted into a cruise ship about 1976.

It is therefore quite obvious that there is still a market for this type of cruise ship and passengers wishing to travel on classic cruise ships.

2. Certainly there is a market for classic ship - sadly most - if not all - who would deserve to be called such are gone. The main problem I see with the ships still around is that they are too young - 'the public' expects a Titanic like ship when talking about an old ship - not a 60ies interior with no wood and a lot of plastic.

-> the crowd appreciating these ships (mostly from the 60ies) is VERY small - the costs to keep them inoperation are very high - and actually it might soon be impossilbe with SOLAS 2010 on the horizon.
To blame NCL for not doing anything about these ships is therefore inadequate - especailly as they actually did more than some other lines. Also, the United States has higher capacity than the above mentioned ships together - and other than in the case of the above mentioned ships - which I assume were a 'bargain' for the cruise line - would it require a massive investment to bring her back to service.

Having worked at sea as a Hotel Manager for P&O Cruises and Princess Cruises for over thirty years I am fully aware of the size of cruise ships in the past and now.

I spent my last ten years at sea on the ss Oriana which to my mind was a far better sea ship than some of the new cruise ships when there is rough weather about !

Neil

[ 04-09-2006: Message edited by: Neil Whitmore ( Bob ) ]

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Originally posted by Neil Whitmore ( Bob ):
It is therefore quite obvious that there is still a market for this type of cruise ship and passengers wishing to travel on classic cruise ships.

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Yes there is, but it is a niche catered for by the likes of Olsen and Saga etc. The big three appear to have little interest in this small sector of the market.

Lets not forget that NCL refitted the SS France not to save a 'classic ship', or attract 'ship nuts'. It was to create a big mass market ship cheaply.

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Originally posted by Neil Whitmore ( Bob ):
[...]

I spent my last ten years at sea on the ss Oriana which to my mind was a far better sea ship than some of the new cruise ships when there is rough weather about !

Neil

[ 04-09-2006: Message edited by: Neil Whitmore ( Bob ) ]

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I would say that the older ships with their deeper hulls were more stable.

If you compare the draft of the newer cruise ships with the older ones you will see a lot of the older ones had up to a 30 feet draft.

This is not so with most of the new cruise ships.

Regarding moving gently, when Oraina did her two Far East Cruises every year from Australia we were often cruising at over 24 knots.
Not what I would call a gentle speed !

There is not many of the new cruise ships can even attain that speed let alone the 27.5 knots which Oriana could still easily do if we were late in leaving a port so that we arrived at the next port on time.

I will admit that the fuel consumption did go up when she did these speeds but you did not get the viabrations you get with a diesel engined passenger/cruise ship !

One of the worse I sailed on was the P&O Spirit of London which later was the 1st Sun Princess.

If she was pushed at over 20 knots as often happened on the run into St Thomas, US Virgin Islands, so we were the first ship in to the port that morning and got the berth nearest to the town, the whole of the aft passenger areas viabrated and items would fall off the tables.

I do not know if you remember but there was an attempt by NCL to join up with P&O and Princess cruises.

I was a share holder in both P&O and Princess Cruises at that time and the offer was declined and instead P&O joined up with Carnival in which I now have shares.

Perhaps the Directors of P&O were not happy with the way things were done by NCL.

Building cruise ships to carry up to 5000 passengers does nothing in my eye apart from making it easier for the owners of the ships to make more profits.

Diesel fuel costs for running the larger cruise ships amounts to little more than for running a 40,000 ton cruise ship.

They also swamp the facilities in ports they visit plus causes a lot of inconvience to people who live there.

At ports where they can not berth alongside and have to anchor out there is also the problem of getting the passengers on and off the ship.

On the ss Oriana we carried 1,500 passengers and often anchored out at some of the South Pacific Island Ports and used the ships boats fitted with twin Volvo engines to take our passengers ashore.

There is no guarantee that the weather will stay fine all the time you are at anchor which then gives major problems in getting the passengers back on board.

Also, one can certainly not conclude just form a deeper draft that a ship is more stable. A more complete picture is necessary - t of all parameters it is acutally the beam which is more sensitive - the uprighting torque actually increases with the third power of the beam for small angles - so a small increase in ship width is hefty increase in uprighting torque. (of course, if you change the beam and leave the displacement constant you also change the draft - also, this dependence is for small angles only)
Modern ships are much 'fuller' so the hull is wider over a bigger fraciton of the length which gives them a high stability. (and makes some of them a little less pleasent in rough sea)

This is of course simplified - we should come up with a proper naval architecture section for this site - which of course should be 'filled' by experts and not layman like me.

[ 04-09-2006: Message edited by: Ernst ]