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By LEE DAVIDSON
Staff ReporterGULFPORT -- A former cruise ship that brought gambling to coastal Mississippi before dockside casinos were legal recently sank off the coast of the Dominican Republic, ending a 61-year odyssey.
On March 16, as it plunged to its final resting place 7,500 feet under the Caribbean Sea,'s surface, so ended the journey of the Copa Casino, which was built in 1942 and launched nine years later.
The derelict cruise ship used to take nearly 1,000 travelers and cargo on routes from New York to Europe in its heyday in the 1950s, one former owner said.
It also spent time as a maritime school and was operated by a major cruise line in Greece, said Rick Carter, who owned the ship from 1989 until late last year.
The vessel survived World War II and its recent sinking derailed plans to crash it into a shoreline in India, where it would have been torn apart by hand for scrap.
In the late 1980s and early'90s, when the vessel was used as a floating casino, the 503-foot-long Copa had some 700 slot machines and 20 table games and three casino cocktail bars, Carter said.
Its name lives on in Gulfport at the Copa Casino, a barge-style operation open since last fall, said Marc Masher, a spokesman for the new Copa. The barge was once the home of Treasure Bay Tunica, but it had been vacant since the mid-1990s.
Masher said the new Copa is bigger and better than its predecessor -- with more than 1,200 slot and video poker machines and two restaurants. The barge is nearly 98,000 square feet, whereas the former cruise ship was about a third that size, he said.
The new Copa holds nearly 4,000 patrons, Carter said, and as of Thursday the company had gained permission from Gulfport to build a hotel on the site.
The new floating casino can't compete with the original Copa's life history.
The cruise ship was launched in Scheidam, Holland, in 1951 under the name Ryndam. It was operated by Holland America Lines, one of the world's largest cruise ship companies.
But before that, in 1942, Carter said, the ship's main plate and frame was built amidst the bombings and pillaging of World War II.
"It laid up just floating, waiting for the war to get over. It's one of the only vessels that survived the war -- it wasn't sunk or scrapped," Carter said.
In the'50s and'60s, Carter said, the vessel was based in New York and carried cargo and people on cruises across the Atlantic for Holland America.
In 1960, the vessel was one of a few first to bring cruises to Canada.
"By 1961, even budget travelers expected more luxury and ... Ryndam had a block of cabins amidships on main deck rebuilt with private shower and toilet, reducing tourist capacity to 822 berths. The first class lounge was extended on the starboard side adding a 'Gents' Corner bar," according to one published account.
At some point, the ship was put out of commission and it was used as a maritime school, Carter said. Carter said a dentist was married on the vessel during that phase. The dentist was said to have met his future wife through the schooling process.
In 1972, the vessel was sold to the Greek Epirotiki cruise company for $2.5 million, according to published reports.
Carter, a Gulfport resident, said he bought the vessel in 1989 for an undisclosed amount. Under Carter's direction, it called on the Port of Gulfport under the name The Pride of Mississippi. Passengers were taken on "cruises to nowhere," journeying about eight miles out to the Gulf of Mexico's international waters, where they could gamble.
In search of more gamblers, in the spring of 1989, the vessel spent some time making calls to the Port of Galveston in Texas. It underwent another name change, appropriately dubbed The Pride of Galveston for its brief travels to westward Gulf waters.
At this point, Carter and his co-owner and Gulfport friend Terry Green, sold their stock back to another co-owner, who declared bankruptcy.
Once the assets were liquidated, Green and Carter bought the vessel back, according to Carter. He said they brought it back to the Port of Gulfport, where it was given its final name -- Copa Casino, and traveled to places like Cozumel, Mexico.
Also in 1989, lobbyists began pushing Mississippi legislators to legalize dockside gambling. In 1992, the law passed allowing floating casinos to be docked at the port in Gulfport.
On Sept. 14, 1993, the Copa Casino opened dockside in Gulfport and became the seventh casino on the coast.
It remained docked there, out of commission, for about eight years. Carter said at one time he thought about sinking it off the Mississippi Gulf Coast to create a natural reef.
"The military was considering using it for target practice and it would have been great for the fishing industry, but it was too expensive," he said. He and his co-owner would have had to cover the $500,000 cost to sink it about 50 miles out of Biloxi in 280 feet of water, he said.
Last fall, the new Copa Casino barge opened to the public, which meant Carter had a limited amount of time to remove the original Copa.
Carter said he sold the vessel for $190,000 in December to a company in Louisiana. That group was responsible for hauling it out of Gulfport.
In January, the Louisiana group sold the vessel to a New York-based group for $500,000, he said. It is unclear who owned the ship when it left the Gulf Coast bound for India.
The vessel was towed out of the Port of Gulfport on Dec. 27, 2002. The next day it arrived in Mobile and was tied at the Alabama State Docks, according to Mobile's harbormaster. The ship stayed in Mobile until Jan. 28, 2003.
James Lyons, director of the Alabama State Docks, said he wasn't surprised the former cruise ship didn't complete its final voyage. He said the month that the vessel was docked in Mobile was a nervous time.
"We took it because it was going to be a couple of days, but they couldn't get it up in the water back to get it to Chickasaw, so we kind of got stuck (with it). They couldn't keep the water out of it," Lyons said.
"One day it was leaning one way and the next day the other way. I was holding my breath hoping it wouldn't sink," he added.
After that, it spent time at a privately owned shipyard in Mobile before beginning its 45-day voyage to India. It never made it out of the Caribbean Sea, instead tilting and sinking during daylight hours on March 16. It had been at sea two or three weeks, officials said.
Capt. David Carey, the Port of Mobile's harbormaster, said it was fortunate that the ship began to sink during the day, so that the towing vessel that pulled it could break away from the doomed ship before it submerged fully.
To Carter, the ship's descent into the Caribbean was a fitting end.
"I'm tickled," he said. "The one good thing about it is we had cleaned it up considerably. It wasn't a terrible pollutant. May she rest in peace."