At Sea with Doug Newman

This month, much of the talk in the ocean liner and cruise ship community has been about Cunard’s latest addition to the fleet, Queen Victoria. She’s the first purpose-built cruise ship (please don’t call her an ocean liner) for Cunard in 30 years. That ship 30 years ago was Cunard Princess.

Originally meant to be named Cunard Conquest but renamed before entering service — perhaps because someone thought the first name sounded too militaristic — Cunard Princess was the second of a pair of sisters; the first entered service in 1976 as Cunard Countess. Cunard Conquest, as she was then, was launched in 1976 by Burmeister & Wain,  Copenhagen, and then fitted out at La Spezia. The 17,495 GT, 800-berth ship was named Cunard Princess by the late Princess Grace of Monaco in New York in 1977 before entering service on year-round Caribbean cruises.

Later in her Cunard career, she moved to the Mediterranean, while her older sister continued in the Caribbean. In 1990-1991, she went even farther east when she was chartered by the US government and berthed in Bahrain where she was used as a rest and relaxation center for military personnel involved in the Gulf War. In 1993, she moved to newly-created subsidiary Cunard Crown Cruises, formed by Cunard as a new mid-market cruise line. It operated Cunard Countess, Cunard Princess and three ships chartered from Effjohn International: Crown Monarch, Crown Jewel and Crown Dynasty. The venture soon failed, though, and in 1995, Cunard sold Cunard Princess to Starlauro Cruises, owned by Mediterranean Shipping Company. Starlauro renamed her Rhapsody and she’s been owned by MSC ever since; by the end of 1995 its cruise division had changed its name to Mediterranean Shipping Cruises and is now called MSC Cruises. Today, at age 30, Rhapsody is the smallest and oldest ship in the MSC fleet; she’s marketed as MSC Rhapsody, but her name hasn’t changed. Cunard, meanwhile, didn’t build another new ship until Queen Mary 2 in 2004, but is now most definitely back in the game, and 30 years after Cunard Princess, we finally have another purpose-built Cunard cruise ship.

If any readers have memories of this ship, either in her Cunard days or with Starlauro/MSC, feel free to use the comments function below. I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks to Tony Davis for the photos used here: Above, Cunard Princess at Corfu in July 1993 and below, at Gibraltar in December 1994 just before leaving Cunard service, in Cunard Crown livery.