At Sea with Doug Newman

Louis Cruise Lines‘ parent, Louis plc, has announced that it has sold two of its oldest ships, the 10,487 GT, 628-berth Princesa Marissa and the 14,173 GT, 507-berth Serenade (pictured above), for a combined price of $8.4 million. Both ships are expected to go for scrap. The company also completed the purchase of the 37,773 GT, 1,450-berth Thomson Destiny and 33,930 GT, 1,254-berth Thomson Spirit, which it previously held under charter-purchase agreements from a Norwegian investment firm and Holland America Line respectively, for the combined sum of $123.5 million. Both ships are chartered to Thomson Cruises until 2011. All this is part of Louis’ aggressive fleet renewal program, which kicked into high gear last month with its acquisition of  the 50,764 GT, 1,742-berth Norwegian Dream and 40,876 GT, 1,462-berth Norwegian Majesty from Star Cruises.

The retirement of Princesa Marissa is an especially big step for Louis; she was its very first ship back in 1986, so her retirement truly marks the end of the beginning of the company’s history in the cruise industry. Built in 1966 as Finnlines‘ Baltic ferry Finnhansa, later Birka Line’s Prinsessan, this small, simple ship is a far cry from the modern tonnage increasingly making up the Louis fleet, but it was she, on short cruises from Louis’ base in Cyprus over two decades ago, that started it all.

The even older Serenade is another Louis veteran, bought back in 1999 when the Louis fleet still consisted mostly of former ferries and ocean liners from the 1950s and 1960s. She was built back in 1957 as Jean Mermoz for the private French shipping company Fabre Line for service from Marseille to West Africa. After a massive 1970 conversion to a cruise ship, she sailed as Mermoz for Croisières Paquet (from 1993 a subsidiary of Costa) until she was bought by Louis in 1999. You can read an excellent history of her here from my good friend Peter Knego of Maritime Matters, and you also won’t want to miss these wonderful videos of her in 2007, her last year of service, by Ernst Galuschek.