Americans
 The Americans off Saint George, May 1987
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Amerika was a cruise ship of the Greek shipping company Chandris, put into service in 1952 . It was created as a passenger ship under the name Kenya Castle and was used as such for the British Union-Castle Line between London and Durban until 1967 . After the retirement by Union-Castle, the sale to Chandris and the conversion to a cruise ship, which was completed in 1968, took place. For the next 28 years, the Amerika was used around the world. Between 1980 and 1984 she was operated under charter by the Italian shipping company Costa Crociere .
The Ameri Kanis remained until October 1996 at the service, and then was five years betätigungslos in the Greek Eleusis . In 2001, the demolition was carried out of the nearly fifty-year-old ship in the Indian Alang . The Amerika was one of the last remaining ships of the former Union-Castle Line.
Planning and construction
The Kenya Castle was built as the second of three sister ships at Harland & Wolff in Belfast and was launched on June 21, 1951 under the hull number 1432. The delivery to the Union-Castle Line took place on February 16, 1952. The name of the new building referred to the East African state of Kenya , while the suffix Castle was part and identification of every ship of the shipping company. The cost of building the Kenya Castle and its sister ships was approximately £ 1.1 million each.
The Kenya Castle could carry up to 530 passengers in a single class. It also had large loading spaces for transporting general cargo and refrigerated goods.
period of service
Union-Castle Line
The Kenya Castle was put into service in April 1952 on the route from London to Durban, which she operated together with her sister ships.
On this route, the Kenya Castle remained in service for 15 years until it was retired on April 22, 1967 and laid up in Essex . The liner service to South Africa had become uneconomical at that time due to the ever increasing and cheaper air traffic.
Her sister ships were no longer sold for further service, but for demolition after a relatively short lifespan. The 14 year old Braemar Castle in Faslane-on-Clyde in 1966 and the 16 year old Rhodesia Castle in Taiwan in 1967 .
Chandris
_(original).jpg)
In July 1967 the Kenya Castle was sold to the Greek shipping company Chandris, which renamed it American . The transfer to Piraeus and conversion to a cruise ship followed. Among other things, the cargo holds of the former liner were built and replaced by additional cabins.
On August 8, 1968, the Amerika was for Chandris. Originally it was planned to use the ship in the liner service between Piraeus and New York during the summer months. However, this was discarded due to the falling passenger numbers due to competition from the airlines. Instead, the Amerika was from now on for cruises from New York to Bermuda . Later in her service, she traveled to the Caribbean and Europe .
1980 was Ameri Kanis for four years at the Italian shipping company Costa Crociere charter. During this time it wore the colors of the shipping company with the yellow-blue chimney typical of Costa and the blue C , but kept its old name. In 1984 the ship returned to service for Chandris.
The Americanis remained in service for another 12 years until retired on October 24, 1996.
Laying time and demolition
The ship came to Eleusis, where it was laid up alongside the cruise ship Regent Star , which was retired in 1995, and the Mediterranean Sky ferry, which was retired in 1996 .
After almost five years lay-in, the ship was sold in April 2001 to be scrapped in Alang , India , where it arrived at the scrapping yards there on June 4, 2001. The Amerika was one of the last existing steamers on the Union-Castle Line. All other ships of the shipping company still in existence were also scrapped by 2005.
Web links
- the ship on Faktaomfartyg (Swedish)
- Postcard motifs of the ship on simplonpc.co.uk (English)
- Pictures of the Kenya Castle and its sister ships on timetableimages.com (English)
Footnotes
- ^ Gustav Adolf Theel: 1952/53: Analysis of the shipping industry . Springer Science + Business Media , Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-642-94599-1 , page 205.
- ^ Micke Asklander: T / S BRAEMAR CASTLE. In: faktaomfartyg.se. Retrieved June 8, 2020 .
- ^ Micke Asklander: T / S RHODESIA CASTLE. In: faktaomfartyg.se. Retrieved June 8, 2020 .
- ↑ Kenya Castle. In: Simplon Postcards. 2006, accessed June 8, 2020 .
- ↑ Chartered Ships. In: Simplon Postcards. 2006, accessed June 8, 2020 .