Costa Allegra

Annie Johnson is a redirect to this article. For persons, see Anne Johnson and Ann Johnson .

Costa Allegra

The Costa Allegra in Split, October 2011

Ship data flag  Italy other ship names Annie Johnson (1969–1986) Regent Moon (1986–1988) Alexandra (1988–1990) Costa Allegra (1992–2012) Santa Cruise (2012) Ship type Container ship (1969–1990) Cruise ship (1990–2012) class Axel Johnson class Callsign ICRA home port Genoa Owner Costa Crociere Shipyard Oy Wärtsilä Ab , Turku shipyard (new construction) T. Mariotti , Genoa (renovation) Launch April 29, 1969 takeover 4th December 1969 Whereabouts Wrecked in Turkey in 2012

Ship dimensions and crew length 187.69 m ( Lüa ) width 25.76 m Draft Max. 8 m measurement 28,597 GT   crew 466

Machinery from 1969 machine diesel-mechanical 2 × diesel engine (Pielstick 16PC2V) 2 × diesel engine (Pielstick 12PC2V) Machine performance 19,139 kW (26,022 hp) Top speed 23 kn (43 km / h) propeller 2 × controllable pitch propellers

Machinery from 1992 machine diesel-mechanical 4 × Wärtsilä 6L46 Machine performance 19,200 kW (26,105 hp) Top speed 19 kn (35 km / h) propeller 2 × controllable pitch propellers

Transport capacities Permitted number of passengers 1000 Pax cabins 399

Others Classifications Registro Italiano Navale Registration numbers IMO no. 6916885

The Costa Allegra was a cruise ship operated by the Italian shipping company Costa Crociere . She was built as a container ship in 1968 and put into service under the name Annie Johnson by the Swedish shipping company Rederi AB Nordstjernan. After the ship mid-1980s launched had been and had repeatedly changed owners, started in 1990, the complete conversion to a cruise ship in the shipyard T. Mariotti in Genoa . In 1992 the ship was put back into service as the Costa Allegra . Characteristic features were the cylindrical chimneys and the glazed stern, which earned the Costa Allegra the nickname “crystal ship”. After a fire in the engine room at sea at the end of February 2012, the Costa Allegra was written off as a total loss and scrapped in the Aliağa shipyard in Turkey in autumn 2012 .

history

As a container ship

Original appearance of the ship (here the sister ship Margaret Johnson )

The later Costa Allegra was built at the end of the 1960s under construction number 1170 on the Finnish Oy Wärtsilä Ab Turku shipyard and was the second of a total of five structurally identical ships of the Axel Johnson class . After being launched on April 29, 1969, the Stockholm- registered ship was delivered as Annie Johnson on December 4, 1969 and used in worldwide container transport. It had a carrying capacity of up to 16,080 dwt .

On August 8, 1986 the Annie Johnson was sold to the Greek ship owner Antonis Lelakis. He planned to convert the ship into a cruise ship under the name Regent Moon for his shipping company Regency Cruises . The Annie Johnson arrived in Piraeus on August 25, 1986 and was initially launched. After the conversion could not be carried out as planned due to financial difficulties of the shipping company, the ship was sold in May 1988 to Compania Naviera Panalexandra SA, based in Panama , and renamed Alexandra , in order to continue to be used for container transport.

As a cruise ship

During the conversion work to a cruise ship, 1992

The Costa Allegra in Hong Kong, June 2006

On August 28, 1990, the Alexandra was taken over by the Italian cruise line Costa Crociere SpA , which transferred it to the T. Mariotti SpA shipyard in Genoa . The conversion to a cruise ship began on September 4, 1990 and ended with the delivery to the shipping company on November 16, 1992. The name of the ship was initially Costa Azurra . The deck superstructures were completely removed and redesigned during the conversion. The hull was lengthened by 13.4 m and passenger cabins and the new infrastructure of the ship were built in the area of ​​the previous cargo holds . In addition, the drive system was renewed. A striking feature of the ship was the glazed stern front, a large glass roof and a glass dome at the stern, which is why it was often referred to as the "crystal ship". The superstructure was designed in such a way that daylight also fell through the large glass surfaces into the lower decks.

After her christening, the Costa Allegra went on her maiden voyage to the Caribbean , where she replaced the smaller Daphne , which was commissioned in 1955 and which was then sold for cruises in European waters. From 1994 to 2000 the ship was registered in Liberia with Monrovia as its home port, having previously been based in Genoa. For the rest of the service as a cruise ship, the Costa Allegra ran again under the Italian flag with Genoa as its home port.

During her service, the Costa Allegra was involved in three incidents. On her first cruise for Costa Asia from Savona to Hong Kong , protests broke out among the approximately 800 passengers in the port of Colombo ( Sri Lanka ). Since the ship left the port of Savona on April 30, 2006, the ship's air conditioning and numerous toilets had failed repeatedly. Some of the cabins were under water. In addition, the ship's machinery had failed. The Costa Allegra was only able to continue her voyage towards Port Blair and Hong Kong when the captain promised to repair this damage . In addition, on the first cruise in Southeast Asia from July 8th to 12th, 2006 there were several failures of the machinery, whereupon the itinerary had to be changed. The following five and a half years of service completed the Costa Allegra without major incidents.

Fire in the engine room

The ship in Port Louis, February 8, 2012

On February 27, 2012, about 260 nautical miles off the Seychelles, a fire broke out in the engine room of the Costa Allegra , which caused the ship's power generator to fail. The Costa Allegra was on a cruise from Port Louis to the Indian Ocean , after which it was to return to the Mediterranean via Oman and Egypt . At that time there were 636 passengers and 413 crew members on board. The fire could be extinguished with on-board means, but the emergency power generator also failed after a short time, leaving the Costa Allegra without electricity or propulsion power. The disabled cruise ship was towed by the French fishing trawler Trévignon on February 28 . As it became too hot below deck and the toilets no longer worked, passengers were allowed to sleep on deck. On March 1, the ship reached the port of Mahé , where all passengers were able to go ashore unharmed. While the cause of the fire was being determined, the slightly larger Costa Voyager was used on the planned routes of the Costa Allegra . The incident met with a great response in the media, as it occurred just a month after the Costa Concordia disaster and another ship in the Costa fleet was affected. The repair costs for the more than forty-year-old Costa Allegra were too high for Costa Crociere, as it would have had to be repaired and re-issued with all certificates before it could be put into operation again. The price for these measures was given at $ 30 million. In addition, the ship was going to be sold anyway, as it was the oldest in the Costa Crociere fleet and had high operating costs. The plans at that time therefore envisaged selling the Costa Allegra or, under certain circumstances, scrapping it. A leak in a fuel line was suspected to be the cause of the fire. The fire doors and the CO ₂ extinguishing system would have worked without errors.

End of use and scrapping

On March 25, 2012, the Costa Allegra arrived under its own power for repair work in Savona, after it had previously been makeshift repairs in Mahé for the crossing to Europe. Initially laid up at the Italian shipyard Fincantieri in Sestri Ponente , she was later transferred to Genoa. In September 2012, the decision was finally made to sell the Costa Allegra for demolition for a price between seven and ten million dollars after it had previously been visited by employees of a Turkish scrapping yard. Before the towing trip, the ship's chimney in Genoa was painted white. On October 24, 2012, the Costa Allegra arrived at the shipyard in Aliağa under the flag of Sierra Leone and the transfer name Santa Cruise . The scrapping of the ship was completed by May 2013.

Areas of application

In the port of Shanghai, July 2006

The Costa Allegra was in the Caribbean (base port Miami ) in winter and in the Mediterranean (base port Savona ) in summer . It was also used at times for cruises in the North Sea . After conversion and renovation work, the ship was in use from June 2006 for the new Costa division Costa Asia under the same name with Hong Kong and Singapore as ports of departure on the then still little developed Chinese cruise market. During this time, the name of Costa Allegra was written on the bow in both Latin and Chinese script. In the summer, the French tour operator Paquet Cruises chartered the ship for trips in the Mediterranean. In the summer of 2011, Costa Allegra made trips to the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea from the base port of Venice . From December 2011 to February 2012 the ship was stationed in the Indian Ocean. From Mauritius (base port Port Louis), the Seychelles, Madagascar and La Réunion were called. After a transfer cruise to the western Mediterranean in March 2012, the Costa Allegra was scheduled to charter the French tour operator TAAJ Crosières in spring and autumn 2012.

Furnishing

The Costa Allegra's facilities included the main dining room (Modigliani Restaurant), a ballroom (Flamenco Ballroom) , a casino , a card room , a bar , a theater and a lounge (Piazetta Allegra) . The ship also had its own wellness area and a fitness center with a glazed roof. Other restaurants besides the dining room were the Yacht Club , which is subject to a surcharge, and the Montmartre restaurant . The ship's passenger decks were named after famous French and Italian artists such as Paul Gauguin , Amedeo Modigliani and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec .

Two swimming pools and a whirlpool were available to passengers on the so-called pool deck of the Costa Allegra . Also on this deck was a jogging course, a buffet restaurant and a disco (Crystal Club) in the stern area of ​​the ship, which was roofed by a glass dome.

Machine system and drive

When Annie Johnson was born, the ship had been fitted with diesel-mechanical machinery using four Pielstick PC2 diesel engines built under license by Wärtsilä . A 16-cylinder and a 12-cylinder engine each formed a group of motors that acted on the controllable pitch propeller via a gearbox and shaft system .

With the conversion to a cruise ship, the Pielstick engines were replaced by four more modern and quieter six-cylinder in-line engines of the Wärtsilä 46 type. In order to generate a comparable performance, these engines ran at a reduced speed of only 450 rpm.

Sister ships

The sister ship Costa Marina

One of the sister ships of the Costa Allegra , the Axel Johnson , was also converted into a cruise ship in 1990 and used as the Costa Marina by Costa Crociere from 1992 . Both ships had the same design, but had different glazing on the stern. In addition, in contrast to Costa Allegra , the Costa Marina was not extended during the renovation. The Costa Marina was withdrawn from the fleet in November 2011 and was then used by Polaris Shipping in South Korea until it was retired in early 2013 and also scrapped in October 2014. An originally planned third unit, the Margaret Johnson , was scrapped in Aliağa in 1987 before it was converted into a cruise ship. The Costa Allegra also had two other sister ships.

literature

• Laurence Miller: New Ship Review Costa Allegra . In: Cruise Travel . Volume 15, No. 3 . Lakeside Publishing Company, Evanston December 1993, pp. 20 to 22 .

Web links

Commons : Costa Allegra  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Micke Asklander: M / S ANNIE JOHNSON. Retrieved October 17, 2010 . 
2. ^ Brian J. Cudahy: The cruise ship phenomenon in North America MD Cornell Maritime Press, 2001, ISBN 0-87033-529-4 , page 182.
3. ↑ sailtrek.de: Costa Allegra the "crystal ship". Retrieved October 29, 2015 . 
4. ↑ Günther Uhlig: Windows: Architecture and Technology in Dialog Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-322-83910-7 , page 134.
5. ↑ Costa Names New Ships . in: Cruise Travel . Volume 12, Number 5, Lakeside Publishing Company, Evanston Mar 1991, 24.
6. ↑ Focus Online: Horror Cruise Complaining immediately is correct. May 18, 2006, accessed April 18, 2016 . 
7. ↑ cruisejunkie.com: Events at Sea by Costa Cruises. Retrieved October 17, 2010 . 
8. ↑ Knitting Italian cruise ship towed after engine room fire. In: The Telegraph. February 28, 2012, accessed April 22, 2016 . 
9. ↑ Costa cruise ship drifts on the open sea after fire. In: Spiegel online. February 27, 2012, accessed February 27, 2012 . 
10. ↑ Passengers on the "Costa Allegra": everyone on deck. In: Spiegel Online. March 1, 2012, accessed April 18, 2016 . 
11. ↑ Costa press release: Costa Voyager replaces Costa Allegra. cruisetricks.com, March 7, 2012, accessed March 26, 2018 . 
12. ^ Fire Damaged Costa Allegra Will Not Return To Service With Costa Cruises. cruiseastute.com, March 9, 2012, accessed April 23, 2016 . 
13. ↑ Frank Neumeier: Costa Allegra may be scrapped. cruisetricks.de, March 10, 2012, accessed on November 9, 2012 . 
14. ^ Franz Neumeier: Costa Allegra: fuel leak probably cause of fire. cruisetricks.de, March 6, 2012, accessed on April 21, 2016 . 
15. ↑ naviearmatori: Costa Allegra. September 25, 2012, accessed April 21, 2016 . 
16. ↑ cruisetricks.de: Costa Allegra is scrapped in Turkey. October 27, 2012, accessed November 9, 2012 . 
17. ^ Cruise Industry: Photo: Scrapping of Ex-Costa Allegra. October 29, 2012, accessed November 9, 2012 . 
18. ^ Peter Knego: San of Aliaga. May 16, 2013, accessed October 29, 2015 . 
19. ↑ Michael L. Grace: The stylish French tradition of cruising will return with the revived Paquet Cruises in 2010. August 19, 2009, accessed April 19, 2016 . 
20. ↑ Christophe Plotard: Taaj Croisières assurera ses départs sur le Costa Allegra. February 29, 2012, accessed October 29, 2015 . 
21. ↑ Laurence Miller: New Ship Review Costa Allegra . in: Cruise Travel . Volume 15, number 3, page 20.
22. ↑ Bart de Boer: Costa Allegra Duckling or Swan? May 29, 2005. Retrieved October 29, 2015 . 
23. ^ Carsten Meyer: The great ocean cruises advisor 2007 . Books on Demand, 2006, ISBN 978-3-8334-6601-4 , page 190.
24. ↑ Wärtsilä: Wärtsilä 46F. Retrieved May 25, 2011 . 
25. ↑ ship journal: Club Harmony (ex Costa Marina) is about to be scrapped in India. October 18, 2014, accessed October 29, 2015 . 

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on May 4, 2016 .