Emerald Seas
 As an explorer in Eleusis, June 2004
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The Emerald Seas was a cruise ship owned by the Panama- based shipping company Eastern Cruise Lines , which operated under this name between 1972 and 1992. It entered service in 1944 as the General WP Richardson (AP-118) troop transport . After being converted into a passenger ship , it was in service from 1949 under different owners and names before it was converted for cruises in 1970. After his tenure as Emerald Seas the ship experienced several owner and name changes before it retired in 2000 and 2004 after sixty years in the Indian Alang was scrapped.
history
_at_sea_in_the_Atlantic_Ocean_on_14_November_1944_(80-G-289826).jpg)
The General WP Richardson was built under hull number 276 in the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Kearny and was launched on August 6, 1944. After its delivery to the United States Navy on October 31, 1944, the ship began service on December 10 with a trip from Boston to Southampton .
The General WP Richardson survived the war and was launched in March 1948 after a good two more years of service . In the same year the ship went to American Export Lines , which had it converted into a passenger ship and commissioned as La Guardia in 1949 .
In December 1951 the La Guardia was reissued. After five years of lay, the ship became the property of the conglomerate Textron , who sold it to the Hawaiian SS Company that same year. From July 1956 to December 1957 it was in service under the name Leilani before it was launched again.
In 1960 the Leilani became the property of the American President Lines , which, after a further renovation, began using them in May 1962 under the name President Roosevelt for trips between San Francisco and Yokohama . From 1969 trips to Alaska followed .
In 1970 the Greek shipping company Chandris took over the ship under the name Atlantis . After being converted into a cruise ship, it began service in June 1971, but remained domiciled in the United States. After a good year, the Atlantis finally went to Eastern Cruise Lines as Emerald Seas in October 1972 and was used for cruises from Florida to Nassau from December . In 1983 the ship briefly ran under the charter of Commodore Cruise Lines . In 1986 the Eastern Cruise Lines was renamed Admiral Cruise Lines.
In 1992 the Emerald Seas ended its service under this name after twenty years. In the same year it changed its name three times to Funtastica , Terrifica and Sapphire Seas , but did not get going again, instead it was launched in October 1994 in Piraeus . In 1998 the ship was a floating hotel in the port of Lisbon during the World's Fair . It was then renamed Ocean Explorer I and put back into service by the World Cruise Company for world voyages planned until 2002, but it was retired and relaunched early on March 25, 2000 due to technical problems.
Another planned use as a hotel ship during the Olympic Games in Athens in April 2004 failed. Instead, the now sixty-year-old ship was renamed Explorer and sold for scrapping in Alang, India, where it arrived on December 1, 2004.
Web links
- the ship on faktaomfartyg.se (Swedish)
- the ship on ssmaritime.com (English)