The ship was built in 1998 as the first of six R-Class ships and put into service under the name R One for the now insolvent company Renaissance Cruises . The ship was arrested in Gibraltar on October 7, 2001 due to the bankruptcy of Renaissance Cruises . In December 2001 Cruise One Invest SA (Majuro, Marshall Island) bought the ship. The ship was named Insignia on June 15, 2003. Between 2003 and 2012, the ship was first used under the name Insignia for Oceania Cruises.
The German shipping company Hapag-Lloyd Kreuzfahrten took over the ship in spring 2012 for two years under the name Columbus 2 , after which the ship was converted from March to April 2012 in Barcelona .
The ship was in 18 April 2012 Palma on the name Columbus 2 baptized and then ran after her maiden voyage Valletta from. In September 2012, the shipping company announced that the charter contract would not be extended beyond 2014. The last cruise for Hapag-Lloyd ended in Barcelona on April 24, 2014. The ship has been sailing for Oceania Cruises again since May 2014.
Incidents
In the early morning of December 11, 2014, a fire broke out in the engine room of the ship in the port of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia ; one crew member and two external workers were killed. The ship was evacuated. All trips up to January 15, 2015 have been canceled. The repairs were carried out in a shipyard in San Juan, Puerto Rico . The world tour started on March 22nd in Singapore instead of January 10th in Miami with a heavily changed program.
