The Ivan Franko was a cruise ship put into service in 1964 by the state-owned Soviet shipping company Black Sea Shipping Company and the type ship of the Ivan Franko class . The after Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko named ship remained even after the collapse of the Soviet Union for the shipping company in use before they retired in 1997 and the Indian Alang was scrapped.
history
The Ivan Franko was built under hull number 125 in the Mathias Thesen shipyard in Wismar and was launched on June 15, 1963. After the takeover by the Black Sea Shipping Company on November 14, 1964 and the transfer to Odessa, the ship was put into service for cruises in the same month. By 1972, four more sister ships followed , which together formed the Ivan Franko class.
The Ivan Franko was stationed in Odessa throughout her service life and was in service around the world, visiting non-communist countries like her sister ships. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the ship was under the Ukrainian flag from 1991, but was still managed by the Black Sea Shipping Company.
In spring 1997, which was Ivan Franko decommissioned and sold for demolition to India where she on 21 July 1997 under the overpass name Frank in the shipbreaking yards at Alang arrived. She was the first ship in her class to be demolished. The Mikhail Lermontov had sunk in 1986, the remaining units remained in service for various owners until the 2000s. The sister ship Aleksandr Pushkin is still in active use under the name Marco Polo .
literature
Arnold Kludas: The world's great passenger ships. A documentation. Volume V: 1950–1974 , Stalling Verlag; Oldenburg, Hamburg 1974, ISBN 3-7979-1844-5 , p. 148.