Karnika
.JPG) As Pacific Jewel in Fremantle, 2015
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The Karnika is a cruise ship of the Indian Jalesh Cruises. Completed in 1990 as the Crown Princess , she was the first of two identical ships. In 1991, today's Pacific Dawn followed .
Until 2019, the ship had been in service for ten years as Pacific Jewel for the British - American Carnival Corporation & plc on cruises from Australia. In German-speaking countries, the ship was known as A'Rosa Blu from 2002 and as AIDAblu from 2004 to 2007 .
history
prehistory
From 1984 onwards, Sitmar Cruises (Società Italiana Trasporti Marittimi), a company of the Russian-born shipowner family Vlasov under Boris Vlasov, negotiated with the Italian state shipyard Fincantieri Cantieri Navali Italiani SpA about the construction of two new cruise ships. Fincantieri was already one of the most important shipbuilding companies in Europe with eight shipyards at the time, but saw the plans as a great opportunity and challenge after no passenger ships had been built in Italy for Costa Crociere since the Eugenio C. in 1966. Until then, Sitmar Cruises mainly used converted cargo ships for cruises and feared falling behind in the ensuing arms race between the American competitors Carnival Corporation and Royal Caribbean Cruise Line with their ever larger newbuildings, which were specially designed for the booming cruise market. When the negotiations dragged on due to demands from the Italian government, the French shipyard Chantiers de l'Atlantique in Saint-Nazaire was commissioned to build the Sitmar FairMajesty for 153 million US dollars by the end of 1988. An option was agreed for a second ship by the end of 1986.
The Italian government was shocked and changed tactics. It now offered Sitmar special conditions for other ships and actually brought the company to the point of dropping the option to build the second ship in France and a contract for two identical cruise ships of the "fourth generation" with 70,000 GRT at 280 million each . USD complete with Fincantieri.
Planning and construction
The ships should have a particularly Italian look. The architect Renzo Piano , who had already achieved worldwide fame with his designs for the Paris Center Georges Pompidou , was engaged to design it. The later Prime Minister of Italy Romano Prodi had approached him in his role as President of the state holding Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI), to which the Fincantieri shipyard belonged at the time. The ship owes its curved shapes and rounded structure above the bridge, which was modeled on the head of a swimming dolphin, to Piano's designs. The original plans are said to have been far more futuristic, but were rejected for cost reasons and revised again.
For ownership of the new ships, Boris Vlasov founded a new subsidiary under the name Astramar, based in Palermo . Sitmar Cruises was to become the lessee after the ships were completed. He wanted to assert tax advantages as an Italian shipping company for the construction contract and to counter the criticism that several EU countries had already expressed about the nationality of his company for a long time. Although he had actually relocated the company headquarters to Monaco shortly after the death of his father, the company's founder Alexander Vlasov in 1961 , the shipping company continued to act officially in Italian.
However, in 1987 Boris Vlasov died unexpectedly and the company got into trouble. The British shipping company P&O recognized its opportunity. For them, the lead of the competition in the expansion of the cruise fleet would only have been made up - if at all - a few years later. It was therefore already considering a merger of its own cruise line with another company. In July 1988, P&O CEO Lord Sterling succeeded in acquiring the cruise line of the Vlasow shipping company's heirs for US $ 210 million, including Fincantieri's Hull No. 5839 and 5840 to buy ships already under construction.
Commissioning
The ship with hull number 5839, today's Karnika , was completed in 1990 and handed over on June 29th.
For the first two years, as planned and contractually agreed by Boris Vlasov, the ship remained the property of the Italian Astramar . This, meanwhile under the management of P&O, left the ship to the American P&O subsidiary Princess Cruises . The ship was registered in Liberia and its maiden voyage led from July 9th from the Greek port of Piraeus through the Mediterranean Sea. On September 13, it crossed the Atlantic from Southampton to New York . It was there that the Italian actress Sophia Loren carried out the official christening of the ship as the Crown Princess .
commitment
After the ship was christened, Princess Cruises started using the ship in autumn 1990 for cruises from Fort Lauderdale to the Caribbean . Princess Cruises finally took ownership of the ship in 1992. The flag initially remained with Liberia , in 2000 Princess Cruises registered the ship for Bermuda . On June 26, 2001, the ship's engines failed during a European cruise and the ship had to be towed to Copenhagen . Only a few days later, P&O decided to withdraw the ship from Princess Cruises.
In Rostock, the cruise subsidiary Seetours of the Deutsche Seereederei (DSR) had been taken over and with it the brand names AIDA (now AIDA Cruises ) and A'Rosa , with which the company wanted to present itself more strongly in the as yet barely developed German market. The ship was on the Lloyd Werft rebuilt by the actress on 14 June 2002 Iris Berben on A'Rosa Blu baptized. Under this name she spent a year in the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and the Baltic and North Seas.
In 2003 P&O Princess Cruises , which had previously been spun off from P&O, formed today's world market leader Carnival Corporation & plc with the American Carnival Corporation . With that the plans changed. The Deutsche Seereederei sold its stake in P&O Princess Cruises , through which it was at least indirectly involved in the Seetours business, and took back the A'Rosa business for its daughter Arkona , from which the A-ROSA river ship finally became in 2009 GmbH emerged. Carnival Corporation & plc decided to transfer the German-oriented cruise operation with all associated ships and the AIDA brand to its Italian subsidiary Costa Crociere . The A'Rosa Blu was therefore rebuilt from April 13th to 27th at Blohm + Voss Repair in Hamburg and put back into service as AIDAblu under the Italian flag. In addition to the other, much smaller AIDA ships, it was also intended to train the German-speaking crew in order to be able to take over the newbuildings of the Sphinx class of a similar size that had already been ordered for the expansion of the AIDA Cruises brand. After “Sphinx I” went on the road as AIDAdiva in spring 2007 , the parent company Carnival Corporation & plc decided to withdraw AIDAblu .
From then on, the ship supported the Ocean Village brand , with which the aim was to transfer the successful German concept of an informal club holiday at sea to the British market under the slogan “the cruise for people who don't do cruises”. After another renovation at Lloyd Werft , the ship was named Ocean Village Two on April 24, 2007 by models Jemma and Jodie Kidd and, after being entered in the British flag register, set sail for the Mediterranean in the summer and the Caribbean in the winter months.
However, on October 30, 2008, Carnival Corporation & plc surprisingly announced that the Ocean Village brand would no longer operate. The two Ocean Village ships were transferred to P&O Cruises Australia . From the Ocean Village Two was established in December 2009, the Pacific Jewel , she was in Brisbane stationed. The identical sister, the Pacific Dawn, completed in 1991 under construction number 5840, was already in service there . The Pacific Jewel from then on sailed under the flag of Great Britain with her home port in London .
The Ocean Village , ex- Sitmar FairMajesty followed at the end of 2010 as Pacific Pearl and its transfer to Australia finally brought all the former Sitmar new buildings together in one fleet.
On August 27, 2010, some scenes for the Australian television series Neighbors (original title: Neighbors ) were filmed on board. A crew of about sixty around the series actors Ryan Moloney and Eve Morey filmed in the hallway and in the circus arena on the upper decks. Numerous crew members participated in the scenes as part of the on-board entertainment. The resulting episode of the series about a cruise went on air in the fall of the same year in the evening program in Australia and New Zealand.
In November 2018, the ship served as the hotel ship for the APEC summit in Port Moresby, together with the Pacific Explorer, also operated by P&O Cruises Australia, and its sister ship Sea Princess .
As early as the beginning of 2018, plans were announced that the ship would be used as a Cartoon Network Wave with a base port in Singapore from the end of the year for a project by the Oceanic Group and the Turner media group . In August 2018, however, the ship was sold without the new owner being named. P&O Cruises Australia stopped operating the ship in March 2019. After a renovation at Sembawang in Singapore and the naming of Karnika on April 23, 2019 in the port of Mumbai , it will be used by the newly founded Indian Jalesh Cruises for cruises from Mumbai, Goa and Dubai.
See also
literature
- Douglas Ward: Complete Guide to Cruising & Cruise Ships 2006 . Berlitz Publishing, 2006. ISBN 3-493-60252-9
- Plowman, Peter: The Sitmar Liners: Past and Present . Hong Kong: Rosenberg, 2004. ISBN 1-877058-25-4 .
Web links
- Presentation on the Jalesh Cruises website
- Details Pacific Jewel on the website of the P & O Cruises Australia (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ship details on www.equasis.org: Ship Info: Pacific Jewel. Retrieved February 5, 2010 .
- ^ Ship details from P&O Cruises Australia: Pacific Jewel. P&O Cruises, accessed on December 3, 2013 .
- ^ Micke Asklander: M / S CROWN PRINCESS (1990). Facta om Fartyg, accessed January 20, 2010 (Swedish).
- ↑ Ship details on SchiffsSpotter.de: MS A'Rosa Blu. Retrieved February 6, 2010 .
- ^ A b Governor-General to Launch P&O Cruises' Pacific Jewel. Press release. P&O Cruises Australia, accessed December 1, 2009 .
- ^ A b c d e Robert Klein: Crown Princess (I). Castles of the Seas, accessed December 3, 2013 .
- ^ Robert Klein: Regal Princess (I). Castles of the Seas, accessed December 3, 2013 .
- ^ Peter Plowman: The SITMAR Liners: Past and Present . Rosenberg Publishing Pty, 2004, ISBN 1-877058-25-4 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
- ↑ Information about the shipping company Sitmar Società Italiana Trasporti Marittimi (SITMAR) 1937-1988. Retrieved December 3, 2013 .
- ↑ Chronological data of the ship: M / S OCEAN VILLAGE TWO (1990) - Ships in Hamburg. Retrieved February 8, 2010 .
- ↑ a b Chronological data of the ship: AIDA Cruises - a historical overview. Retrieved February 5, 2010 .
- ↑ New tonnage to increase P&O Cruises Australia's presence in Fremantle, Brisbane and Auckland . In: Cruise Business Review . Cruise Media. October 31, 2008. Accessed October 31, 2008. ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Announcement from Ocean Village - 10/30/2008 . In: Ocean Village press release . Ocean Village. October 30, 2008. Archived from the original on June 29, 2009. Retrieved October 30, 2008.
- ^ A b Neighbors become good friends with Pacific Jewel. In: eTravel Business News. P&O Cruises Australia, September 29, 2010, accessed on May 26, 2019 .
- ^ APEC summit in crime-ridden Port Moresby houses attendees on cruise ships. In: The Japan Times . November 14, 2018, accessed March 30, 2019 .
- ↑ Cartoon Network gets its own cruise ship. Cruisetricks, January 26, 2018, accessed August 24, 2018 .
- ↑ Pacific Jewel Sold, Star Princess to P&O Australia in 2021. Cruise Industry News, August 22, 2018, accessed August 23, 2018 .
- ↑ Shirsh Nadkarni: Indian start-up Jalesh Cruises named Karnika. Seatrade Cruise News, April 23, 2019, accessed May 20, 2019 .
