Sagafjord
 As Saga Rose at the exit from Warnemünde on May 30, 2009
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The Sagafjord was a passenger and cruise ship . The construction costs were so high that the Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée shipyard went bankrupt in July 1966 .
planning
In the summer of 1960, the technical department of the Norwegian America Line (NAL; Norwegian : Den norske Amerikalinje ) began to prepare plans for a new liner. This should replace the oldest ship in the fleet - the Stavangerfjord - and will mainly be used for cruises. The new ship as a liner should only make a handful of scheduled transatlantic trips between Oslo and New York. NAL's technical director Kaare Haug and his assistant Ditmar Kahrs were responsible for the design, as was the case with the Bergensfjord and the second Oslofjord . They took the successful Bergensfjord as a model, enlarged the hull so that the greatest width still fit into the dry dock of the Akers Mekaniske Verksted in Oslo, where the annual inspections were to be made.
In January 1963, the specifications for the new ship were handed over to 23 shipyards in Belgium, France, Italy and Great Britain, whose offers were received in March. The final decision to build was only announced in July, when negotiations with the Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée ( La Seyne-sur-Mer , France ) were well advanced. The main reason was that this shipyard was subsidized by the French government and so could undercut others. These subsidies made up about a quarter of the contract value. The order for 100 million crowns was signed on September 24, 1962 and delivery was scheduled for April 1, 1965. In order to minimize the financial risk, the property was on the new ship in the ratio of 60:40 between the NAL and Oslo shipping company Leif Høegh & Co. shared.
A team of experts went on board the Bergensfjord to check improvements and their implementation in the new building. The most important technical innovations were presented in October. Many functions were to be automated and the engine room air-conditioned and soundproofed. For the first time, a transatlantic liner should be equipped with bow thrusters and thus minimize the use of harbor tugs . In addition, a surveillance camera was planned at the rear. All of this was very innovative for the early 1960s. No expense was spared to turn the ship into an efficient passenger ship: in the hotel area, escalators were planned between the kitchen and dining room and a central vacuum cleaner system for the entire passenger area.
Keel laying and construction
On June 19, 1963 the keel was laid at the FCM. Until then, the ship only had hull number 1366, a few days later the new name Sagafjord was announced. The managers of the New York NAL office no longer wanted a name ending in -fjord because, in their opinion, it was difficult to spell and pronounce for the main customer group in America. Even Norway was under the name suggestions, but won the tradition and with Saga Fjord a ship was first not derived from a geographical object in the company's history.
The launch took place on June 13, 1964 , the hull was blessed by a Catholic priest, and the French and Norwegian anthems were played. In the same year, Captain Odd Aspelund was chosen as the first commander, after 36 years of service he was the commander of the last transatlantic voyage of the steamer Stavangerfjord in December 1963 to Oslo.
The ship's porch was reinforced for the transatlantic service; the thickness of the steel plates was thicker than necessary in crucial places. This additional weight made a permanent ballast tank superfluous and lowered the center of gravity . An additional 520 tons of aluminum were needed to stabilize the hull and to meet the requirements of the 1960 International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea .
The hull was divided into eleven watertight chambers. The design as a two-chamber ship means that the ship is still buoyant if any two chambers are flooded.
Since the first Oslofjord was built in 1938 , diesel engines found their way into NAL shipbuilding, they were more economical than steam turbines and increased maneuverability. From the NAL's point of view, there were no suitable turbine manufacturers in Norway at the time, which is why the decision was made to use two Sulzer main engines of the type 9RD68, which were built under license from FCM. Each of the nine cylinders had a bore of 680 mm and a stroke of 1250 mm. The two-stroke turbo engines were directly connected to the two propellers by means of 61 m long propeller shafts, together they could bring the ship to a service speed of 20 knots with 150 revolutions per minute and 12,000 hp each. Each of the two screws had four blades 4.8 m in diameter and weighed twelve tons. A pair of Denny-Brown AEG stabilizers were installed, each about four meters long and two meters wide. The six auxiliary diesel engines were of the Bergen Diesel LSG8 type .
Commissioning
On October 2, 1965, the Sagafjord started on her maiden voyage in the liner service to New York .
The Sagafjord was measured with 24,528 GT , 188.88 m long and 24.49 m wide. There was space for up to 789 passengers on seven decks , who were looked after by around 350 crew members . With a propulsion power of 17,650 kW, the ship reached a top speed of 20 knots .
Cruise service as Sagafjord
From the 1970s to the beginning of the 1990s, the passenger ship, together with her sister ship Vistafjord, was one of the ten best cruise ships in the world and was awarded 5 Star Plus by the Berlitz Cruise Guide . During service with the Norwegian America Line (NAL, 1965–1980), Norwegian American Cruises (NAC, a subsidiary of NAL, 1980–1983) and Cunard Line (1983–1996), the Sagafjord was in service worldwide and was one of the first four months each year on a world tour. During her service with the Cunard Line, the Sagafjord was mainly used in Alaska on the Vancouver - Anchorage - Vancouver route in the summer months (June to September) .
From October to December 1980, Blohm & Voss in Hamburg placed a new component with additional cabins on the bridge deck. In October 1983, the Norwegian shipping company NAC was taken over by the Cunard Line , and the Sagafjord now sailed together with her later-built sister ship Vistafjord with the traditional red chimney colors of the Cunard Line under the flag of the Bahamas . The ship was one of the first passenger ships of this size to be granted a berthing permit for the Galapagos Islands in 1993 .
Several incidents followed in 1996:
- On February 26, a fire broke out in the engine room 230 nm west of Manila (Philippines), and the Sagafjord was towed to Subic Bay , unable to maneuver .
- On April 15, the ship participated in the rescue of crew members of the sinking Turkish freighter Harran and took 26 of them on board.
From July 16, 1996 to May 1997, the ship was chartered by the German operator Transocean Tours and renamed Gripsholm .
- On the voyage from Copenhagen to Kiel the ship ran aground on August 4th off Landskrona (Sweden) on a sandbank. The next day, the 601 passengers were taken to Landskrona and the fuel was pumped out. On August 7, the Gripsholm was towed to Helsingborg for inspection and then repaired in the Lloyd shipyard in Bremerhaven . Scheduled operations could be resumed on August 18th.
Saga Rose
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In the same year it was sold to Saga Shipping Co. Ltd. in Nassau , Bahamas , which operated it under the new name Saga Rose and started cruising again on May 20, 1997. On July 29, 1999, the Saga Rose collided with the Norwegian trawler Havbas , which sank afterwards. The ten crew members were rescued and brought to Olden (Norway) .
The ship was last modernized in 2006. In November 2009, the Saga Rose was decommissioned because the requirements of SOLAS 2010 were not met. Plans to use the ship as a hotel ship in Southampton failed. The ship was eventually sold for scrapping.
In the 13 years with Saga Shipping, the Saga Rose carried over 100,000 passengers and a. eleven trips around the world . In total, the ship made 44 voyages around the world, most of them (33) under their original name Sagafjord - more circumnavigations than any other ship so far.
On December 7, 2009, the ship left Southampton. After traveling halfway around the world, the journey of the Saga Rose ended in Jiangyin on the Yangtze River , where one of the largest Chinese shipbuilding yards is located. Scrapping began there at the end of 2011.
literature
- Anders Johannessen: The Story of Saga Rose & Saga Ruby. Overwiew Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9547206-5-0 . (English)
- Clive Harvey, Roger Cartwright: The Saga Sisters. Tempus Publishing, 2005, ISBN 0-7524-3418-7 . (English)
Web links
- the ship on kreuzfahrthafen-warnemuende.de
- the ship on faktaomfartyg.se (Swedish)
- Picture collection: Saga Rose in the Kiel Canal
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c d Equasis - France Ministry for Transport: Administrative data of the ship. Retrieved January 6, 2012 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Micke Asklander: Technical and historical data of the ship. Retrieved January 6, 2012 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Anders Johannessen: The Story of Saga Rose & Saga Ruby. Overwiew Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9547206-5-0 .
- ↑ The scrapping of a cruise ship is the last way . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . October 27, 2010. Retrieved January 20, 2012.