Stockholm (ship, 1948)

Stockholm

Ship data flag  Sweden GDR Norway Italy Portugal         other ship names Friendship of Nations (1960–1985) Volker (1985–1986) Fridtjof Nansen (1986–1989) Surriento (1989–1992) Italia I (1993) Italia Prima (1993–2000) Valtur Prima (2000–2003) Caribe (2003–2005) Athena (2005–2012) Azores (2013–2016) Astoria (since 2016) Ship type Passenger ship Shipyard Götaverken , Gothenburg Launch September 9, 1946 Whereabouts in motion

Ship dimensions and crew length 160.06 m ( Lüa ) width 21.06 m measurement 11,700 GRT   crew 200 men

Machine system machine 2 ×  diesel engines Machine performance 12,000 PS (8,826 kW) Top speed 19 kn (35 km / h) propeller 2

Transport capacities Permitted number of passengers 113 1st class 282 tourist class

Others Registration numbers IMO no. 5383304

Data as Astoria flag  Portugal home port Madeira Callsign CQRV measurement 16,144 GT

The passenger ship Stockholm is the longest in service transatlantic ship in the world. It was built in 1946 at the Götaverken shipyard in Gothenburg ( Sweden ). So far the ship has had twelve names, it is currently called Astoria .

It became known mainly through the collision with the Andrea Doria and in the GDR as the FDGB holiday ship Völkerfreundschaft .

history

The Stockholm after the collision in 1956

As a friendship of peoples in 1968 in Warnemünde

As Athena in 2011 in Split

As Azores 2014

The ship made the maiden voyage on February 21, 1948 on the route from Gothenburg to New York. In 1952 it was rebuilt and afterwards had 12,644 GRT and a capacity for 86  passengers in 1st class and 584 in tourist class. In 1955/56, loading hatch III was built over with the cinema and loading space III was used for a different purpose in the respective deck position.

On July 25, 1956, the Stockholm sailed from New York and collided shortly before midnight in a fog bank near Nantucket with the twice as large Italian liner Andrea Doria , whom she met amidships on the starboard side . The Andrea Doria sank 11 hours later, 46 people (from 1706) died; there were five fatalities on the Stockholm . She took some of the rescued passengers (545) from the Andrea Doria and drove back to New York, where she received a completely new forecastle ( bow ) by November 5th .

On January 3, 1960, the ship was bought by the GDR, renamed to Völkerfreundschaft and handed over to the FDGB . It was converted into a single-class ship with 568 passengers and 12,442 GRT and thus used for our own holiday trips, but also chartered out to other companies. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, the ship, manned by tourists, crossed the US blockade line and reached Cuba unscathed .

In April 1968, during the Easter holidays, sprang a passenger in the night the ship and was of the torpedo boat catcher Naiad the German Navy rescued. To do this, the naiad initiated an abrupt turning maneuver and unintentionally rammed the friendship of the peoples , which continued slightly damaged. The Naiad had previously set out with the Triton for close-up tactical reconnaissance. The commanders were informed in advance that a GDR citizen intended to jump off the vacation ship. The ship's command instructed the crews at sea. Before the trip, the fugitive passenger managed to get in touch with a high-ranking officer of the German Navy through contacts in his relatives and to inform them about his escape plans. After the friendship between peoples was established in Warnemünde , the state security found a compass and West German nautical charts in the cabin of the rescued man, which indicated a planned escape.

The painter Lea Grundig , former president of the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR , died on October 10, 1977 during a trip to the Mediterranean with the friendship of the nations .

In 1985 the GDR sold the friendship between the peoples to the Neptunus Rex Enterprise , which had the ship renamed Volker and moored in the Oslofjord in August . In September 1985 it was relocated to Southampton .

On December 20, 1986, the now forty-year-old ship was renamed Fridtjof Nansen and stationed in Oslo as accommodation for asylum seekers . After another sale in May 1989, it was sold to Star Lauro SpA and towed to Genoa . From 1992, under the direction of the Italian architect Giuseppe de Jorio, it was converted into a modern cruise ship, with little more than the particularly robust and stiff hull remaining from the old ship . Since the slender hull did not develop the necessary buoyancy for the considerably larger and therefore heavier superstructures, the ship was given a so-called “ ducktail ” or “duck tail” at the stern . From 1995 the ship was owned by the shipping company NINA Spa. in service for several charterers, including Neckermann Seereisen . From 1999 it was used as the Valtur Prima for round trips from Cuba . In 2004 the shipowner George P. Potamianos bought the ship for his shipping company CIC and renamed it Athena in 2005 after an extensive renovation . From 2007 the ship was used for the German tour operator Vivamare Urlaubreisen , which has since gone bankrupt . In 2009 the Athena gave a short guest appearance at Phoenix Reisen as a replacement for the Alexander von Humboldt . Because of open claims from creditors of the shipping company, the ship was put on the chain in Marseille in September 2012.

In May 2013, the ship was bought by the newly founded shipping company Portuscale Cruises , which renamed it Azores . From March 2014 it was used for Ambiente cruises in European waters. The collaboration between the Ambiente Kreuzfahrten and Portuscale Cruises brand was discontinued on September 5, 2014 due to the low number of passengers. From 2015 the ship was chartered by Cruise & Maritime Voyages and replaced the Discovery there . The ship has been named Astoria since March 2016 and was used for cruises in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe in the 2016 season. In 2016/2017, the ship was used as the filming and residence of the candidates and for the first shoots of the casting show Germany's Next Top Model .

In the summer of 2018, Rivages du Monde deployed the Astoria . The ship has been sailing for Cruise & Maritime Voyages again since 2019 , as it did in 2015. In 2020, the Astoria is due to leave CMV's fleet.

literature

• Karlheinz Krull: Holiday ships - messengers of friendship between peoples . Tribüne Verlag, Berlin 1961.
• Robert D. Ballard , Ken Marschall : Lost Liners - From the Titanic to Andrea Doria - the glory and decline of the great luxury liners . Heyne Verlag, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-453-12905-9 (English: Lost Liners: From the Titanic to the Andrea Doria. The ocean floor reveals its greatest lost ships. Translated by Helmut Gerstberger).
• Arnold Kludas : The world's great passenger ships . Bechtermünz Verlag, Augsburg 1998, ISBN 3-86047-263-1
• Gerd Peters: From vacation ship to luxury liner - the sea tourism of VEB DSR Rostock. Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-7822-0920-6

Movie

• Mathias Haentjes, director: ocean liners - golden years. Documentation about the era of the Atlantik-Liner , Germany, 2019, Radio Bremen , 52 min. (Image and film material about "Titanic", " Britannic " (wreck), from Cherbourg from Gare Maritime , from the Hapag-Hallen in Cuxhaven, on " Queen Mary 2 ", "Normandie", " United States " - Philadelphia, "Astoria" (Ex-Stockholm). Information from the broadcaster arte about the film, accessed Feb. 27, 2020)

Web links

Commons : Stockholm  - collection of images

• Literature about Stockholm (Schiff, 1948) in the national bibliography MV
• Model role of friendship among peoples
• Lots of data and pictures about the ship's history (Swedish)
• Press release : A MBIENTE Cruises presents new high seas program from March 2014: MS Azores (former MS Athena), maritime & personal.
• Model of friendship between nations - (360-degree view) in the Virtual State Museum Mecklenburg

Individual evidence

1. ↑ MS "Friendship of Nations". Retrieved March 22, 2014 . 
2. ↑ Gerd Peters: From vacation ship to luxury liner - The sea tourism of VEB DSR Rostock. Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-7822-0920-6 , pp. 14,15.
3. ↑ Jan Schröter: Via Cuba to Kiel: Jump into the Baltic Sea - Spectacular GDR escape on a cruise , Spiegel Online , March 5, 2020, accessed on March 8, 2020
4. ↑ Source: Exhibition in Flensburg Maritime Museum
5. ^ De Jorio Design International
6. ↑ Ambiente Kreuzfahrten website ( Memento of the original dated September 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ↑ Friendship of peoples back in Germany . In: Daily port report from October 4, 2013, p. 1
8. ↑ MS Azores: Portuguese shipping company "Portuscale Cruises" and Ambiente Kreuzfahrten end their cooperation. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on May 29, 2014 ; Retrieved May 29, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
9. ↑ CMV charters classic cruise ship Azores to replace Discovery in 2015. June 27, 2014, accessed June 28, 2014 . 
10. ^ Cruise Capital. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on January 28, 2015 ; accessed on January 27, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
11. ↑ CMV Cruise Calendar. July 13, 2015, accessed July 13, 2015 . 
12. ↑ Le M / S Astoria - Un paquebot à taille humaine. Retrieved October 8, 2018 . 
13. ↑ MS ASTORIA remains with Cruise & Maritime Voyages (CMV) for the time being. February 25, 2017. Retrieved February 28, 2017 . 
14. ↑ Cruise Calendar. CMV, October 6, 2018, accessed October 6, 2018 . 
15. ↑ 2020 Farewell season for CMV's Astoria. January 20, 2020, accessed on January 24, 2020 .