CRUISING 2000: Year-End Review - notable events and services in travel industry

Cruise Travel, Jan, 2001 by Theodore W. Scull

Renaissance Cruises brought out, in rapid-fire fashion, the R5, R6, and R7, expanding its patchwork of itineraries to Northern Europe and east of Suez, while increasing capacity in the Mediterranean and the South Pacific. After pursuing a direct-booking policy whenever possible, the line did an about-face and began courting travel agents by offering more standard commissions. The apologies about past practices created a weakening storm of protest as most agents saw that it was in their best interest to book Renaissance when asked by clients.

Silversea Cruises introduced the 396-passenger Silver Shadow, retaining the line's all-inclusive package incorporating fares, port charges, gratuities, and wines and spirits. Royal Olympic, now majority-owned by Louis Cruise Lines of Cyprus, brought out the Olympic Voyager, a fast (28-knot) monohull design applied to a cruise ship for the first time, to undertake a weekly Mediterranean cruise that calls at three continents (Europe, Asia, and Africa), and then sent the ship across the Atlantic to race between Fort Lauderdale and the Amazon River port of Manaus. Star Clippers finally was able to launch the much delayed Royal Clipper in mid-summer on Western Mediterranean cruises. The five-masted square-rigger, the largest sailing vessel ever built, was said to be modeled after the Preussen, of the German Flying P Line, built just after the turn of the century.

In the small-ship department, Delta Queen Steamboat Co. introduced a new riverboat, the Columbia Queen, in the Pacific Northwest to ply the Columbia and Snake rivers year-round. And the revived American Cruise Lines began operating the small coastal cruiser American Eagle along the Eastern Seaboard.

The venerable Belofin 1 (ex-Britanis), the oldest ocean-liner afloat, finally left her layup berth in Tampa and headed under tow for the breaking yards in Pakistan. But on October 21 she sprang a leak, heeled over, and sank 50 miles west of Cape Town, South Africa. Built in 1932, she traded in the Pacific as Matson Line's Monterey, Matsonia, and Lurline before being sold to Chandris and rebuilt into an immigrant liner and later the much-loved cruise ship Britanis. Efforts to move her to San Francisco as a hotel ship and attraction came to naught.

During the course of a South Pacific cruise in late April, Society Expeditions' World Discoverer ran on a reef in the Solomon Islands and, to avoid sinking, was beached. Passengers and crew were safely landed, but the ship was eventually written off and local marauders went aboard to strip her clean.

In one very sad note, the cruise-ship industry was marred by one major accident in the year 2000--one that did not directly involve a ship but rather the French Concorde supersonic jet. The Air France charter flight taking mostly German passengers from Paris to New York to join the Deutschland crashed on takeoff, killing everybody aboard.

More than a dozen ships, each exceeding 25,000 grt, will be entering the market in 2001--with more than half of them topping 80,000-grt apiece, equaling or surpassing the size of the great ocean liners completed prior to World War II. Meanwhile small-ship fans can look forward to the Delta Queen Coastal Cruises 1,580-grt/226-passenger Cape May Light and Cape Cod Light in the upcoming months. But as supply continues to exceed demand, cruise travelers may well enjoy another year of bargain fares.