M.S. PACIFIC PRINCESS

P&O Princess Cruises

United Kingdom

 

Northbound in Bosphorus, Istanbul. Summer, 1988.

 

Built: 1971 by Rheinstahl Nordseewerke GmbH, Emden, Germany. Major refit in 1992.

Technical:  

Overall length: 168.7 m

Beam: 24.6 m

Draft: 7.7 m

Gross Tonnage: 20166 tons

Passengers: 640

Power: 4 x Fiat C420 diesels, 4 x 4500 hp.

Service Speed: 21.5 knots

Operating Routes: Worldwide cruising. Mostly Alaskan, NY-Bermuda, Caribbean and Mediterranean cruises.

Sister Ships:

- M.S. Island Princess (ex. M.S. Island Venture, later M.S. Hyundai Pungak, M.S. Platinum, M.S. Discovery)

Former Names: M.S. Sea Venture

Later Names: None at this time.

Owners:
- 1971-October, 1974: Flagship Cruises, Oslo, Norway.
- October, 1974-2001: P&O Princess Cruises, London, United Kingdom.
- 2001-Present: Italian interests. Chartered to Princess Cruises until the Fall of 2002 to complete her final season.

History and Current Status: M.S. Pacific Princess was built in Germany as the Norwegian M.S. Sea Venture in 1971 for the now defunct Flagship Cruises. She was originally intended and designed for the always popular weekly New York City - Bermuda line, a chore that she was able to perform very succesfully until the end of her Princess Cruises career. In 1974, after Princess Cruises merged with P&O, she followed the footsteps of her sister M.S. Island Venture and joined the Princess fleet. In 1975, she became the base ship of the famous TV series "The Love Boat". This large scale mass advertisement made her and her company Princess Cruises very popular in the cruise industry. Under the Princess logo, she made Seattle based summer Alaskan cruises in the Pacific, returning to the Atlantic via Panama Canal in winter to be deployed in the Caribbean and Bermuda. Beginning from the end of the 80's, she also made Mediterranean and European cruises together with her sister, the M.S. Island Princess.

In 2001, after a long and very succesfull career with the Princess Cruises, the company announced that she was going to leave the fleet by the end of 2002. She actually got sold to Italian interests (that also bought P&O's M.S. Victoria, ex-. M.S. Kungsholm, ex- M.S. Sea Princess and renamed her M.S. Mona Lisa) in 2001, but chartered back to Princess to complete her final year of scheduled service. At the time of this writing (September 2002), her future is unclear.

An interesting event from her past: In the April of 1974, as the Norwegian M.S. Sea Venture, she performed a rescue operation when Cunard's Queen Elizabeth 2 lost all of her power some 250 miles off the Bermuda coast. M.S. Sea Venture received QE2's Mayday call and left Hamilton, where she was docked during a cruise, to help. She picked up all 1650 QE2 passengers using her lifeboats and carried them back to Hamilton. QE2 was towed to Bermuda for repairs.

(email all info about her to ata.bilgili@dartmouth.edu)

Notes: For an 8 year old with an interest in ships, 1975 was a great year!... That's when the TV series "The Love Boat" started and M.S. Pacific Princess sailed through our living rooms!... Years passed watching her on TV every week, but she was nowhere near our corner of the world. Alaska, Caribbean and other exotic places were where she was passing her time. I was getting Princess Cruises catalogues just for the fun of it every year, never expecting to see the M.S. Pacific Princess or her sister Island Princess in Turkish waters. Then suddenly, in the 1987 catalogue, I saw a Mediterranean Cruises section. Bam!!! There it was, Istanbul, Turkey in the ports of destination. Of course here I am, with camera on hand, taking her pictures and contemplating her on August 31st, 1987. In the next couple of years, I was able to see her on a couple of occasions but the best came in the Summer of 1988, when she actually sailed Northbound in Bosphorus towards the ports of the Black Sea. Before, Istanbul was her last post of call and she alway started her return voyage from Karakoy, pretty much killing the best opportunities of photographing her: sailing through Bosphorus!..

Being a big fan of smaller vessels at human scale, M.S. Pacific Princess has always been one of my favorites. She is a great looking ship at every angle and shows each and every characteristic of the "modern era" cruise ships built in the 70's: a nicely curved pointed bow, a slightly sheered main deck, a nice observation deck on or around the wheelhouse, a round aft section housing the pool and sun decks, a mid-sized funnel purposefully located towards the aft, etc... What always amazed me about her, though, was how different she looked at different angles. I always found her to be pretty full and beefy looking from the bow and thin and elongated from the rear.

Although approaching a considerable age for a ship in an era of gigantic cruise ships, I believe that she still has lots to offer, especially with her fame and TV background!... Openly neglected by Princess Cruises over her last years with only temporary solutions to her problems and not having been modernized in the interiors over the last 5 years (small cabins, outdated decoration, etc), she may have some difficulty to survive. A ship with her background just should not disappear!...

Links: Because of her popularity, the web is crowded with M.S. Pacific rincess websites. I am only going to give a few here.

- Princess Cruises webpage.
- M.S. Pacific Princess by Aleksi Lindstrom.
- An article on the final Bermuda season of M.S. Pacific Princess by John McFarlane.
- M.S. Pacific Princess by Heikki Helen.
- M.S. Pacific Princess by Jon Villareal.
- M.S. Pacific Princess by Mel Litzenberger.
- M.S. Pacific Princess postcards from Simplon postcards.
- M.S. Pacific Princess page from the unoffical "The Love Boat" TV series page.

Line Drawings:

Other Pictures:

---

WebCounter Visitor No: