Sunday, May 8, 2011

the world's longest serving trans-Atlantic passenger ship

This is the Athena, seen in Warnemünde in what was East Germany, a ship that has been several times renamed and rebuilt and still in service.  She was built in 1948 as the MS Stockholm by Götaverken in Göteborg (Gothenburg) for the Swedish America Line. In the 11 years as the Stockholm she is best best known for sinking the Andrea Doria: on the night of 25 July 1956, at 11:10 pm in heavy fog in the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nantucket, the Stockholm and the Andrea Doria of the Italian Line collided, resulting in the latter sinking.

In January 1960 the ship was bought by the East German authorities as a holiday ship for "free socialist workers". At 525 feet (160 metres) long with a gross tonnage of 12,165, Stockholm was the smallest passenger ship operating on the North Atlantic route at the time. However, she was also the largest ship built in Sweden at the time. Originally designed to carry 395 people, a 1953 refit expanded Stockholm's capacity to 548 people.  From 1960 to 1985 as the Völkerfreundschaft (peoples' friendship) she sailed to various destinations as a holiday ship, including to the capitalist west.  Although passengers were vetted by the Stasi, that didn't prevent some of them, and some crew members, escaping. Altogether there were 280,000 passengers in these 25 years.




stop in Malta

 


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