Ship of the month
by Published on 1st April 2018 09:51 PM
March 2018
Remembering the Beautiful Vistafjord
On an April day in 2017, one of the most beautiful ships, both inside as well as outside, landed at the beaches of Alang in northwest India. She had reached the end of her days. She’d had a long career, 44 years in all -- and quite a heritage. Her next stop: The local scrappers. She’d started her days as the Vistafjord for Norwegian America Line, then served Cunard as the Caronia and then had a third commercial life as Saga Cruises’ Saga Ruby. The 24,000-tonner was very popular in every one of her cruising careers. But in the very end, her luck ran out. After being sold to buyers in Myanmar in 2014 and then renamed Orasia, she was to have been converted to a floating hotel in her new Southeast Asian homeland, at Yangon. But the project never materialized and, after sitting idle for three years, the 615-ft long liner was sold to Indian scrap merchants.
Myself, I have several memories of this ship. On June morning in 1973, several members and myself of the World Ship Society’s Port of New York Branch traveled down to the Battery seawall especially to photograph the Vistafjord, arriving on her maiden voyage after a crossing from Oslo. The weather was ideal: bright, sunny and very clear. Suddenly, the master of a McAllister tug generously waved us aboard – and off we went to the Lower Bay. Dressed in flags, the sparkling Vistafjord was waiting just inside
the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. But then more good luck – we were asked to come aboard and sail with the ship for the hour’s run up to Pier 40. A maiden arrival and an unexpected minicruise – such excitement! And it even included a late breakfast!
A second recollection is of taking the Vistafjord on a British Isles cruise in August 1985. We sailed from Hamburg and altogether visited some rather remote ports such as Portee in the Hebrides in Scotland and Milford Haven in Wales. Five years later, I was back on Vistafjord and again giving talks but on a rather appropriate occasion – Cunard’s 150th anniversary. It too was a British Isles cruise, but included a high spirited rendezvous off Portsmouth with the royal yacht Britannia, with Her Majesty the Queen & Prince Philip onboard, and being moored in a specially assembled fleet that included the Queen Elizabeth 2. On the next day, the Vistafjord was anchored in the Thames, then one of the very first big liners to be moored off Greenwich.
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