Rescue in the Caribbean: the Viking Princess

[Doc Vernon]

On April 8th 1966, and with subsequent headline-making news, the cruise ship Viking Princess caught fire and burned out off Cuba. The 12,000-ton ship was on a Caribbean cruise at the time. Captain Klaus Schacht was then serving aboard the freighter Cap Norte, a West German vessel (Hamburg-South America Line), and raced to the rescue. “We rescued passengers & crew, but some of the crew was quite notorious. They seemed more interested with the monies & other valuables in the ship’s safe than saving lives or even the ship itself.”

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Attachment 27278A postcard View Viking Princess

The fire started in the 17-knot ship’s engine room and spread quickly. An order to abandon ship was ordered almost immediately and along with the Cap Norte, two other freighters -- the Chunking Victory and Navigator --- rushed to the rescue. The Navigator did added duty: it later towed the blistered, wrecked Viking Princess to Port Royal on Jamaica. Sadly, however, she had to be written-off as a complete loss and later was towed to Bilbao in Spain for scrapping.

Below Burning off Jamaica

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(Above: The blistered remains of the fire-gutted Viking Princess)

The Viking Princess had been a French passenger-cargo ship, the Lavoisier, owned by a now long-vanished company called Chargeurs Reunis. A 537-ft long ship, she was built at St Nazaire and completed in the summer of 1950. She and a sister, the Claude Bernard, carried lots of cargo & some 450 passengers (divided between first & third class) on the long-haul run from Northern Europe to the East Coast of South America --- from the likes of Hamburg and Le Havre to Rio, Santos, Montevideo & Buenos Aires. She was sold, however, in little more than a decade to Italian buyers, an otherwise unknown Palermo-based firm listed as Commerciale Marittima Petroli, who rebuilt her totally as the 600-passenger cruise ship Riviera Prima. But mostly, she operated under charter, sailing for New York-based Caribbean Cruise Lines on 2-14 day itineraries. But after that company went bankrupt in 1964, the ship was sold to Norwegian buyers, Oslo headquartered Berge Sigval Bergesen, but who sailed the ship under a Viking Cruise Lines house flag, and who began using her as the Viking Princess. She sailed from many US East Coast ports, including Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Port Everglades and Miami. She even did a cruise from Port Jefferson, Long Island.

[Keith Tindell]

The thought of evacuating, and accounting for in excess of 7000 passengers and crew just makes me think of the panic. I have been involved many times in large hotel evacuations, which is always mayhem, and all that happens with that is to get them out of the building and into fresh air, relatively simple. Now the though of having to get that many people into boats or rafts etc, down the side of high rise hulls !!!,in a seaway , incredible, and frightening. Lets just hope it never happens, kt

[Red Lead Ted]

I have said it before and will say it again, There are that many different Nationals speaking different language crewing these ships there is no communication between the bridge and crew members, Crew members who are paid and have a duty of care for all passengers it is a disaster waiting to happen, If the Costa Concordia would have gone down instead of resting on rocks you would have had another Titanic story, Remember lads our first duty after signing on any ship passenger or otherwise was to find and familiarise your self with your designated life boat and fire station, And that was before you turned too Terry.

[happy daze john in oz]

I discovered a couple of years back that some of those ships are very different when it comes to evacuation.
Some now have chutes similar to the ones on aircraft, the iea is you slide them down to the life boats and rafts.

Just hope I never have to se it.