MS Scandinavia and the Failed East Coast Ferry Service
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Northern Europe has always been one of the world's most competitive and vibrant passenger ferry markets – or was, things have no doubt changed quite a bit this year. Which makes sense, a lot of countries with a lot of port cities arranged around the Baltic Sea, with numerous possibilities for ferry connections. It helps that driving all the way around is long and inconvenient, and also that ferries don't have to charge sales tax in their onboard shops once in international waters. Over time, Northern European ferries have evolved to be nearly indistinguishable from luxury cruise ships – sure, they can carry cars, motorhomes, and tractor trailers – but they also have private cabins, suites, spas, gyms, restaurants, bars, nightclubs, swimming pools, etc, to the extent that people often take them just for a quick weekend getaway, not always just for Point A to Point B transportation.
Well, outside Alaska and Washington (and one short hop over the Delaware Bay, and one route on Lake Michigan), the United States hasn't had much demand for large ferries, and those we do have certainly don't compare to the Europeans in terms of comfort and luxury. But, in the 1980s, one company decided to do something about that.
Danish-based DFDS AS (Det Forende Dampskibs-Selskab,“United Steamship Company), one of the larger ferry operators in the Nordic region, took a look at the potentially giant US market, which had taken to cruise ships quite well, after all, and wondered if maybe there was a potential there that no one had yet exploited. With New York City representing a large, concentrated urban area, and Florida representing a hugely popular vacation destination that lots of New Yorkers traveled to, and with many people having family in both states, they reasoned that a coastal service from New York to Miami might be a good place to start – allowing people to bring their car with them back and forth, without having to drive themselves. A market research study in the late 1970s produced favorable results, so DFDS got underway.
They formed a new, American-based subsidiary called Scandinavian World Cruises, and placed an order with Dubigeon-Normandie SA in Nantes, France for what would become the largest cruiseferry in the world. The new MS Scandinavia, delivered in 1982 at a cost of $100 million, measuring 26,747 gross tons, almost 608ft. long, and accommodating 1,606 passengers and 532 cars, became the company's new flagship, purpose designed for American tastes and the long haul 1100 mile trip down the Eastern seaboard.
There was just one small snag in their plans. The good old Merchant Marine Act of 1920, also known as the Jones Act, which specifies that only American-built, American-registered, American-crewed, and American-owned ships may carry passengers and/or cargo directly between US ports without stopping in a foreign country en route. The Danish-owned, French-built, Bahamian-flagged, and internationally-crewed Scandinavia clearly did not qualify. DFDS knew this from the start, but they were convinced it was an obstacle they could clear before the ship was ready. They spent the period between 1980 and 1982 lobbying Congress and the Carter and Reagan administrations for a special exemption, based on the novelty of their proposed service and the fact that it could not be realistically achieved in a Jones Act compliant manner. It didn't work. So, rather than nonstop New York-Miami service, the giant new Scandinavia had to run from New York to Freeport, Bahamas, where passengers and their cars would change ships to one of two smaller ferries for the final leg from Freeport to Miami. The two smaller ferries, Scandinavian Sun and Scandinavian Sea; had been built in West Germany in 1968 and the United Kingdom in 1970, respectively, and were acquired secondhand.
Obviously, this drove up operating costs and made the service far less convenient, so things didn't go well, at all. After a little over a year, DFDS threw in the towel. Scandinavia was transferred to the main DFDS Seaways fleet for service in Northern Europe in 1983. Scandinavian World Cruises carried on with just the Florida-Bahamas service until 1985, when the company was rebranded as SeaEscape Cruises and started targeting the gambling market more heavily. DFDS sold their stake in the company in 1987, and SeaEscape collapsed in bankruptcy in 1991.
As for Scandinavia, after service with DFDS on their flagship Copenhagen-Oslo run for a few years, she was sold to the American-based Sundance Cruise Corporation (a joint venture of the Finland Steamship Company, the Swedish-based Johnson Line, and McDonald Enterprises). She was rebuilt by Blohm & Voss AG in West Germany as a dedicated cruise ship, with the former vehicle deck subdivided into additional passenger spaces and the ramp doors welded shut, and entered service with Sundance Cruises in 1985 as their Stardancer, running cruises from California-Mexico in the winter and Washington to British Columbia and Alaska during the summer.
In 1987, Sundance amalgamated with Eastern Cruise Lines (formerly Eastern Steamship Lines) and Western Cruise Lines to form Admiral Cruises, with Stardancer becoming part of that new fleet. Admiral was taken over by Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. in 1988, who immediately began phasing out the brand. One infamous event occurred during her time with Admiral – despite dating from a time when private balconies were uncommon for most cabins, Scandinavia/Stardancer did have a few luxury suites with them, and those balconies were stacked straight up, rather than terraced. In February 1988, chiropractor Dr. Scott Rolston murdered his wife, Karen, by strangling her in their suite and throwing her body over the side, which allowed a clear path straight down to the water.
Although Admiral's older, converted ocean liners were earmarked for disposal following the takeover, the modern Stardancer would be retained and incorporated into the main Royal Caribbean International fleet in 1990 as their Viking Serenade, undergoing another rebuild at Southwest Marine in Los Angeles during 1991 to bring her up to Royal Caribbean's fleet standards and add the distinctive 'Viking Crown' observation lounge to her funnel.
But, modern or not, Viking Serenade's status as a converted ferry meant that she became increasingly uncompetitive as the 1990s wore on. Only ¼ the size of the new generation of megaships coming into service, she also lacked the novelties like ice skating rinks, climbing walls, and private balconies in every room that were fast becoming requirements for the North American market. In 2002, she went to a newly formed Royal Caribbean subsidiary, Island Cruises, to become their Island Escape, offering low budget Caribbean cruises to British passengers in combined fly/sail packages.
During this period, history repeated in 2006, when a passenger named Lonnie Kocontes stalked his ex-wife Micki Kanesaki on board, strangled her, and threw her body over the balcony railing straight down to the water. The Island Cruises venture never worked out as well as hoped, and Island Escape was sold to an investment company called Cruise Holdings Ltd. and chartered to British-based Thomson Cruises for more budget priced British market cruise service. With newer vessels coming into their fleet, Thomson dropped their charter in 2016, and Island Escape was set to be leased to the Swedish government for 4 years as a migrant accommodation vessel moored in Harnosand, under the new name Ocean Gala. A controversy occurred when the ship arrived in port without the proper licenses in place, which prevented the migrant hotel plan from coming to fruition. Ocean Gala instead sailed to Egypt, where she was successfully chartered as a migrant worker accommodation vessel in Suez until 2017, when she moved to Dubai for continued use as worker accommodation. In 2018, the now 36-year old ship was sold to Indian scrappers and demolished at Alang under the delivery name Ocean Gala I.
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Seems like a really bad business plan to spend all that money to do something that isn’t yet legal.
Good series. This installment was a little creepy with the murders. I wonder how much crime happens on ships and how much security they have. The Love Boat never showed us that. Maybe Gopher was also a martial arts and security expert.
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Probably would have worked out pretty well if they had received a Jones Act waiver. Amtrak's Auto Train is always packed, and pretty much the same concept. I guess it would have been a minimum 3 day trip with the Bahamas stop, and NY-FL flights were pretty aggressively priced, even in the early 80s, so it might still have failed.
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@chariotoflove Silicon Valley seems to have done alright with it... Got a good laugh out of trying to imagine Gopher as a former Navy Seal turned cruise security expert.
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@chariotoflove I kind of wonder how they discovered the two murders as it seems like the perfect plan. Straight shot to the water mid ocean and no one around to give the alarm.
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I wonder what would have happened if they had got a Jones Act waiver and managed to actually spark the public's interest. That's still a ton of money to spend on something that's not legal but I suppose it sort of worked out for them in the end. The ship had a long life. I'm always fascinated by how quickly these ships seem to go through owners and names the older they get.
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Images are borked
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No photos loaded, post got hyphen'd
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@someassemblyrequired
The whole trip was about 4 days, so about 4x longer than just driving straight through. I believe tickets were priced at $370 double occupancy, with no extra charge for your car. But, they were constantly running discounts and promotions all through the life of the service, so I doubt anyone paid full price.They probably could have knocked a day out of the trip with a direct route
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It was 4 days, including the changeover in the Bahamas, a direct route probably would have been 3. I expect it might have done at least as well as the AutoTrain, maybe even better, since it was New York Harbor straight to Miami Harbor, whereas Amtrak is Lorton, Virginia to Sanford, Florida. It's a 4 1/2 hour drive south from New York just to pick up the train, and Sanford is still 30 minutes from Orlando at the other end. And if Miami is your destination, that's another 3 1/2 hours on top of that.
Of course, the ship would always be more expensive, but would have been more comfortable and with a lot more entertainment and amenities.
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@chariotoflove In the 1970s, probably not much - ships were still mostly registered in developed countries and were pretty small, a few hundred to a thousand passengers, maybe, tickets were expensive, crew tended to be better trained and with a higher staff:passenger ratio.
Today? A surprisingly high amount. You've got 5,000 drunk people from all walks of life packed into a floating apartment block for several days with minimal security or supervision. And, when something happens, it's, say, the Liberian police that are in charge of investigating. Cruise lines hold a lot of influence in the countries where they register their ships, since those countries often have very little other large industries, and they can get cases closed and swept under the rug with some pretty cursory investigation.
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@someassemblyrequired that's their Scandinavian Sea, originally built in Scotland in 1970 as the British-flagged Blenheim, a combination ferry and cruise ship for Fred. Olsen. She burned out in an arson fire in 1984, and Scandinavian World Cruises replaced her with the infamous Scandinavian Star (which later also had a rather serious fire). The old Scandinavian Sea was rebuilt as the casino ship Discovery I for Discovery Cruise Line, who were the main ones behind those barely not legally a scam "free cruise" spam cell phone calls we all used to get. She burned out again in 1996 and was scrapped in '97.
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@ranwhenparked Used to use the Scandinavian Star as an example of fire development when I taught at the Coast Guard Academy. Another arson as well.
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@someassemblyrequired that is pretty damn awesome. I totally forgot that was arson, been years since I read about it
