Stockholm - Astoria

This article is about a ship, an old ship this is! She started life as the Stockholm, launched in 1946 at the Götaverken shipyard in Gothenburg, Sweden.

She was built for the Swedish American Line (SAL) to replace the aging Drottningholm of 1904. As such she made her maiden voyage from Gothenburg to New York in February 1948. She ran along with her fleetmate Gripsholm and in 1953 received a refit to accommodate more passengers as she had just been joined by the new Kungsholm. Now that the Gripsholm and Kungsholm were running alongside, she was the smallest ship in the fleet and she was occasionally used for cruising from 1953 onwards.

Her most famous ... or infamous moment would come in July 1956, when in heavy fog she accidentally collided with the Italian ship Andrea Doria, the bow of the Stockholm was heavily damaged and she took on water eventually settling about 3 feet lower in the water than normal, however ... she survived and could sail on under her own power after separating from the Andrea Doria. The Stockholm took on passengers from the Andrea Doria even though she was heavily damaged, the French Ile de France also assisted in the rescue of passengers from the Andrea Doria and the next morning, the Andrea Doria capsized and sank. The Stockholm sailed on to New York where she arrived and went to Bethlehem shipyard in Brooklyn to have her bow rebuilt. The ship's bell had been damaged and gone down with the Andrea Doria but was later recovered in 1959 and placed on the ship again as a display piece. In 2020 the missing part of her bow was also discovered close to the wreck of the Andrea Doria.

Following her repair in Brooklyn she went back home for yet another refit, adding a cinema and an outdoor pool. By 1957 she was joined by the new Gripsholm and was now the oldest and smallest vessel in the fleet.

She was sold to East Germany to become the Völkerfreundschaft being operated by Deutsche Seereederei (this company eventually became the current day AIDA Cruises). She sailed in this company and further into East German service and had a small role in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and had some more small incidents in her career before eventually being transferred to Panama in 1985, her name being reduced to Volker and by the end of the year she was laid up in Southampton. Even later in 1985 she was renamed Fridtjof Nansen and served as a refugee ship in Oslo (Norway).

Then something rare happened, the ship was 41 years old when in 1989 she was sold to Star Laura Lines but since she was still under charter, she remained in Oslo until 1993. She was then towed to Italy where she was completely gutted and rebuilt into a more modern cruise ship. She emerged in 1994 as the Italia I, then Italia Prima and then Valtur Prima, she was briefly laid up in Cuba following the 9/11 terrorist attacks and eventually returned to cruising in 2002 as the Caribe for Festival Cruises but the plan didn't work and she was sold to Portugal in 2004 where she became the Athena for Classic International Cruises. In 2013 the ship got a new paintjob and renamed Azores, she sailed for Portuscale Cruises but this didn't last long and the company (that also operated the legendary Funchal) collapsed and the ship was chartered to Cruise and Maritime Voyages and later under this operation she was renamed yet again to Astoria.

The CMV operation seemed pretty succesful but then a global disaster in the form of the Covid-crisis stopped her luck and CMV went down in this period, she ended up being laid up in Rotterdam and never moved again for a long time. Eventually after an incident damaging her and being sold, she was again sold in 2025, this time it was a Belgian scrapyard in Ghent that bought her for only 200.000 EURO.

Time had finally caught up with her and she was towed out of her 5 year lay-up in Rotterdam to Ghent on July 3rd, 2025 where I was able to photograph her in her poot condition being towed out to sea. All together she served actively for about 78 years and another 5 years in lay-up.

In December 2025 the process of scrapping had started on her rear superstructure and flew my drone over her to see her one last time most likely.

THE END