One of the world’s most famous ships was this week the first cruise ship of the year to dock in Reykjavík harbor.
The Portuguese cruise ship Azores was built in 1948 and was not always known by her current name. She docked in Reykjavík on Wednesday, mbl.is reports.
60 years ago the ship was called the MS Stockholm and made headlines for being involved in one of the world’s most famous maritime accidents, when she collided with the Italian liner the SS Andrea Doria.
The Stockholm was the smallest liner on the North Atlantic, but also the biggest ever built in Sweden; while the Andrea Doria was the de facto flagship of post-war Italian economic recovery.
The two ships collided on a foggy night off Nantucket, which led to the Andrea Doria sinking but the Stockholm surviving. 46 people on the Andrea Doria died as a direct result of the collision, but the boat remained afloat for 11 hours and other ships rescued the other 1,660 on board—the ship’s stable design credited with avoiding a Titanic scale disaster.
The bow of the Stockholm was severely damaged, but it too took part in the rescue of passengers and limped back to New York under its own power—where it had its bow repaired at a cost of a million dollars (over USD 8.5 million in today’s money).
Five crewmembers were killed and several others trapped in the wrecked bow of the Stockholm.
The ship’s interesting history doesn’t stop there, as she was sold to the East German government in 1960 and used as a liner until 1985. She was then used as an accommodation center for asylum seekers in Norway, before being refitted in Genoa—the Andrea Doria’s home port, where the press dubbed her the “ship of death”.
Attacked by pirates in 2008, she eventually wound up in Reykjavík in 2015.
The famous ship is not short of luxury or modern conveniences and is still going strong, all over the world.
