What happens to cruise ships when they go to ship heaven

I came across this image and thought wow what a sad sight I worked at tui for many years and got to go on many cruises with them onboard the Marella Spirit so to see her like this was quite upsetting. Then it got me thinking well what does happen to these amazing big ships when they come to the end of there sailing careers and here’s what I discovered.

Typically there are three options that determine the fate of an old cruise ship.

Most often they are actually offloaded to a less-luxurious cruise line within the same company or transported to a different part of the globe with smaller market share.

Alternatively, they are sold on the second-hand market to fledgeling or budget cruise lines that are not interested in investing in new tonnage.

Another option is, of course, a nicely minted renovation.

Carnival Cruises is just one of the companies that have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in order to revive their older cruise ships, particularly since nine of their 26 ships are over 20 years old.

And who could forget the extreme renovation when Silversea Cruises literally split 9-year-old Silver Spirit down the middle, in order to accommodate for an expanded pool area and more dining options.

Norwegian Cruise Line has announced they are going to be spending in the region of $400 million in renovations on 9 of its 16 vessels.

And perhaps the older cruise ships who can no longer set sail will hopefully have the long-awaited happy ending like Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2).

One of the most famous cruise ships, 50-year-old QE2, which was part of the Cunard Line and sailed around the world 25 times hosting more than 2.5 million guests, has finally found a new home as a floating hotel in Dubai.

SCRAPPED

When ships get truly dilapidated they’re sold for scrap, with parts and metals recycled. Most end up in one of the world’s three largest ship scrapyards: Alang in India, Chittagong in Bangladesh or Gadani in Pakistan. Ships are run aground on the beach and a vast army of underpaid, unprotected workers break up the ship, stripping everything useful, cutting up the hull’s steel plates and abandoning hazardous materials to the elements in scenes that could be straight out of a Mad Max movie.

Among cruise ships eventually scrapped is Pacific Princess, which famously appeared in the TV series Love Boat in the late 1970s and early ’80s. It had a particularly sad fate of deterioration under subsequent owners, saw several fatal crew accidents, and was eventually seized by a Genoan shipyard because of unpaid bills. In 2014, it was sold to a Turkish scrapyard for just €2.5 million.

ABANDONED AT SEA

Some cruise ships don’t even make it as far as the knacker’s yard. Ocean liner America (1933), which later became American Star, was being towed across the Atlantic in 1993 for conversion into a luxury hotel when it ran aground off the Canary Islands in a storm and broke in two. For quite some time it provided spectacular photos. Parts of the ship’s structure eventually collapsed into the sea. The remainder of the stricken vessel is now only visible at low tide.

When Society Expeditions’ World Discoverer struck a reef off the Solomon Islands in 2000, passengers were evacuated and it limped towards Roderick Bay, where it was abandoned off the beach. It’s still there, stripped of its contents by islanders, and has become a local tourist attraction – or for some, an eyesore.