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SPIRIT OF LONDON (1972)
Service dates: 1972-1989
Official number: 358619
Shipping lines: P&O LINES; P&O PASSENGER DIVISION; PRINCESS CRUISES INC.
Ship type:
Passenger Ship.
Career
- 19.01.1971
- Purchase announced. She had been ordered by Klosters R/A, Norway, as a sister for Southward, and was bought on the stocks at a cost of £10 million. Norwegian Caribbean Line had pulled out of the deal after price rises following the Italian builders’ nationalisation.
- 30.03.1971
- Date of contract.
- 17.08.1971
- Name announced.
- 29.04.1972
- Named by Mrs Beatrice Marriott, London’s Pearly Queen. She could not be launched due to unsuitable sea conditions offshore.
- 09.05.1972
- Launched without further ceremony.
- 11.10.1972
- Delivered as Spirit of London for P&O Lines Ltd (P&O Passenger Division, managers).
- 11.11.1972
- Maiden voyage from Southampton to Madeira, Barbados, Grenada, Martinique, Antigua, St Thomas and San Juan. Thereafter she was based in San Francisco.
- 12.01.1973
- Picketed by US seamen in Sacramento in protest at the proposal to ‘adopt’ a foreign ship for a week by the State of California.
- 08.08.1974
- P&O announced the purchase of the Los Angeles-based Princess Cruises and the transfer of Spirit of London to their operation.
- 09.10.1974
- Renamed Sun Princess during her annual refit in Victoria, British Columbia. Her dining room was modernised to suit the Princess Cruises style, her ‘Swinging Sixties’ image was replaced, a gymnasium was added and the casino enlarged.
- 11.02.1986
- Operating company became Princess Cruises (P&O Lines, managers).
- 20.06.1986
- Owners restyled as P&O Lines (Shipowners) Ltd.
- 01.07.1986
- Management transferred to P&O Lines Ltd.
- 09.1986
- Passenger capacity now 703.
- 24.02.1989
- Sold to Premier Cruise Line, Cape Canaveral, USA for further trading and renamed Starship Majestic. Princess Cruises was finding it difficult to market her as a contemporary part of its enlarged fleet following the takeover of Sitmar in 1988.
- 1995
- Chartered to CTC Cruise Lines and renamed Southern Cross.
- 1997
- Purchased by Festival Cruises and renamed Flamenco.
- 2004
- 27.02.2016: Following the collapse of Festival Cruises, Flamenco was sold for $12.25 million to Cruise Elysia and renamed New Flamenco. Capsized and sank off Laem Chabang, Sri Racha,Thailand in shallow water on 27 February 2016 after having been abandoned without crew or maintenance for about a year.