Costa Victoria

Design and construction

Costa Victoria was the first of two Victoria-class cruise ships ordered by Costa Cruises from the German shipyard Bremer Vulkan as their yard number 107 (the second was intended to become Costa Olympia, but was completed as Norwegian Cruise Line's ). Costa Victoria was launched on 2 September 1995 and delivered on 15 July 1996. She was 252.9 m in length with a 36.1 m beam, had fourteen decks and was measured at . She had a diesel-electric power plant, which gave her an operating speed of up to 24 kn.

Costa Cruises service

The last new acquisition before Costa Cruises was taken over by Carnival Corporation and Airtours plc in 1997, Costa Victoria entered service in mid-1996 with a capacity for 2,394 passengers. In 2004, the ship underwent an extensive refit, which included balconies being added to 246 cabins. Costa Victoria underwent an additional refit in November 2013, in which public rooms were modernized and staterooms were remodeled to have a more "Italian" design.

Costa Victoria hosted athletes for Universiade event at Naples in July 2019 with over 1,900 athletes and 38 national delegations worldwide were accommodated to aboard the ship.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, after the ship left Dubai on 7 March 2020, a female Argentine national tested positive after she had disembarked in Crete. 726 passengers on the ship were quarantined. The ship did not dock at Venice, her final destination, or nearby Trieste, and passengers ultimately departed the ship after she docked in Civitavecchia on 25 March. On 4 May 2020, a 69-year-old woman linked to the ship died from the coronavirus, while her husband was also infected.

Deployments

In April 2018, the ship sailed in Asia, including China, and in summer 2018, the Mediterranean. In November 2019, the ship sailed cruises from Mumbai to the Maldives and fortnightly cruises to Sri Lanka. Costa Victoria was set to sail from Aqaba from October 2019 to 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Costa's operations were suspended and her planned sailings were cancelled prior to her ultimate departure from the fleet.

Sale and scrapping

She docked in Civitavecchia to disembark her final passengers on 25 March 2020. On 19 June, Costa sold Costa Victoria to Cantiere Navale San Giorgio del Porto SpA for possible conversion to an accommodation vessel for their shipyard workers in Genoa or, otherwise, for scrapping. On 23 June she was transferred to subsidiary Genova Trasporti Marittimi and berthed in Piombino.

On 13 January 2021, renamed St. Victoria, the ship left Piombino in towed of the tug VOS Chablis, to Aliağa, Turkey, for demolition and was beached on 28 January. Scrapping began in March.

Notes

References

References

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2. {{csr
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21. (2021-01-30). "These Cruise Ships Are Being Scrapped in Aliaga".
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