Canadian offshore accommodation provider Bridgemans Services Group has pulled the plug on a small luxury cruise ship it acquired only in March, selling it to a Turkish ship recycling facility.
The 8,300-gt Diamond XI (built 1974) was beached at a recycling yard at Aliaga on Saturday.
When Bridgemans bought the 226-berth cruise ship as Ocean Diamond from Diamond Cruise Partners, a group of investors linked to Miami-based SunStone Ships, it said that due to strong interest from project proponents, the company wanted an accommodation ship “sized to support projects in their earliest stages or to supplement accommodation at peak workforce”.
The company described its new purchase as “a beautiful ship that perfectly suits resource and other projects requiring premium accommodation space for up to 350 beds, catering, entertainment and more”.
It is unclear why Bridgemans decided to pull the plug on the Diamond XI so quickly, and the company could not be reached outside office hours on Monday.
During its heyday, the ship itself was proof that in shipping it was possible to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
The vessel was built in Norway as the run-of-the-mill ro-ro Begonia, with accommodation for only 12 passengers.
Just over a decade later, it was converted by Oslo-based Fearnley & Eger into the luxury cruise ship Explorer Starship, with its blunt bow being the only hint of a more mundane past.
Upon completion of its conversion at Lloyd-Werft in Germany, the ship was chartered to US-based Exploration Cruise Lines for two years before being sold to newly formed Seven Seas Cruise Line, which after several name changes and merger deals is today known as Regent Seven Seas Cruises.
Trading under the name Song of Flower for Seven Seas, the ship enjoyed a reputation as being one of the cruise industry’s top-rated ships.
French cruise operator Compagnie Des Iles Du Ponant became the ship’s owner in 2003. Under the name Le Diamant, it helped the niche cruise operator, which back then owned two very small ships, break into the increasingly popular polar expedition cruise sector and paved the way for the ordering of larger, even more luxurious ice-classed ships.
Outclassed by these newbuildings, the Le Diamant was sold in 2011 to a group of investors put together by Miami-based SunStone, who chartered it to various expedition cruise operators under the name Ocean Diamond.
The ship went into lay-up at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 and remained inactive until Bridgemans acquired it in March.
The Diamond XI was one of just a handful of ships reported as being sold for recycling over the past week, during which weakening prices saw only the owners of a couple of small general cargo ships and a cement carrier, all of less than 15,000 dwt, opt to recycle their unwanted ships in Bangladesh.
Apart from the Diamond XI, Turkish recyclers were reported in the latest recycling reports as buying a trio of elderly ships of between 3,000 dwt and 5,000 dwt.
No recycling deals were reported for India or Pakistan.
