A more than forty years old cruiseship has been disabled by a fire on an Indian ocean voyage.
The extent of damage to the 28,000-gt Costa Allegra (built 1969) is not so far known but the vessel is reported to be adrift between Madasgascar and the Seychelles.
The 636 passengers and 413 crew were mustered for a potential evacuation of the vessel as a precautionary measure.
The vessel was due to berth at the port of Victoria on Mahe tomorrow.
The fire comes just six weeks after the grounding and capsize of the 114,000-gt Costa Concordia (built 2006) which has cost more than 30 lives.
Transmissions from web cameras on the Costa Allegra were suspended and there was no immediate response from Carnival Corp subsidiary Costa Cruises or from the public relations firm that spoke on its behalf after the Costa Concordia tragedy.
Some hours later Costa confirmed the fire but said it had not spread from the generator room to any other areas of the ship and there were no injuries or casualties.
“The shipboard fire extinguishing system and procedures were promptly activated and the special fire fighting squads intervened to extinguish fire,” said a Costa spokeswoman.
“Inspections on the state of the engine room are ongoing, in order to restart the necessary equipment to reactivate the functionality of the ship,” she added.
The hull and machinery cover on the Costa Allegra is led by the UK's RSA insurance group and believed to be with a similar panel of underwriters as the Costa Concordia. The protection and indemnity cover is also similar and shared between the Standard Club and Steamship Mutual on a 50:50 quota share basis.
The Costa Allegra has had a long and eventful history being originally built by Wartsila as a containership for Sweden’s Johnson Line.
The vessel was part of Regency Cruises fleet but came up for sale following the operator’s bankruptcy.
