For several months she was lying in front of Sharjah, not far from Dubai, waiting for her fate. Now the OCEAN GALA I is on its way to India, obviously the demolition yard.
The ship was built in 1982 in Nantes, France, as a cruise ferry named SCANDINAVIA. The Danish ferry company DFDS had it for their subsidiary United Steamship Co., Ltd. commissioned with headquarters in Nassau.
The SCANDINAVIA initially had a passenger capacity of about 1,600 and 530 cars on the car deck.
The ship is 185.25 meters long, 27 meters wide and has a maximum draft of 6.80 meters. It is measured with a gross space of 26,747.
After delivery to United Steamship in August 1982, she was inaugurated on September 28, 1982, in New York. Then she was deployed between New York and the Bahamas. But a good year later, she was withdrawn from the area and brought to Copenhagen.
From December 1983, the DFDS used the SCANDINAVIA as a ferry on its traditional route between Copenhagen and Oslo. This route is still served today by the DFDS.
The SCANDINAVIA, meanwhile, was sold to Sundance Cruises in 1985. After a conversion at Blohm & Voss in Hamburg, she drove on Canada-Alaska-Cruises. In 1990, a resale and renamed VIKING SERENADE, to be used for Royal Caribbean Cruise Line. In 1991 she was converted to a pure cruise ship at the Southwest Marine Yard in San Diego, USA. Where originally the car decks were, cabins were installed.
From 2002 to 2015, the ship sailed as ICELAND ESCAPE for Island Cruises, on Mediterranean cruises and cruises around South America. After being launched in 2015, it was resold and renamed OCEAN GALA. In 2016, it was to become a refugee shelter in Sweden. The ship was taken to Utansjö for this purpose. It is a small port on the Gulf of Bothnia, north of Sundsvall and about 450 km from Stockholm. However, in Utansjö, when the ship arrived there, there were quarrels about the permit. After all, it was not allowed to stay there. The last trip to date took place in 2017 under the name OCEAN GALA I in the Persian Gulf, where it was launched before Sharjah. As of today, 23.03.2018, she is on her way to Alang to be scrapped.
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