Karl WP Beyer November 25 th, 2020 - The friends of MS Astor will be saddened that the 33 year-old cruise ship is being scrapped in Turkey. On Monday of this week, the ship landed in Aliaga, Turkey.
The cruise ship MS Astor, put into service in 1987, has completed its last voyage to Aliaga, 50 kilometers north of Izmir. The ship landed alongside five other cruise ships in a ship graveyard. Aliaga is not only the seat of an oil refinery but also the location of several scrapping yards.
The scrapping action became apparent since the operator of the MS Astor, the British Cruise & Maritime Voyages (CMV), was forced to file for bankruptcy for itself and the subsidiary brand TransOcean Kreuzfahrten in summer 2020. The cause of the insolvency proceedings were the consequences of the corona pandemic.
The original plan was to let the MS Astor sail for French cruise guests under the name Jules Verne on May 1, 2021 under the direction of the newly founded CMV France. Before moving to France, MS Astor was supposed to complete a 128-day trip around the world from Hamburg to Bremerhaven, mainly for regular German customers. The trip was planned for winter 2020/21.
The 176-meter-long classic ship can accommodate 578 passengers with double occupancy. The ship, built by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft GmbH, was put into service in 1987 under the name MS Astor. The following year it passed to Soviet owners and was given the name Fedor Dostoevsky. In 1996 it was taken over by the German cruise company TransOcean. After the company went bankrupt, CMV acquired MS Astor and the brand name. The British incorporated the ship into their fleet of old and proven ships in 2013. MS Astor sailed in Australia during the winter; In the European summer months it was mainly used by TransOcean for regular German guests.
The ship was auctioned off to a scrapping yard for $ 1,7 million. Until recently, the initiative "Rescue MS Astor" tried to raise around 3,5 million euros for the continued operation of the Astor.
