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Built for the British based Shaw Savill
& Albion Line, Southern
Cross was one of the first ships
to be designed with her engines at the
rear to give more space for the
passengers. Her maiden voyage from
Southampton March 29th 1955 called at Las
Palmas, Cape Town, Durban, Freemantle,
Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, Wellington,
Fiji, and Tahiti, passed through the
Panama Canal and called at Curacao and
Trinidad before returning to Southampton.
Southern Cross completed
four such voyages a year with each taking
76 days. By the late 1960s, Jet aircraft
were providing a service to most of these
destinations. This led to Southern
Cross being laid up at Southampton
in 1971. The Ulysses Line bought her two
years later to be operated under the name
Calypso. After being converted to
a full time cruise ship, Calypso
set out on her first Mediterranean cruise
from Piraeus/Greece April 25th 1975.
Calypso only completed a few
of these Mediterranean cruises before
being chartered by Thomson Cruises.
Thomson’s operated her on cruises
out of Tilbury and Southampton/England,
then later from New York - Bermuda. The
Eastern Steamship Line of Panama acquired
Calypso in 1980 to be operated
under the name Azure Seas.
With this purchase, they founded a new
line called the Western Steamship Line.
Azure Seas was then
operated on cruises from the west coast
of America - Mexico. The Western
Steamship Line became known as Admiral
Cruises following their merger with
Sundance Cruises in 1986. With the cruise
industry out of Miami - Bahamas booming
by that time, the large cruise lines
began buying up the smaller lines. The
Royal Caribbean Cruise Line bought
Admiral Cruises in 1986 and began selling
off their smaller ships. This led to
Azure Seas being sold to
the Dolphin Cruise Line in 1992 to be
operated under the name Ocean
Breeze. She was again sold in
1999, this time to Imperial Majesty
Cruises to be operated on short budget
cruises out of Fort Lauderdale - Bahamas
under the name Ocean
Breeze.
After arriving in Fort Lauderdale
after her final cruise, the Ocean
Breeze was laid up and put up for
sale. In 2003, despite an Australian
preservation campaign to save her, she
was sold to scrap merchants and on the
25th August 2003, she departed the Grand
Bahama shipyard where she had been laid
up and headed out to sea on her final
voyage. On the 3rd September 2003, she
arrived at Gibraltar. On the 12th
September 2003, she passed through the
Suez Canal. Originally heading for Alang,
she continued onward to Bangladesh where
a higher scrapping price was tendered.
Arrival at Chittagong in Bangladesh saw
her beached ready for scrapping. By May
2004, there was nothing left of this once
revolutionary ship.
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