Brittany Shammas of the Washington Post recently wrote that the ship originally built as MS Stockholm, just after World War II, is likely to be “nearing its final voyage.” The 72-year-old ship is one of the oldest cruise ships in service.

The ship has gone by many names. Including MS Stockholm, she has sailed as Völkerfreundschaft, Volker, Fridtjof Nansen, Italia I, Italia Prima, Valtur Prima, Caribe, Athena, and Azores. Since 2016 she has operated as Astoria, operated by Cruise and Maritime Voyages (CMV). CMV has announced that the 2020 season will be the old ship’s last.

The Stockholm is most famous, or perhaps infamous, for the 1956 collision with the Italian passenger liner Andrea Doria off the island of Nantucket. A total of 51 people died in the collision, five on the Stockholm and 46 on the Andrea Doria. The collision took place in dense fog. The captains of both ships misinterpreted the intentions of the other. Both ships had radar and the accident is often referred to as the first serious radar-assisted collision. The Stockholm’s bow stuck the Andrea Doria near amidships. The Stockholm was seriously damaged while the Andrea Doria sank 11 hours after the collision. In all, 1,663 passengers and crew were rescued from Andrea Doria. 

Ms. Shammas describes the ship’s subsequent career: 

In the years that followed, the Swedish-built ship continued having brushes with history, becoming a kind of Forrest Gump of maritime vessels. It carried members of East Germany’s Communist Party for pleasure cruises in the 1960s and ’70s and housed Middle Eastern refugees seeking asylum in Norway in the ’80s. It was later converted to a cruise ship and has become one of the few remaining classic cruise ships still on the water, a “Love Boat”-era vessel that sails out of the Mexican resort town of Puerto Peñasco under the name Astoria.

The last scheduled cruise for the Astoria is in October 2020.