To date, the suffix Princess has been linked to the names of 13 cruise ships that have made 204 visits to Port Chalmers under the P&O or Princess Cruises banners.
The first of these visitors was the first Pacific Princess owned by P&O Lines. Time, however, has now run out for this 20,186gt vessel which will make its final voyage shortly, bound under tow, to a Turkish shipbreaker's yard.
Seen here for the first time on February 10, 1991, the 610-berth ship made a further six calls, the last on February 9, 1995.
The vessel was built for Oivind Lorentzen's K/S Sea Venture A/S & Co., Oslo, for operation between the United States and Bermuda, by Flagship Cruises.
Ordered from the Rheinstahl Nordseewerke shipyard at Emden, Germany, it was launched on May 5, 1970, and was delivered on May 14, 1971. Geared twin-screwpropulsion machinery supplied by the Fiat works at Turin, Italy, gave the vessel a service speed of 21.5 knots.
P&O purchased the vessel in 1975 and renamed it Pacific Princess, with London as the port of registry.
In 2001, it passed to Pullmantur Cruises of Madrid, but was leased back to the former owner until late 2002.
The Spanish operator then deleted the suffix from the name, reinstated it in June 2003, and almost immediately after dropped it off again.
Pacific has been registered at Nassau since then. In 2008, it was chartered by the newly established Quail Cruises of Madrid to operate cruises out of Valencia in the northern summer and by CVC of Brazil during the southern summer.
According to reports, the ship has been laid up at Genoa for more than two years due to non-payment of repair bills by its former owner, Templeton International Inc.
Italian authorities are said to have tried to sell the ship at auction three times since 2010.
On March 6, it was announced the ship had been sold for $US3.3 million ($NZ4 million) to Cemsan, which will break it up at Aliaga.
Earlier in its days as Pacific Princess, the ship was detained at Piraeus after 25kg of heroin smuggled by two Filipino crew members was found on board.
But the ship is probably best-remembered for the role it played in the US sitcom The Love Boat. The ship appeared in nearly every episode, helped out from time to time by sister ship Island Princess.
Much of the production was filmed in studio sets, and the term Love Boat was heavily used by Princess Cruises in its marketing.
It is almost a month since Queen Elizabeth called here on that wet and miserable day, February 23. Last week, it visited Hong Kong. and Chan May (Vietnam) before arriving at Ho Chi Min City yesterday.
On its 112-day round-the-world cruise, the Cunarder left Hamburg on January 8, and is due back there on April 29. At the time of writing, midday yesterday, this latest addition to the fleet had steamed 24,441 nm (45,268km), since it departed from Hamburg.
The cruise also includes a shorter 108-day haul from Southampton to Southampton.
