"began in the 1950s. Most ship-based tourists depart for the peninsula from Ushuaia in Argentina. The grounding of the Argentine ship ""Bahía Paraíso"" and subsequent oil spill occurred near the Antarctic Peninsula in 1989. In 2005, Lewis Gordon Pugh broke the farthest-south long distance swim record by undertaking a swim at Petermann Island off the Antarctic Peninsula. In November 2007, the ""MV Explorer"" rammed submerged sea ice and then sank after water from a fist sized hole could not be pumped out quickly enough. All passengers and crew were safely evacuated and rescued. The peninsula is highly mountainous, its highest"
"Lindblad. Observers point to the ""Explorer's"" 1969 expeditionary cruise to Antarctica as the frontrunner for today's sea-based tourism in that region. The ""Explorer"" was the first cruise ship used specifically to sail the icy waters of the Antarctic Ocean and the first to sink there when she struck an unidentified submerged object on 23 November 2007, reported to be ice, which caused a gash in the hull. The ""Explorer"" was abandoned in the early hours of 23 November 2007 after taking on water near the South Shetland Islands in the Southern Ocean, an area which is usually stormy but was"
"2009 ""Nordnorge"" did not operate on the coast of Norway. Very little information about its employment has been released by the owners but it appears that the ship was hired out at the end of 2008 as a hotel ship in the Mediterranean, possibly in Venice. On January 30, 2007 the ""Nordnorge"" came to the aid of the MS ""Nordkapp"" after the ""Nordkapp"" ran aground in the Antarctic. All 294 passengers were safely evacuated from the ""Nordkapp"" and were taken to Ushuaia, Argentina. On November 23, 2007 the ""Nordnorge"" was involved in the rescue of all passengers and crew from"
"owned by Elona Maritime Ltd, a company based in Malta, but registered at Piraeus, Greece. Artwork on the ship included two reliefs by ceramic artist Åsa Hellman. On April 5, 2007, at around 16:00 EEST (13:00 UTC) the ship ran aground on a well-marked volcanic reef east of Nea Kameni, within the caldera of the Greek island of Santorini, began taking on water, and listed up to 12 degrees to starboard before her watertight doors were reportedly closed (a report which was later refuted when the wreck was examined). The 1,195 passengers, mostly Americans and 60 Canadians, were initially all"
"MS Sea Diamond MS ""Sea Diamond was a cruise ship operated by Louis Hellenic Cruise Lines. She was built in 1984 by Valmet, Finland for Birka Line as Birka Princess."" The ship sank on April 5, 2007, after running aground near the Greek island of Santorini the previous day, leaving two passengers missing and presumed dead. Originally named ""Birka Princess"", the ship was built by the Finnish state-owned company Valmet at their Vuosaari shipyard in Helsinki at a cost of 350 million Finnish markka (€58,9 million). She was delivered in 1986 and operated for Birka Line in the Baltic Sea"
"MV Ushuaia MV ""Ushuaia"" is a cruise ship operated by Argentina's Antarpply Expeditions, based in the city of Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego (Argentina) on the Beagle Channel near the southern tip of South America. She was built for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She served the NOAA for twenty years under the names and """"Malcolm Baldrige"""". MV ""Ushuaia"" is registered under the flag of the Comoros. She was built in 1970. She can carry 84 passengers. On December 4, 2008 she hit a rock in Wilhelmina Bay in Antarctica, and had to be evacuated on December 5 with the"
"expedition cruise ship, like her equally unlucky sister . Her hull was built to Finnish-Swedish ice class 1A, to withstand impacts with ice, and she often sailed in Antarctica and the Arctic. The ship was refurbished in 1999, and chartered by Marine Expeditions for cruises to the Antarctic Peninsula in 2000. She underwent extensive renovations in 2002 and was subsequently chartered by Quark Expeditions for the Antarctic and Cruise North Expeditions for the Arctic. ""Lyubov Orlova"" ran aground at Deception Island, Antarctica, on 27 November 2006. She was towed off by the Spanish Navy icebreaker ""Las Palmas"" and made her"
"known as the Madrid Protocol. All mineral extraction was banned for 50 years and the Antarctic was set aside as a ""natural reserve, devoted to peace and science"". Børge Ousland, a Norwegian explorer, finished the first unassisted Antarctic solo crossing on 18 January 1997. On 23 November 2007, the MS ""Explorer"" struck an iceberg and sank, but all on board were rescued by nearby ships, including a passing Norwegian cruise ship, the MS ""Nordnorge"". Women were originally kept from exploring Antarctica until well into the 1950s. A few pioneering women visited the Antarctic land and waters prior to the 1950s"
"the Merchant Marine Ministry of Greece announced the wreck will be raised, out of environmental and navigational concerns. It is an artificial reef for now. Images from ""Birka Princess"" taken one week after her maiden voyage in April 1986 MS Sea Diamond MS ""Sea Diamond was a cruise ship operated by Louis Hellenic Cruise Lines. She was built in 1984 by Valmet, Finland for Birka Line as Birka Princess."" The ship sank on April 5, 2007, after running aground near the Greek island of Santorini the previous day, leaving two passengers missing and presumed dead. Originally named ""Birka Princess"", the"
"popular cruise destinations. Azamara Quest Azamara Quest is an that entered service for Azamara Cruises on October 24, 2007. She was built in 2000 for Renaissance Cruises as R Seven. Following the collapse of Renaissance Cruises in 2001 she was laid up for two years, until chartered to the Germany-based Delphin Seereisen as Delphin Renaissance. In 2006 she was sold to the Spain-based Pullmantur Cruises and renamed Blue Moon. She sailed for Pullmantur until 2007 when she was transferred to Azamara Cruises. The ""Azamara Quest"" carries about 710 passengers (double occupancy) plus 410 crew members (1:2 staff to guest ratio)."
"MS Arctic Explorer The MS ""Arctic Explorer"" was a ship which sank off St Anthony, Newfoundland, in the Strait of Belle Isle, on 3 July 1981. The 165 foot, 900 tonne icebreaker sank in calm seas in less than 20 minutes leaving 13 crew members dead and 19 survivors drifting in two inflatable liferafts for more than two days until rescued by the Canadian Coast Guard. The ship was chartered to Geophysical Service Inc., a seismic exploration company, which was owned by Texas Instruments at the time she sank. It was often incorrectly reported that the ship hit an iceberg."
"of Phoenix Reisen. In 1989 ""Maksim Gorkiy"" made headlines twice. On around midnight on 19 June 1989 she hit an ice floe while on a cruise near Svalbard and begun to sink rapidly. All passengers and a third of the crew were instructed to abandon ship, while the Norwegian coast guard vessel ""Senja"" was dispatched to assist. By the time ""Senja"" arrived on the scene some three hours later, ""Maksim Gorkiy"" was already partially submerged. The passengers were evacuated from the lifeboats and ice floes by helicopters and ""Senja"", taken to Svalbard and later flown back to Germany. Meanwhile the"
"transportation to the North Pole for 7 years, from 2001 to 2007. Kapitan Dranitsyn, another Russian icebreaker, was also used by Poseidon Expeditions to operate their Franz Josef Land Arctic expedition cruises until 2006. The company has chosen all-suite Sea Explorer small luxury ship for Antarctic destinations. An ice-strengthened hull, a fleet of rubber inflatable boats for landings on wild shores, an experienced crew, and a set of retractable fin stabilizers for smoother sailing provide comfortable and safe navigation in Antarctica. In 2015, Poseidon Expeditions will revive the ‘Franz Josef Land Expedition Cruises’ aboard a smaller, all-suite, luxury expedition ship,"
"Uusikaupunki, Finland. The ship was built to stay afloat with two compartments filled with water. Her original Finnish-Swedish ice class was 1C, which is relatively weak. It is not known when the ice class was uprated to 1A. The vessel was originally named ""Lindblad Explorer"" after Lars-Eric Lindblad and was the first custom built expeditionary cruise ship. On 11 February 1972 ""Explorer"" ran aground near La Plaza Point, Antarctica; her passengers, Lars-Eric Lindblad among them, were rescued by the Chilean Navy. She was towed to Buenos Aires, Argentina and then to Kristiansand, Norway, for repairs. On 25 December 1979 ""Lindblad"
"popular and highly sought after ship for passengers and crew alike. In 1999 Cunard and Seabourn were merged by parent company Carnival Corporation. It was decided to move ""Royal Viking Sun"" to Seabourn, and after an extensive refit she emerged as the ""Seabourn Sun"". In 2002 she undertook her last cruise for Seabourn, a circumnavigation of South America. After another extensive refit in 2002, ""Seabourn Sun"" was renamed ""Prinsendam"" for Holland America Line - another division of the Carnival Corporation. On 1 February 2007, ""Prinsendam"" was hit by two tall rogue waves near Cape Horn. There were around 40 injuries,"
"sounded on the ""Van Gogh"" before or after the accident, resulting in confusion amongst her passengers. Traveloscope went bankrupt in December 2007, but Club Cruise took over the ship's planned 2008 world cruise. In January 2008, Club Cruise established a new subsidiary, Van Gogh Cruises, which took over all existing bookings for the ""Van Gogh"" and planned to continue to operate her in the UK market. Due to difficulties in acquiring a membership in the Association of British Travel Agents, Van Gogh Cruises were forced to suspend operations in April 2008. As a result, the ""Van Gogh"" was chartered to"
"to NCL's parent company Star Cruises, in preparation for possible sale or transfer to the Star Cruises fleet. On 10 December 2007, the ""Norwegian Dream"" was involved in a further collision with a barge while leaving the port of Montevideo, Uruguay. The collision caused some damage above the waterline that did not appear to be serious. The collision caused several cars and five containers to fall off the barge, which closed the port for some time. On 23 April 2008 Star Cruises entered an agreement to sell the ""Norwegian Dream"", as well as her fleetmate ""Norwegian Majesty"", to the Cyprus-based"
"The company introduced tourism in some of the most exotic parts of the globe including cruises to Antarctica, in 1966; to Easter Island and the Galápagos Islands, in 1967, and along the coast of China and Bhutan in 1978. Many of these places had no facilities for visitors in the late 1950s and early 60s, when Lindblad Travel was in its infancy. In 1972, one of his company's ships, the MS ""Explorer"", ran aground in Antarctica – its passengers, including Lars-Eric Lindblad, were rescued by the Chilean Navy. Lindblad Travel ceased operations in 1989. In that year, the company was"
"was renamed ""Oceanic II"". From 30 April to 28 May 2007, Louis Hellenic Cruises sub-chartered the ship as a temporary replacement for the MV ""Sea Diamond"", which went aground off the coast of Santorini, Greece and sank earlier in April. Following this she was operated by Pullmantur Cruises (a subsidiary of RCCL) for the 2007 northern hemisphere summer season. The ship was refitted to become an educational vessel for The Scholar Ship international education program, a cooperative venture between seven major world universities and RCCL. The Scholar Ship offered undergraduate and graduate semester programs during four-month voyages. The inaugural voyage"
"Arktika 2007 Arktika 2007 () was a 2007 expedition in which Russia performed the first ever crewed descent to the ocean bottom at the North Pole, as part of research related to the 2001 Russian territorial claim, one of many territorial claims in the Arctic, made possible, in part, because of Arctic shrinkage. As well as dropping a titanium tube containing the Russian flag, the submersibles collected specimens of Arctic flora and fauna and apparently recorded video of the dives. The ""North Pole-35"" (abbreviated as ""NP-35"") manned drifting ice station was established. On January 10, 2008 three of expedition members"
"was scheduled for 10 December was cancelled almost before the voyage, and the operating company went bankrupt few days later. A bit later Mauritius Island Cruises also collapsed, and in 2005 ""Island Sun"" was sold to the Danish Clipper Group, and the vessel was chartered to an American company named Travel Dynamics International. They renamed the vessel ""Corinthian II"", refurbished and redecorated her, and for eight years she cruised mainly in the Mediterranean region and later in Antarctica. In 2013 the ship was chartered from Clipper Group by Polar Latitudes and Poseidon Expeditions. They operated her in Antarctica and the"
"W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev at Malta. On 26 July 1991, while on a cruise to Svalbard a television exploded on board, injuring three people. In December of the same year the ship was re-registered to Nassau, Bahamas as ""Maxim Gorkiy"". Following the collapse of the Soviet Union she was transferred to the fleet of Sovcomflot, who continued chartering her to Phoenix Reisen. Sometime between 2004 and 2006 ""Maxim Gorkiy"" finally received the green/white livery of Phoenix Reisen. Her long-term charter to Phoenix Reisen ended on 30 November 2008, and Phoenix Reisen did not extend the charter due to the"
"transferred to Costa following the merger of Carnival Corporation and P&O Princess in 2002. Ibero Cruises is a new brand, created in 2007 as a joint venture between Carnival Corporation and Orizonia Group. The Costa Cruises brand currently operates fourteen cruise ships, which all sail under the Italian flag and provide cruise holidays in the Mediterranean, Northern Europe, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, the Middle East, South East Asia and South America. The company gained international attention on January 13, 2012 when one of its cruise ships, the ""Costa Concordia"", ran aground and capsized off the coast of Italy, because"
"""Silja Opera"" (renaming it M/S ""Cristal"") to replace the ""Sea Diamond"". On June 19, 2007, the owners, operator and captain of the ""Sea Diamond"" cruise ship were fined €1.17 million for causing marine pollution. On August 21, 2007, a lawsuit was filed in United States federal court on behalf of the passengers who were aboard the ship when she sank. After six years in the courts, the ""Sea Diamond"" captain and an insurance company employee were given 12- and 8-year jail sentences, respectively. The Greek newspaper ""Eleftherotypia"" (now defunct) speculated no actual jail time would be served. After the sinking"
"Azamara Quest Azamara Quest is an that entered service for Azamara Cruises on October 24, 2007. She was built in 2000 for Renaissance Cruises as R Seven. Following the collapse of Renaissance Cruises in 2001 she was laid up for two years, until chartered to the Germany-based Delphin Seereisen as Delphin Renaissance. In 2006 she was sold to the Spain-based Pullmantur Cruises and renamed Blue Moon. She sailed for Pullmantur until 2007 when she was transferred to Azamara Cruises. The ""Azamara Quest"" carries about 710 passengers (double occupancy) plus 410 crew members (1:2 staff to guest ratio). Her first season"
"New Zealand Flight 901, crashed into Mount Erebus on the eastern shores of McMurdo Sound. The crash high on the slopes of the active volcano took the lives of all 257 people aboard the aircraft. In 1969 the MS ""Explorer"" brought seagoing tourists to Antarctica (British Antarctic Survey). The cruise's founder, Lars-Eric Lindblad, coupled expeditionary cruising with education. He is quoted as saying, ""You can't protect what you don't know"" (IAATO). In the decades since the Lindblad, ships engaged in Antarctic sight-seeing cruises have grown in size and number. Infrequent Antarctic cruises have included passenger vessels carrying up to 960"
"investigate the structure and evolution of the Earth's crust in the Arctic regions neighbouring Eurasia, such as the regions of Mendeleev Ridge, Alpha Ridge and Lomonosov Ridge, to discover whether they are linked with the Siberian shelf. The base ship ""Akademik Fedorov"" left Saint Petersburg on July 10, 2007 for the expedition. Off Baltiysk, it took aboard the two MIR Deep Submergence Vehicles manufactured by the Finnish company Rauma Oceanics from ""Akademik Mstislav Keldysh"" On July 22 the vessel arrived at Murmansk, and sailed for the North Pole three days later, behind the nuclear icebreaker ""Russia"". After five hours, the"
"""New Flamenco"". In 2007 Club Cruise acquired ""New Flamenco"". Club Cruise had ""New Flamenco"" serve as a hotel ship in New Caledonia until they failed in late 2008. The vessel was sold for scrap after over a year of lay up off Singapore. In 2012 the ship was saved from the scrapyard and was renamed ""Ocean Dream"" with a dragon painted on her bow. Now owned by Runfeng Ocean Deluxe Cruises, she began operating cruises from Haikou, China to Halong Bay, Vietnam. The ship capsized and sank off Laem Chabang, Sri Racha,Thailand in shallow water on 27 February 2016 after"
"In 2002 the ship was rebuilt at Baltic Ship Repairers, Tallinn, Estonia, where sidesponsons were added for increased stability. In January 2007, Viking Line ordered a replacement for her to be delivered in summer 2009, codenamed ""Viking ADCC"". On 23 October 2007, the ""Ålandsfärjan"" touched the bottom near Mariehamn. Passengers were readied for evacuation, but an inspection of the ship revealed no major damage and she was able to continue to Mariehamn under her own power, arriving some 30 minutes behind schedule. As a result of the accident, all departures until 22 November were cancelled. Investigations revealed that the cause"
"and the first to sink there when she struck an unidentified submerged object (USO) on 23 November 2007, reported to be ice, which caused a gash in the hull. All passengers and crew were successfully rescued. ""Explorer"" was abandoned in the early hours of 23 November 2007 after taking on water near the South Shetland Islands in the Southern Ocean, an area which is usually stormy but was calm at the time. ""Explorer"" was confirmed by the Chilean Navy to have sunk at approximate position 62° 24′ South, 57° 16′ West, between South Shetlands and Grahams Land, in the Bransfield"
"Kapitan Khlebnikov (icebreaker) The Kapitan Khlebnikov (, ) is a Russian (formerly Soviet) icebreaker. The vessel now operates as a cruise ship offering excursions to the Arctic and Antarctic. The ""Kapitan Khlebnikov"" was completed in Finland in 1981 as one of four Kapitan Sorokin class icebreakers. She was refitted in 1990 as a tour ship. and was the first ship to circumnavigate Antarctica with passengers in 1996-97. In February 2006 the ""Kapitan Khlebnikov"" reached the Bay of Whales in the Antarctic, reaching 78° 40.871' south and equalling the record set by Roald Amundsen in the Fram in 1911. In November"
"generation, MS ""Lofoten"" (1964), is still in use. MS ""Nordstjernen"" (1956) was also in use for Hurtigruten until she was sold in 2012 and at the same time protected as a national heritage in Norway. The other vessels in use were built between 1982 and 2003, most of them in the late 1990s or early 2000s. MS ""Fram"", named after Fridtjof Nansen's famous expedition ship ""Fram"", delivered in 2007, is used exclusively on cruises, around Greenland during the northern hemisphere summer and around Antarctica during the northern hemisphere winter. In order, northbound: As part of its slow television series, the"
"again between 4 December 1968 and 23 February 1969, when further volcanic activity caused it to be abandoned. Deception Island has become a popular tourist stop in Antarctica because of its several colonies of chinstrap penguins, as well as the novel possibility of making a warm bath by digging into the sands of the beach. Mount Flora is the first site in Antarctica where fossilized plants were discovered. After the Norwegian Coastal Cruise Liner ran aground off the coast of Deception Island on 30 January 2007, fuel from the ship washed into a bay. Ecological damage has not yet been"