Century

Century was built at Jos L. Meyer's wharf in Papenburg, Germany as yardnumber 637. She is 248,52 meters long, 32,20 meters wide and her draft is 7,50 meters. Her gross tonnage is 70.606 and she can carry 1778 passengers and 858 crew on ten passengerdecks. She flies the Liberian flag with homeport Monrovia. Berlitz gave the ship a *****-rating.

Century was the thirth newbuilding for Celebrity Cruises, following Horizon and Zenith, both smaller ships of around 40.000 GRT. With Century, Celebrity Cruises and thus Chandris started big-ship cruising. The ship is a more classical-looking version of the newer near-sisters Galaxy and Mercury, and she is also more handsome. She floated out on the 2nd of october 1995, and was named on the 26th of that month. Her positioning-voyage from Southampton to New York started at the 6th of december 1996 and after that, she sailed mostly Caribbean-cruises. With Celebrity Cruises growing rapidly with the new Millennium-class around 2000, the company sent some ships back to Europe and the Mediterranean to be part of the growth of this market. Celebrity Cruises became a very important player in todays cruise industry in just two decades, not counting their much older Chandris roots. Their ships are high rated and very popular with passengers.

Because Century had become a little outdated allready by the new millennium-class ships, Celebrity Cruises updated the just ten year old ship to the Millennium-class standards. During a five-week drydock period in april 2006, the ship got 314 new verandas and also the restaurants and art-gallery were updated.

In 2008, Celebrity Cruises added the prefix 'Celebrity' to the names of all their ships for brand-recognition. So Century became Celebrity Century. I do not think the names of the ships became more attractive by this change, but of course, that's just an opinion. At the next picture you can see her with her new name.