Costa Crociere
Costa Lines was established in 1924 but sailed with only freighters untill 1947 when the Maria C. recieved some passenger accomedation (120 passengers besides cargo). One year later, the Anna C. was their first purpose built passenger liner, operating mostly on the Genoa-South America run. This was the main Costa passenger line. Costa Lines grew larger and at their best years they were the largest passengerline in the western world, only surpassed by the Russian communist fleet. Costa is now again part of the biggest cruisecompany in the world and especially from the second half of the nineties onwards, the fleet was rapidly growing with big cruiseliners. Recently, the line added some 100.000-plus tonnage ships based on an improved Destiny-class design.
Costa Romantica was built at the Fincantieri wharf at Porto Marghera, Italy as yardnumber 5899. Her tonnage is 53.049, her lenght 220,52 meters, width 30,82 meters and draft 7,60 meters. Some 1905 passengers are served by 607 crew on ten decks and her rating by Berlitz was 4 stars.
Costa Romantica and her slightly older sister Costa Classica were the first megaships of the Costa Line. The introduced the 'Euroluxe' concept to the company, being far bigger than the older ex-liners in the Costa fleet at the time. Classica floated out at the 2nd of february 1991, sailing her first cruise that december. Romantica's floatout followed the 28th of november 1992. She was named at Genoa on the 25th of september 1993 and sailed from this Italian port at the 7th of october to the Canaries. Mediterranean cruising has always been the most important part for Costa, so these ships were deployed at the Med really often. But they also did worldwide cruising from their early years on. In the year 2000, their homeports changed from Monrovia to Genoa and they became part of the ever growing Italian passengerfleet. Because a lot of European countries made it more profitable to reflag the foreign passengerliners again back to their own colours, this has become common the last years.
Just after these two ships entered service, two even bigger ships were ordered for Costa and they would recieve the names Costa Victoria and Costa Olympia. They were built at the Bremer Vulkan Werke at Vegesack, Germany. Their tonnage was 75.000 and they were built to transport around 2000 holidaymakers. But a few months after Costa Victoria was floated out, the wharf went bankrupt and work on her sistership stopped when this ship was complete for 35%. This second ship was sold to Norwegian Cruise Line and they brought her into service in 1999 as Norwegian Sky. Costa Victoria sailed her first cruise from Venice at the 28th of july 1996. She was rebuilt in 2004 when she recieved 246 balconies for her outside cabins because this became the new standard for modern cruiseliners.
At the end of the year 2000, far bigger liners had entered the fleet of Costa and the former biggest Italian liners ever were becoming the smallest. Costa planned a lenghtening for the ships at the old Cammell-Laird wharf at Birkenhead, so on the 23th of november 2000 Costa Classica went to the English wharf. Not everything went as smoothly as it should be and the middle part arrived far too late for Costa. They ordered the ship back and Cammell Laird stayed with the costs and went bankrupt. To my knowledge their are no new plans to lenghten the ships.
Costa Atlantica was built on Kvaerner-Masa yards in Helsinki, Finland. Her tonnage is 85.619 and her lenght is 292,56 meters, width 38,78 and her draft is 7,80 meters. She can accomodate 2680 passengers and 902 crewmembers on 12 decks. Her homeport is Genoa, Italy. This ship was built as a part of the Carnival Spirit-class of ships and was in fact the first ship of this class to be completed. With this class, Carnival also started to built ships for several of its brands, creating less diversity in the exteriour looks of the ships of their companies. Luckily, the inside of the ships isvery different each time so a Costa ship and a Carnival ship of the same class can still have a totally different atmosphere. Normally a class should be named after the first ship but with this class that is not so. Although this was a big new class for Carnival Corporation, these were by far not the biggest ships in the Carnival fleet. With over 100.000 tons the Destiny-class is way bigger.
But Costa Atlantica was at least the biggest Italian-flagged passenger liner in history when she floated out at her Finnish yard at the 11th of november 1999. The Costa fleet was expanding with big ships for a few years already, but by then this was the biggest. Costa Atlantica sailed on het maiden voyage from out of Venice on the 16th of july of 2000 and since then she sailed mostly Mediterranean and Caribbean cruises. In summer, she sometimes visited Northern Europe as well, but in the coming years this will be her most important role, replacing the smaller Costa Europa on the growing market on cruises out of Amsterdam between 2004 and 2009. She still sailes Europe now in summer, but has her base at Copenhagen, Denmark. In Amsterdam she was replaced by the newer Costa Luminosa.
In 2004, Costa Magica was added to the Costa Fleet. She is a part of the Destiny-class of which two ships were built for Costa. Besides Costa Magica, also Costa Fortuna is part of this class and she entered the Costa-fleet a year before the Costa Magica. Of course these superliners were now the biggest Italian flagged passengerships ever, surpassing the Costa Atlantica and Costa Mediterrannea by around 17.000 tonnes. With all these bigger ships added to the fleet, the smallish Costa Marina now is a strange duck in the Costa fleet and it is expected that she will soon leave Costa to be placed in another role.
The latest additions to the Costa-fleet were named together in Genoa on the 5th of june this year, Costa Luminosa and Costa Pacifica. I devoted a special page to Costa Luminosa, accompanied by a page with interiour photographs I took while I visited the ship in Amsterdam in may 2010.
