Deutschland
Deutschland was built on Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft in Kiel, Germany as yardnumber 328. She flies the German flag and her homeport is the North-German port Neustadt in Holstein. The ship is 175,30 meters long, 23 meters wide and her draft is 5,80 meters.She caters for 520 passengers who are served by 270 crewmembers. Her tonnage is 22.496 and she has seven passengerdecks. Berlitz awarded her with ****+-rating.
Deutschland is a well-known name is liner-history, although not for Peter Deilmann Reederei but for HAPAG (Hamburg-Amerikanische Paketfahrt Aktien Gesellschaft). The first ship of this big German company was called Deutschland and they operated four ships of that name in their history. The most well-known Deutschland was the thirth one, a four-funnelled liner built in 1900. In 1919 this ship was not taken over by the Allied forces, like most German ships were after the first world war. This because the ship was in a very poor condition. So this was the only big German ship left in Germany at that time. Peter Deilmann's Deutschland, so can be called the fifth big German ship with this name, and she floated out on the 16th of januari 1998. She is a true German cruiseliner, and her interiour is based on the oceanliners of the twenties. This makes the ship's interiour classic and unique in the modern cruise-age. Her first cruise started exactly four months after her float-out and took her to Norway. One year later, a big rebuilding took place and eighty double-cabins were rebuild as single ones. This reduced her capacity from 650 to 520 passengers. Most cruiselines make it very hard for single passengers to have a decent-priced cruise, so Deutschland is a forerunner on this matter. In july 2000, Deutschland came in the spotlight in a very shocking way, when a Concord supersonic plane crashed into a hotel just after take-off from Paris. On board of this jet were 96 German tourists, who were supposed to take a cruise on the ship out of New York. The crash led eventually to the collapse of supersonic airtravel in total. The cruise out of New York was strangely not cancelled.
Peter Deilmann Reederei was formed in 1968 as a freightcompany, but started passenger operations in 1972 when a ferryservice was started between Neustadt in Holstein and the Island of Bornholm. In 1976 the company entered the cruisebusiness with the small Nordbrise. A few years later, the freightdivision was sold off and Peter Deilmann focussed on cruising when Berlin was taken over. In 1983 the company started also European rivercruising. The company is still family owned, and managed by Peter Deilmann's daughters since 2003, when Deilmann himself passed away. Deutschland is now their only ocean-going cruiseliner, after Lili Marleen and Berlin were sold in 2004.
