The early cruiseships feautured in this section of Castles of the Seas are by no means the first cruiseships that were built. Already in the nineteenth century, ships were build especially for the purpose of pleasure travelling.  The idea of travelling just for fun and not going really anywhere was not very attractive in ships just built for line-voyaging. Spaces were cramped an noise was everywhere from the large enginerooms situated just a few meters away from passenger accomodations. These first ships built for cruising were only a handful, but the idea of travelling for fun was born long before Carnival Cruise Lines was established in the late 1960's.

It is hard to just mention a year in which modern cruising was introduced. But when I have to name a certain year, 1970 would be my choise. This, because all mayor players on the North Atlantic withdrew themselves around this year from this with Cunard Line as exception because they are still operating a sceduled transatlantic service at this very day. Also, new companies were starting up around 1970, like Norwegian Caribbean Lines in 1966, Royal Caribbean Cruise Line in 1968 and Carnival Cruise Line in 1971. Also, these companies started building new cruiseships from scratch so they were an immidiate threat for the old linercompanies that started up their cruiseservices with old tonnage.

In the early years of modern cruising, it was considered to be just a way of holidaymaking for the very rich. It was, like it was on the liners, for these new companies also very lucrative to name important and well-known people that came aboard their ships and they also published a lot of pictures of these passengers in their advertisements. But this just added to the general feeling that cruising was just for the upper class. So although cruising became a new way to spend your holidaytime, it wasn't very popular throughout the 1970's at all. So, after the first purpose built cruiseships featured here were in service, not many successors were build in the 1970's and early 1980's.

A little change occured when in 1976 Aaron Spelling approached Princess Cruises because he wanted to create a new series for television about cruising. Princess Cruises immidiately said 'yes' to his ideas and 'The Love Boat' was started. The series became a big succes and introduced more and more people to cruising. When Norway came in service for Norwegian Caribbean Lines in 1980 also the prices went down and a new period for cruising began.