Renaissance Cruises

Renaissance Cruises was formed in 1989 by the Fearnley & Eger-group and started sailing with a small luxury cruiseyaught from december 1989. In rapid succession eight of these ships entered service for them and they sailed mostly to remote ports that could not be entered by the bigger cruiseships. In 1991, Fearnley & Eger was declared bancrupt and Renaissance Cruises was sold to the Italian Cameli Group. At the end of the nineties, the line had become a well-known name in the modern cruiseworld, and the company decided to built six new and bigger ships to replace the smaller yaughtlike vessels. The first of these ships entered service in august 1998 under the inventive name of 'R One'. 'R Two' followed in november, and 'R Three' sailed in the beginning of 1999. Surprisingly, this naming was continued and two more ships were ordered. The last one that entered service was 'R Eight' in february 2001. Renaissence Cruises announced that real names would be given to the ships in time. This never happened, as Renaissance Cruises itself was declared bancrupt at the 25th of september 2001. The finances of the company had been bad for some time, but the terrorist atacks in America and the global downturn in tourism were the final push. The ships were taken over by Cruise Invest and were chartered out to several companies since then. This big and rapid expansion could simply not be paid.

For the moment, two of the former ships of Renaissance Cruises are feautured under this banner, the Hebridean Spirit and the Delphin Renaissance.

Because it is very easy to loose track of all these R-class ships I will post an up-to-date history of these ships on this page also. Because I took pictures of all of these ships except one, I also added links to their pages at castlesoftheseas.

R One

1998-2001 R One Renaissance Cruises

2003 (2-4) Insignia (I) Oceania Cruises

2003 (4-6) Insignia TMR (marketingname 'Vaisseau Renaissance')

2003-now Regatta (II) Oceania Cruises

R Two

1998-2001 R Two Renaissance Cruises

2003-2012 Insignia (II) Oceania Cruises

2012-onwards Columbus 2 HAPAG-Lloyd

R Three

1999-2001 R Three Renaissance Cruises

2002-now Pacific Princess (II) P&O Princess Cruises