MS Costa Marina
cruise ship built in 1969
MS Costa Marina was a cruise ship, last owned by Polaris Shipping and operated by Harmony Cruises.
History
The MS Costa Marina was originally built in 1969 as the container ship Axel Johnson by the Wärtsilä Turku Shipyard in Turku, Finland for the Sweden-based Rederi AB Nordstjernan and operated on their Johnson Line services. In 1986 she was sold to Regency Cruises with the intention of being converted into a cruise ship operating under the name Regent Sun, but she was laid up instead. In 1987 she was sold to Navyclub Italia and renamed Italia, but continued to be laid up. In 1988 the ship was acquired by Costa Cruises, renamed Costa Marina, and rebuilt into a cruise ship at the T. Mariotti shipyard in Genoa, Italy. She entered service as Costa Marina in 1990. From 2002 she was marketed more towards German passengers.
On August 3, 2011, it was announced by parent company Carnival that new ships would be built for Costa to replace their older ships, starting with Costa Marina. Costa Marina left the fleet in November 2011, and was initially replaced by Iberocruceros' Grand Voyager for her Red Sea cruises. Costa Marina was chartered to the South Korean Harmony Cruise and renamed Harmony Princess with a Marshall Islands registry, for cruises between Korea and Japan.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “MS Costa Marina” is cruise ship built in 1969. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Costa, Marina and cruise, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “cruise ship built in 1969” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1103018. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1986, 1987 and 1988.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “MS Costa Marina”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow MS Costa Marina primary sources, MS Costa Marina archive and Costa research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “MS Costa Marina”?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “MS Costa Marina” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.