Saga Pearl II
cruise ship built in 1981
MS Saga Pearl II was a cruise ship of about 18,700 GT that was built in Germany by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft as the Astor in 1981. After short unsuccessful operations with two owners, she was bought by the East German government in 1985 and renamed Arkona. After 1990 the ship was operated by Seetours, which was acquired by P&O Princess Cruises in 1999, and then chartered to Transocean Tours as Astoria in 2002. From 2009 until 2019 she was owned by Saga Cruises as Saga Pearl II (and a short period as Quest for Adventure), then withdrawn from service, laid up as Pearl II, and scrapped in 2022.
Design and construction
Astor was built in 1981 as Yard no. 165 in the shipyard of Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft, Werk Ross, Hamburg for the newly-formed German company Hadag Cruise Line, owned by the City of Hamburg. Originally intended to be named Hammonia, the female personification of Hamburg, she was launched as Astor on 16 December 1980. As built, she measured 18,834 gross tonnage (GT) and her hull dimensions were 164.35 m (539 ft 2 in) length overall, 22.6 m (74 ft 2 in) beam and 16.1 m (52 ft 10 in) depth, with a service draught of 6.1 m (20 ft 0 in). She was powered by four 6-cylinder MAN 6L40/45 medium-speed diesel engines rated 3,300 brake horsepower (2,500 kW) each. They were geared to two controllable-pitch propellers, which gave a speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph).
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This entry incorporates text from “Saga Pearl II” 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.