Century

Century leaving IJmuiden in her original livery and under her original name. She is seen her in the outer harbour at the 21st of may 2005.

Century was the thirth newbuilding for Celebrity Cruises, following Horizon and Zenith, both smaller ships of around 40.000 GRT. With Century, Celebrity Cruises and thus Chandris started big-ship cruising, although soon after her delivery Chandris sold Celebrity Cruises to Royal Caribbean Cruise Line. Century measures 70.606 tons and she has a lenght of 248,52 meters, she is 32,20 meterswide and her draft is 7,50 meters. She can sail with up to 1778 passengers and 858 crewmembers. The passengers can use ten decks The ship is a more classical-looking version of the newer near-sisters Galaxy and Mercury, and she is also more handsome, in my opinion. She floated out on the 2nd of october 1995 from the Jos L. Meyer wharf at Papenburg, Germany where she had been built as yardnumber 637 and was named on the 26th of that month. Her positioning-voyage from Southampton to New York started at the 6th of december 1996 and after that, she sailed mostly Caribbean-cruises. With Celebrity Cruises growing rapidly with the new Millennium-class around 2000, the company sent some ships back to Europe and the Mediterranean to be part of the growth of this market. Celebrity Cruises became a very important player in todays cruise industry in just two decades, not counting their much older Chandris roots. Their ships are high rated and very popular with passengers.

Below, Century is shown with her new verandahs added.

Because Century had become a little outdated allready by the new Millennium-class ships, Celebrity Cruises updated the just ten year old ship to the Millennium-class standards. During a five-week drydock period in april 2006, the ship got 314 new verandas and also the restaurants and art-gallery were updated.

In 2008, Celebrity Cruises added the prefix 'Celebrity' to the names of all their ships for brand-recognition. So Century became Celebrity Century. I do not think the names of the ships became more attractive by this change, but of course, that's just an opinion. At the next picture you can see her with her new name. 

When the Celebrity Century reaches twenty in april 2015, the ship will leave the fleet of Celebrity Cruises and will be transferred to the French-based company Crocieres de France, also part of the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. In her last season, the ship will host several special events and special offers for the passengers. Also, she will visit 17 new destinations for the company especially in Asia, like Manila, Brunei and Rangoon. For Crocieres de France, that is currently sailing with the former Celebrity ships CdF Horizon and CdF Zenith, the ship will be a huge improvement. Forecasted, her new name will be CdF Century, as I am not expecting that they will come up with an innovative name for her reflecting France itself (what would be great for a French line). Like the adding of the Celebrity name to the ships name earlier, I would love to see a company so now and then who are really creative in names...