Royal Viking Line

The structure of the Royal Viking Line, founded in 1972, was practicly the same as the structure of the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line in their early years. The Royal Viking Line was a Norwegian company, although their offices were located in San Fransisco, California. Three Norwegian shipowners all brought in one ship of almost the same design. The first of the ships that entered service was the Royal Viking Star, 1972 for Det Bergenske Dampskibsselskab (Bergen Line), followed by the Royal Viking Sky in 1973, owned by Nordenfjeldske Dampskibsselskab of Trondheim. The last of the trio was Royal Viking Sea, owned by AF Klaveness & Co., based at Oslo. The company was headed by Warren Titus, who we will meet again later on this page.

The company targeted more wealthy passengers and they sailed longer cruises then their competitiors at the Caribbean. Royal Viking Line was really one of the first true upmarket cruiselines, where others were trying to loose the thought that cruising had to be for the rich only. Royal Viking Line attracted  a very loyal following of repeat passengers, that loved the intimacy and high service of these ships. When the company decided to lenghten their ships to add passengercapacity in the 1980's instead of building a fourth ship, a lot of these passengers the company thrived on, turned their backs towards them. The company fell into hard times,and the slump of the 1980's did not help either. In 1986, Royal Viking Line was purchased by Kloster Cruise (Norwegian Caribbean Lines), a fastgrowing Norwegian company that was really one of the trendsetters in the Caribbean after they introduced the largest cruiseship in the world, Norway, in 1980. It was also under the ownership of Klosters that finally a fourth ship was added to the line, when the Royal Viking Sun was introduced in 1988. She was the largest ship of the line, close to 40.000 tons and this raised the thought that Kloster was trying to keep the Royal Viking brand also up to date.

After this enlargement of the fleet, in 1990, almost twenty years after their introduction, the first trio of ships was not in the high end of the cruise industry anymore. Klosters decided to replace the older ships into other brands of their company. The Royal Viking Sea was transferred to the Royal Cruise Line brand, also owned by Kloster. The Royal Viking Star was relocated to the Norwegian Cruise Line fleet, also of Klosters. In 1991, the last of the original trio was also placed within the fleet of Norwegian Cruise Line and so the Royal Viking Line became a one-ship operation untill in 1992 the Royal Viking Queen was added to the fleet. This ship was a close sister to the ships of the Seabourn Cruise Line, the brainchild of Warren Titus, former manager of the Royal Viking Line.

Kloster Cruise was declared bankrupt in 1994 and as a result, both Royal Viking Line and Royal Cruise Line were discontinued. Norwegian Cruise Line survived becaue of this move, but was sold to the Malaysian based Star Cruises. For a brief period, Royal Viking Queen had been placed in the fleet of the Royal Cruise Line, because Royal Viking Line was dissolved earlier, but later on she was placed in the Seabourn fleet next to her close sisters as Seabourn Legend. The Royal Viking Line name and remaining ship Royal Viking Sun were sold to Cunard, who operated that ship under the Cunard Royal Viking Line name untill 1998. In this year, Cunard Line was bought by Carnival Corporation and the nam Royal Viking Line dissappeared from the cruise industry. The only remembrance to the company was the name of the Royal Viking Sun, that was maintained untill the ship was transferred from Cunard Line to Holland America Line in 2002 as their elegant explorer, the second Prinsendam.