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The Topaz
An Elegant Survivor from the
Fifties
By: Barry Evetts
Perhaps by then the funds will be around
from somewhere to ensure a life thereafter as a permanently moored hotel ship -
cum conference and exhibition venue.
I won’t go into too much historical
detail here. Peter Knego’s excellent pictorial biography of this fine
lady at www.maritimematters.com covers that only too well, but suffice to
say that the one-time ‘Empress of Britain’ - later metomorphsised in to Greek Lines ‘Queen Anna
Maria’ - was lucky enough when her owners went into bankruptcy in the mid
1970’s to be saved from the blow torch then - unlike her less fortunate
sister, Shaw Savill’s Ocean Monarch ex Empress
of England.
Unable to match the dazzle of
Carnival’s new ‘Inspiration’ class and others – and
after an unsuccessful attempt to rebrand her for the
Spanish speaking market out of Puerto Rico as the ‘Fiesta Marina’,
she was traded-off as the ‘Olympic’ to Carnival’s one-time
suitor Epirotiki Lines, following Carnival’s first attempt to secure a
foothold in the European cruise market. Never really suitable for 3 and 4 day
Greek Island cruising, in 1997 she passed into the hands of Paris Katsoufis’ Kyma Ship
Management, a company which enjoyed an existing close relationship with both
Carnival and Epirotiki.
It was an ideal match. Renamed ‘The
Topaz’, she went to a team who knew how to get the best out of a classic
vessel. Katsoufis cut his teeth operating such ships
as ‘Dolphin 1V’ (ex ‘
‘The Topaz’ began her first season
under charter to
When converted to a cruise ship her aft decks were greatly extended
With accommodation for my wife and I in an
outside cabin on the Bolero Deck – a modular job installed into what had
once been part of the first class dining room - at some £550 per head -
including air travel from Bristol and transfers to the vessel at Teneriffe – to say nothing of drinks being included
as well (which is something of a Maritime Hotel Management speciality it
seems), it sounded like bargain.
Having realistic
expectations we were not disappointed. With her present configuration of some
1050 berths – and we were told she was a full ship – she never
seemed crowded, other than when trying to get a table in the informal topside
dining area – The Yacht Club - at peak meal times. And that being the
case, we had the alternative of the slightly more formal Topaz Dining Room four
decks below anyway.
Food was adequate and plentiful, house wine
flowed freely, and service with a mostly Filipino or East European smile
– and sometimes even a joke – was generally attentive.
Entertainment consisted of the usual floorshows, dance bands, etc, but this
aspect of cruising has never been a
The profile of ‘The Topaz’ had
changed a little from her earlier incarnations, with cargo derricks forward
dismantled during a 1997 refit and cabins built into a forward extension of the
promenade deck. At her stern, the Yacht Club had been built above the Broadway
Show Lounge, itself an addition made by Greek Line when the ship was first refitted
in 1964. Original wood panelling from her Canadian Pacific days can be found in
some of the public rooms. There’s an extensive observation area at boat
deck level, forward of the bridge housing and above the newly (1997) added
cabins. And most of the extended lido area aft, a prominent feature of her
refit/rebuilding as ‘Queen Anna Maria’ - when she switched from a
North European to Mediterranean route across the Atlantic in the mid
1960’s –remains, with two pools plus a Jacuzzi.
It’s a pity though that her indoor
swimming pool, in use as I understand it until just a few years ago, had been
converted into a storage area.
After a summer season in the Western
Mediterranean, based out of Palma de Majorca, ‘The Topaz’ had, when
we joined her, recently repositioned to a seven-day itinerary from Las Palmas
and Teneriffe (with fly/cruise and cruise-and-stay
passengers embarking and disembarking at either port), with calls on the
following two days at Lanzarote and Agadir, Morocco, followed by a full day at sea, a day in
Madeira, a day at the island of La Palma in the Western Canaries, thence back
to Las Palmas and Teneriffe.
Most of the sea passages were gentle
overnight affairs in relatively sheltered Canarian
waters. But these mid-Atlantic latitudes can still put on a display of autumnal
weather in late November and both our arrival at, and departure from, Agadir, in a heavy swell - and a full day at sea in similar
conditions between there and Madeira - gave ‘The Topaz’ a chance to
show off her deep-sea pedigree in conditions that I would not particularly like
to experience in a top-heavy balconied behemoth drawing a mere twenty-eight
feet six inches!
The perceived wisdom in the cruise industry
– as in any other industry - is that progress comes in the form of a
bigger, better, newer product – even if it is a 1984 built hand-me
–down instead of a 1957 built hand-me –down. So Thompson have now
replaced ‘The Topaz’ with the ‘Thompson Spirit’, ex
‘Patriot’ ex ‘Niew
Amsterdam’, and ‘The Topaz’ has – since June 2003 -
moved on to her new role with the Peace Boat Organisation.
It is certainly a role that will see her
continue to show off her deep-sea pedigree, with a variety of round-the-world
itineraries that include long hauls across the Indian,
And what comes after her
current charter expires in 2006? A renewal with Peace Boat perhaps, if she
still suits their 
needs – or will Kyma
have to look out for imaginative alternative employment?
In theory, she can cruise on right up until
2010, but will there still be a market for her? She had a large following in
the
Under Charter to the Peaceboat Organisation [PK]
Could she be a starter for budget cruising from
Could she be a starter for budget cruising
from Australia for a four to six month southern summer season with a couple of
months of positioning voyages between the UK and Australia/New Zealand and a
northern summer season based in British waters?
Barry Evetts
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