Elinis

[Bucko]

What ever happened to the cruise ship named the Elinis. I think it was a owned by a company in Greece.

 

Triumph 9/7/02

[dougnewmanatsea]

ELLINIS was scrapped in 1987. You can read a short history of her here, from the wonderful site Maritime Matters of which I am a long-time reader and occasional contributor. There is also a fantastic article on her better-known sister BRITANIS here.

 

They were indeed owned by a Greek company, namely the illustrious Chandris Line. Chandris got their first large passenger ship, PATRIS (formerly Union-Castle's BLOEMFONTEIN CASTLE) in 1959. Chandris' first passenger service were line voyages between Europe and Australia, mainly carrying immigrants. They soon acquired a large fleet of secondhand liners for this very successful service. Later they won out over Sitmar Line, the previous operator, for the UK government's migrant contract to Australia.

 

The migrant contract to Australia expired in 1978 and Chandris ended its line voyages and turned to cruising from both US and European ports. By the mid 1980s they were the world's largest cruise line though Carnival soon overtook them in that respect. In 1989 they launched Chandris Celebrity Cruises, a new upscale division; the first newly-built Chandris passenger ship in history, HORIZON, was delivered in 1990. The traditional, mass-market Chandris cruise product became Chandris Fantasy Cruises with plans to slowly phase it out in favor of the new Celebrity product. The Chandris name was dropped soon after and in 1997 Fantasy Cruises ended operations. The same year, Celebrity merged with Royal Caribbean. John Chandris remains a major shareholder and board member of Royal Caribbean. Celebrity's corporate logo continues to be the X - the Greek letter "Ch", first letter of the name "Chandris". Chandris also is active in other areas of shipping and owns two huge new oil tankers, called BRITANIS and PATRIS after ELLINS' sister ship and his first passenger ship respectively. There is also a small chain of Chandris Hotels in Greece, including one on the island of Chios, the ancestral home of the Chandris family.

 

Doug Newman

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