''La Belle Des Oceans'' is a small, yacht-type

cruise ship Cruise ships are large passenger ships used mainly for vacationing. Unlike ocean liners, which are used for transport, cruise ships typically embark on round-trip voyages to various ports-of-call, where passengers may go on tours known as "s ...

operated by

CroisiEurope CroisiEurope (Alsace Croisières until 1997) is an international river cruise company. It operates a fleet of river cruising vessels along the rivers of Europe, Russia, Mekong, Burma (Myanmar), Africa, South America and the United States. The co ...

. She has previously been operated by a number of cruise lines under different names, the most recent of which was ''Silver Discoverer''.

Architecture and equipment

The ship has a gross tonnage of 5,218, is 338 feet long and 51 feet wide. She is for destination-intensive cruising and does not have many amenities like larger ships. All the cabins are outside and the ship has a small selection of balcony rooms and has one suite. She can accommodate up to 120 passengers in five categories. The facilities on board include a jogging track, a swimming pool; a gym and beauty salon; a restaurant and pool grill; a lecture room for in-depth stories and briefings about the destinations and a panoramic lounge. ''Silver Discoverer'' is also equipped with 12 Zodiac boats and a glass-bottom boat for exploration of marine life. She used to have a decompression chamber for divers, but it is no longer in use.

Service history

The ship was built in 1989 for the Japanese market as ''Oceanic Grace'', before being bought by Indonesia's Spice Islands Cruises which renamed her ''Oceanic Odyssey''. In 1999, she was bought by St Louis-based Clipper Cruise Line, and renamed ''Clipper Odyssey''. She was then sold in 2007 to

International Shipping Partners FleetPro Passenger Ship Management was founded in 2012 as a merger of two existing passenger ship management companies and is based in Switzerland. It combined International Shipping Partners (ISP), a passenger ship management services company head ...

. On 10 September 2013, it was announced that the vessel had been purchased by Silversea Cruises. She entered service for Silversea on 1 March 2014, after being rechristened in

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

by Elda Turco Bulgherini. The following month, she commenced a program of short cruises along the Kimberley coastline between Broome and Darwin, Australia. As ''Silver Discoverer'', she is deployed in remote regions of the world including Micronesia, Melanesia, Polynesia, the Russian Far East, Southeast Asia, New Zealand and Australia, including the Kimberley. The ''Silversea Expeditions'' onboard team consists of 11 experts, from expedition leaders, divemasters and marine biologists to historians, geologists and naturalists. In 2019, ''Silver Discoverer'' left the Silversea Expeditions fleet. The vessel's owners, Florida-based SunStone Ships, subsequently announced it had been sold to the French cruise company,

, and will sail under the name ''La Belle Des Oceans''.

Incidents

In July 2002, the ship ran aground on St. Matthew Island in the

Bering Sea The Bering Sea (, ; rus, Бе́рингово мо́ре, r=Béringovo móre) is a marginal sea of the Northern Pacific Ocean. It forms, along with the Bering Strait, the divide between the two largest landmasses on Earth: Eurasia and The Ameri ...

but was not damaged. In August 2004, the ship ran aground in the

Aleutian Islands The Aleutian Islands (; ; ale, Unangam Tanangin,”Land of the Aleuts", possibly from Chukchi language, Chukchi ''aliat'', "island"), also called the Aleut Islands or Aleutic Islands and known before 1867 as the Catherine Archipelago, are a cha ...

near

Dutch Harbor Dutch Harbor is a harbor on Amaknak Island in Unalaska, Alaska. It was the location of the Battle of Dutch Harbor in June 1942, and was one of the few sites in the United States to be subjected to aerial bombardment by a foreign power during Worl ...

and the passengers and crew had to be evacuated. The ship was seriously damaged and 5000 gallons of fuel leaked from the vessel. She returned to service two months later.

References

External links

Photos
from shipspotting.com
Silver Discoverer
from silversea.com {{Silversea ships Cruise ships Ships built in Japan 1988 ships