Artemis - pioneering ship to change hands

P&O Cruises have sold their oldest ship, the 1984 built Artemis. At 44,588 gross tons, it is also the smallest unit in the fleet that will grow to seven units next year with the arrival of the 115,000 gross ton Azura in April - Artemis itself will continue to sail for the current operator until April 2011. That ship triggers mixed feelings when I think about its design concept and the execution of that concept.

When I took a cruise on Artemis in 2006, the ship did not impress. While the cabin accommodation was good, the ship's public rooms were just woefully inadequate to keep me happy for the 12 or so nights that I spent on board. There is a show lounge forward and a secondary lounge aft. In between a two-deck high atrium with a bar provided the only alternative to those two large, bland and boring principal public rooms on the same deck. The bar was cosy, but the seats so uncomfortable that relaxation was all but impossible.

An observation lounge at the foot of the funnel was slightly better, but even there a handrail was placed so that when I sat at a table close to the floor to ceiling windows, I could see the handrail rather than what was outside.

Although this is a personal opinion, and admittedly a rather unkind one towards the designers of the vessel, it is difficult to appreciate that way back in 1982 when the ship was ordered, it was hailed as the most forward looking cruise liner contracted so far.

The design itself was called All Outside Cabin or AOC for short - and created by a team of naval architects at the then Wartsila shipyards in Finland, which today are part of STX Europe. In previous designs, most cabins had been placed in the hull and thelowermost decks of the s uperstructure, while principal public spaces were located above these, together with a handful of luxury cabins.

In AOC, this was reversed upside down: cabins would go up and the principal public rooms find their way down, in case of Royal Princess as Artemis was first called, to the upermost deck in the hull. Consequently a quarter of the 600 or so cabins on the ship could have private balconies, an unprecedented figure.

AOC was first conceived as a 55,000 gross ton design, whose rounded strern bore striking resemblance to Song of America that Wartsila had delivered to Royal Caribbean in late 1982. Although the original design was never built, AOC set the benchmark for most cruise liners that have been built since then. A layout whereby a theatre is located forward, principal dining venue either aft on the same decks - or closer to midships on a lower deck - and a host of other public space in between these, usually on the uppermost deck in the hull and the one just above that, is the benchmark to which most cruise liners on order still today are built.

This demonstrates that the AOC concept itself was an excellent idea - indeed, it is tempting to guess whether the cruise industry could have staged the stellar rise it has enjoyed since the introduction of Royal Princess in 1984 and subsequent ships with lots of cabins with balconies had that concept not been introduced.

The early 1980s saw a flow of concept designs to flow from the offices of Wartsila. Sail Cruiser was a boutique sail cruise ship that emerged with Windstar, although the ships were built in France. SWATH or Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull used ideas from oil rigs and combined these with ones of the cruise industry, in 1992 a catamaran vessel called Radisson Diamond was built to this design. However, slow and with a deep draft, it was not a success.

Still, a feature from SWATH is now making headlines again: a large town square that cabin balconies face will be repeated in Oasis of the Seas and Allure of the Seas, the 225,000 gross ton giants of Royal Caribbean International.

AOC was an excellent concept, although Royal Princess / Artemis was not an impressive execution of that concept. SWATH has not been repeated since the single pioneer vessel that was anything but a success, but the town square part of the design may well become the next big think in cruise liner design.

And who knows, perhaps SWATH itself will get a second chance as a result!