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Concept
MS Achille Lauro
Summary
MS Achille Lauro was a cruise ship based in Naples, Italy. It was built between 1939 and 1947 as the ocean liner Willem Ruys for Royal Rotterdam Lloyd. In 1965 Achille Lauro bought the ship, had it converted into a cruise ship, and renamed it after himself. In 1985 it was hijacked by members of the Palestine Liberation Front.
The ship was also involved in two serious collisions: in 1953 with the , and in 1975 with the cargo ship Youseff. It also suffered four onboard fires or explosions: in 1965, 1972, 1981, and 1994. In the last of these, in 1994, the ship caught fire and sank in the Indian Ocean off Somalia.
Ordered in 1938 to replace the aging ships on the Dutch East Indies route, she was laid down in 1939 at Koninklijke Maatschappij 'De Schelde'. Scheepswerf en Machinefabriek in Vlissingen, Netherlands, for Rotterdamsche Lloyd (now part of Nedlloyd). Interrupted by World War II and two bombing raids, the ship was finally launched in July 1946, as Willem Ruys. The ship was named after the grandson of the founder of Rotterdamsche Lloyd, whom the Germans had taken hostage and shot during the war.
Willem Ruys was completed in late 1947. At that time, the Rotterdamsche Lloyd had been granted a royal prefix in honour of its services during the war. Willem Ruys was in length, in beam, had a draught of , and measured 21,119 gross register tons. Eight Sulzer engines drove two propellers. She could accommodate 900 passengers. She featured a superstructure very different from other liners of that era; Willem Ruys pioneered low-slung aluminium lifeboats, within the upper-works' flanks. The next ship to adopt this arrangement was the in 1961. Today, all cruise ships follow this layout, with fibreglass-reinforced plastic (FRP) used for lifeboat hulls.
As Willem Ruys, the ship began her maiden voyage on 5 December 1947. Together with her main competitor and running mate, the MS Oranje of the Netherland Line, she became a popular fixture on the Dutch East Indies route. However, when the East Indies gained independence from The Netherlands in 1949, passenger numbers decreased.
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