Premier Cruises

SS OceanBreeze

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Operator: Premier Cruises
Year Built / Last Refurbished: 1955 / 1992
Length / Tonnage: 604 / 21,500
Number of Cabins / Passengers: 399 / 798
Officers / Crew: Greek / International
Operating Area: Year-round Caribbean

A company so prone to oversell itself rarely shows much regard for historical fact either, and Premier is no exception...witness the blurb they printed about this ship on the back of their recent itinerary brochure: "The first liner with engines aft...."they say, presenting "a profile that became the hallmark of all the Far Eastern traders..." WHAT UTTER nonsense! She may have been the first liner over 20,000 tons to have her funnel and engines all the way aft, but she wasn't the first liner to have her engines at the stern...NOPE...the FIRST ocean going liner to have THAT ugly rig was Matson Navigation Company's LURLINE of 1908...a ship followed in 1909 by the similarly arranged WILHELMINA. Those two ships were joined by the much larger MATSONIA and MAUI in 1913 and each of those twins, the largest liners in service to Hawaii until the advent of the MALOLO in 1927, had their single stacks in roughly the same spot that the atrociously ugly OCEAN BREEZE has hers...If FOUR were not enough, consider Matson's FIFTH ship with engines and funnel all the way AFT...the MANOA of 1917. With enough passenger tonnage in the fleet, for their additional cargo tonnage in the post World War I era, Matson ordered a pair of engines aft freighters, two ships, which were also LINERS, since they served a regular line.

And as for the idea that the peculiar design introduced by the ship that is now OCEAN BREEZE set the style for Far Eastern traders, I simply don't know what Premier is talking about and I promise you, neither do they. I ask them to name ANY "Far Eastern" trader so arranged because of this ship...especially one built since the advent of this ugly duckling...and I do NOT accept NORTHERN STAR, the unfortunate near sister to the present OCEAN BREEZE, a ship that was launched in 1954 as SOUTHERN CROSS. Even though she presented a new profile to a British steamship company, British shipowners are or were NOT above taking credit for innovations others put to sea. Witness the celebrations P & O made for themselves for the "court" cabins in the CANBERRA and ORIANA of the very early 1960s...inside cabins were arranged around "courts"...spaces along the outboard side and fitted with floor to ceiling windows....the inside cabins were fitted with windows giving out onto the "courts"...thus allowing inside cabins to be outside cabins...THAT idea was an American idea, pioneered in 1931 by America's most brilliant naval architect, George G. Sharp. A successful idea, it was reprised in several subsequent classes of ships, most notably in the PANAMA trio of 1939...and was even extended to crew quarters to allow those rooms to have access to natural light, too.

SORRY, PREMIER, your claim is WRONG...and I question the spirit behind your total disregard for the facts here.

The SOUTHERN CROSS was built with engines aft as an experiment. The idea was to build a biggish passenger ship, restrict her to passengers only .... no cargo, no mail, put the engines aft in order to allow the more comfortably riding midships section to house passengers...The ship was built for Shaw Savill & Albion's round the world service, a line that basically took Britons out to Australia, returning with Australians on holiday. The ship was a one-class only, TOURIST CLASS, liner...and in typical fashion, though for a change a tourist passenger could get a single bedded cabin to him or herself, most cabins were multi-berth affairs, those needing many berths could get a cabin with six berths on lower decks...naturally these rooms were not fitted with private facilities. To refresh my memory about this ship, I just looked at two different editions of SOUTHERN CROSS deckplans...and was instantly struck by some of the sanitary blocks...The big women's bathroom on B Deck...the one opposite one for men...each with 16 different stalls for toilets...Share and share alike, I guess...

Well...as I said...she DID have some singles....and had a lot of deck space and many public rooms, such as they were and ugly as they were, for her passengers, whose numbers ever dwindled as modern jets made their inroads. A money loser by the late 1960's, Shaw Savill gave up on her and pulled her out of service in 1971. London Greeks, the Vlassopoulos family, bought her in January 1973 and registered her at Panama as CALYPSO. Hoping to ape the success the Chandris group was having with American passengers in particular, they wanted to convert this loser into a cruise ship, not a high class one but a high density one for the British and German markets. In a refit that took over two years to complete, the new owners had most of her cabin decks gutted, and in those spaces built in spartan rooms for passengers, fitting each with it's own shower and toilet facilities. In late April 1975 she started cruising in the Mediterranean. Later that year or in early 1976 she did a 69 day cruise around Africa...I have some of the programs and menus...Vlassopoulos, which used the trade name "Ulysses Cruises" for the CALYPSO and the smaller ITHACA (now and for many years trading as DOLPHIN IV..and I invite you to notice the family connection....) didn't charge much nor did it give much...It's the line that offered passengers at one Captain's Dinner a choice between fried chicken and "frankfurter sausages in mustard sauce"...I have that menu. Guess where she started cruising in 1976? Right! From New York, where I took a cruise in her. Booking a minimum priced room, I was at once unfavorably impressed that the entire block of cabins down there smelled like a big bathroom. Let's just say that the CALYPSO and I didn't become friends, nor did the two year+ refit do anything to improve her external appearance.

Paquet Cruises chartered her for a while and for them she cruised both in the Caribbean and Alaska. Then in 1980 Vlassopoulos was able to dump her, selling her to Western Steamship Lines, an offshoot of Florida based Eastern Steamship Lines, a firm long experienced in operating 3 and 4 day cruises. Renamed AZURE SEAS, this now 25 year old ship chugged off to Los Angeles to take up 3 and 4 day cruises to nearby Catalina and Ensenada. A big casino added to her list of amenities perhaps accounted in large measure for her success on 3 night weekend cruises. Eastern and Western merged with Sundance Cruises to form Admiral Cruises in 1990... After Royal Caribbean bought Admiral, they replaced the AZURE SEAS with the VIKING SERENADE, extensively rebuilding and increasing that ship's accommodations a couple of years later. The AZURE SEAS was sold to an outfit called Dolphin Cruises...a line founded in large part by Vlassopoulos, who had sold this ship over a decade earlier. Now she was renamed OCEAN BREEZE...and since then has been operating bottom of the market budget cruises in the Caribbean, her operator doing its best to try to fool prospective passengers into believing this old timer is one of the great "classic ocean liners". Sorry...she may be old, but a classic, in the accepted sense of something outstanding for quality...she is not...and never was.

I'm tempted to reprise a New York Times' TV section one liner about the movie "Ship of Fools"....they called it a "one star cargo that hardly floats" but I cast no aspersion on the sea keeping qualities of this liner. After all, she comes from one of the world's greatest shipyards...she was built at Harland & Wolff. I bet they learned their lesson in 1912! They have built some GREAT, LONG LIVED ships since then! So I won't use that one liner about this ugly, ugly ship...She's a 20,000 tonner that carries about 800 passengers. I don't like her, never did, but you might.

I never much liked her public rooms...Redecorated, yes, they are all pretty much where they have always been for the past forty four years....Topmost among public rooms on Boat Deck is her Library/Card Room. Midships and reached from the deck below is the upper level of her all important casino...imaginatively named the MONTE CARLO Casino...(how ORIGINAL!) Forward on Promenade Deck is the Rendezvous Lounge. The main venue for evening entertainment, it looks better than it did when she was CALYPSO, but the furniture and decor here looks and feels inexpensive as it does throughout the ship. The ugly Mayfair Lounge was once the Smoke Room and is something of a quiet lounge...unlike the Five Star Disco way down deep in the ship, a room whose noise level rivals that of the ship's decades old turbines. Finally, there's the Cafe Miramar which does double duty as both an eatery or a nightclub though it too, can be used as a lounge.

Notice, though, ways to spend money are right smack dab in the middle...that big two level casino vies for your money with a big shopping complex...as does the photo gallery and even the video arcade which beckons your quarters every bit as compellingly as might the slots....

Caravelle Dining Room - right where the SOUTHERN CROSS and CALYPSO used to feed their passengers, the OCEAN BREEZE feeds diners at two sittings in this room named by Paquet during a charter so many years ago. I haven't eaten here and don't want to so I can't tell you much about the food, only that I have serious issues with Premier's advertising and their claims of excellence. Look....just because you say your food is great does NOT mean it is, it has to be delicious to be great...and my experience with the food on ships at this end of the market is decidedly negative and Premier has given me no reason for confidence that things here are any different.

Outdoors, food is served at the Cafe Miramar...or you could take some up to the Boat Deck near the open air Cafe St. Tropez...there is not much space nearby so expect that encumbered by a plate or tray of food, you may be mounting a spiral staircase to yet a higher deck in hopes you can find a seat where you can eat your light meal under the broiling noonday sun.

Yeah, there are insides and outsides and they all have private facilities and some closet space, a couple of beds and not much more...There's nothing special here except for the twelve suites...the ONE Category A "deluxe" suite is kinda nifty...it's a BIG two room affair, looks out forward, but it's on THIS ship...so I don't think I will be booking into it anytime soon. Nor do I expect to take any of the eleven Category B suites..."In fairness to Premier..." to use a phrase they use when they write me or email me to exhort me to change my tune... I will say that they have a dandy suite program for...I don't know how it works for discounted suite fares, but at least in the 1998 brochure, full fare suite passengers get 7 nights free hotel stay in Jamaica...PLUS...chilled champagne and chocolate covered strawberries, a complimentary fruit basket and...a SHOE SHINE! Also, late afternoon brings them a tray of canapes and a departing night pillow gift (I have no IDEA what that means)...they also throw in "FREE" shore excursions worth up to $240.00 per cabin. So if you must go in this ship because you like the itinerary and/or you are part of a larger contingent which has opted for her for her price structure and you can swing it, consider opting for one of the dozen rooms eligible for this package. It IS a good deal!

As for the rest of the cabins, the bulk of those outside category C rooms on Atlantis Deck, the "Deluxe Oceanview" rooms look out onto covered promenade deck before they see the sea...and if you are not careful and don't draw your curtains by night YOU may be the late show... By the way, pay brochure rate for a Category C or D and Premier throws in a free week in a hotel in Jamaica.

People looking for bargain rates to escape a week of northern winter often find the OCEAN BREEZE a good choice. Like the other budget ships she attracts all kinds, from those who don't know what they are getting into and those who do. Again, "in fairness to Premier" which they have asked of me, I must say that since this ship's cruises begin and end in Jamaica, if you have issues about the smooth operation of airports and transfers there, you may want to sail in something else...Jamaica, beautiful, tough Jamaica, can be a maddening place if you are not calm.. So if you're going to take one of her cruises, relax...everything will get done...it always has.

She sails every Sunday at 5:30PM, local time, from Montego Bay, Jamaica to Cartagena, Colombia; into the Panama Canal and back out again, the nearby San Blas Islands and Puerto Limon, Costa Rica...a rather interesting circuit of places to go in a one week period. To make brochure rates more attractive, there are inducements like free 7 night hotel stays in Jamaica to prospective passengers to book certain categories.

Does your doctor need to share the pain in your head to know that you might benefit from an analgesic? Does a master chef need to see your recipe to know, upon tasting something you cooked, might need just a pinch of....say....thyme...? Do you yet know enough about life to know what foods you like and don't like, which types of music you like and don't like? Well, then...so do I...and a man who has grown up obsessed with ships, collecting all sorts of things about them and sailing in them since, say age FOUR (when I typed my first letters to steamship companies to send me deckplans and brochures)...I don't HAVE to sail in every ship under every operator to know what I am looking at. I know the OCEAN BREEZE. I know Premier. I know they are not for me. I also know that there are some people who love this ship and love Premier...and I am glad there are and that they do. I do wish that they would all get together that just as they have a right to their fondness for this company and its product, I have a right to MY opinion and my lack of enthusiasm for it. Anyway, under Premier the OCEAN BREEZE offers some of the lowest rates for 7 night cruises in the business. I really do believe that you get what you pay for. When I see a rate of under $400 per person available to the general public, I shy away... I know that at those prices I wouldn't be buying something that could please me, and I doubt my fellow passengers would have much patience for me either...