History of Norwegian Cruise Lines

Norwegian Cruise Lines is a private cruise company headquartered in Miami, Florida. It works on freestyle concept that is you do not have to wait for meal timings and go in a particular dress.

When this company started in 1966 by Knut Kloster and Ted Arison, there was only one cruise ship/car ferry of 830-ton that cruise to Caribbean. Also the cost of the cruise was very less. Formally the name of Norwegian Cruise Lines was Norwegian Caribbean Lines. After setting up, Arison decided to form Carnival Cruise Lines and Kloster bought some more ships to expand their business.

Many first things happened in Norwegian Caribbean Lines. These were air sea programs in which you can go anywhere at low prices, Out island cruise, New ports were developed in Caribbean one of which is named as Ocho Rios in Jamaica. The combined air sea program was marketed as “Cloud 9 Cruises”.

Even in 1966 they bought a second ship. The specialty of this ship was that it can carry automobiles. But now you will see a theatre and casino at that place. After that many new cruise companies developed and there was a boom in cruise industry.

In 1979 they did a major change. They rebuild the liner as a cruise ship and renamed her Norway but this conversion costs them more than $100 million USD. At that time Norway was the largest ship among any other cruise ship and many other changes were done on the deck like adding 24 hour entertainment at some place of the ship or another.

But in 2003 there was an instant burst in boiler of Norway. That is why they stopped using Norway. But in 2005 in Bremerhaven, Germany Norway was again put in use for slow night cruises and worked on her remaining boiler. After sometimes it was sold and renamed as SS Blue Lady. Then in August 2006 it reached Gujarat, India.

After that the lines were expanded to different parts of the world like Alaska, Europe, Bermuda and Hawaii. Then it expanded so much that they started their cruise lines crossing Australia by the name of Norwegian Capricorn Line.

A new subsidiary was founded in 1991 with the name Orient lines. They acquired a ship named Marco Polo in 1998. These Orient lines run Marco Polo. It was also acquired by Star Cruises in 2000 which is subsidiary of a Malaysian group named Genting. After this Star Cruises sold the Marco Polo to Transocean in 2007.

In 2002 they bought a first under construction American ship. This American ship was been constructed at Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, Mississippi, USA. After this the ship was sent to Germany at the Lloyd Werft shipyard to complete its construction. After completing this, they got the rights to plan their operations outside United States. They moved their two ships outside United States and began their functioning under the name Norwegian Cruise Lines. Then company bought two American flagged liners SS United States and SS Independence in 2003 for their use for the cruise. But before July 2007 they sold the SS Independence. Its name was later changed to SS Oceanic.

In August 2007, to make them financially strong, Star Cruise sold half of the company to US based Apollo Management which is the owner of Oceania Cruises. It was sold for $1 billion. After this Norwegian Cruise Lines America’s brand stays under Star Cruise ownership for next 16 months, but after this the company decided to either eliminate it totally or keep if there is any profit. One of the ships of Norwegian Cruise Lines named Norwegian Winds was transferred to Star Cruises which later on became their Super Star Aquarius. They decided to transfer their another ship named Pride of Aloha to fleet of Star Cruise but later the decision was canceled.