Cruiseships were on the cusp of a giant transformation the year that TradeWinds first hit the printing presses. Thirty years later, the industry and its ships are barely recognisable.
The cruise fleet in 1990 was small, and so were the ships. The industry’s first megaship, Norwegian Cruise Line’s 76,049-gt Norway (built 1961), a converted transatlantic liner, had been in service for a decade.
It was a pioneer that proved that large cruiseships could work, but in terms of igniting the fuse of a trend towards big cruiseships, it was a slow-burner.
The industry, more used to ships below 50,000 gt, preferred to wait and see how Norwegian owner Knut Kloster’s gamble on the huge ship would pan out.
The gamble paid off and in 1987, a full seven years after the Norway debuted, Royal Caribbean International had worked up enough courage to follow suit and introduce the purpose-built 73,529-gt Sovereign of the Seas.
Even then, Royal Caribbean took only a tentative step into the megaliner domain, and it was not until the Sovereign of the Seas had been in service for a couple of years that it went forward with an order for two sisterships.
Once Royal Caribbean had picked up the challenge — and it appeared to pay off — peers began to follow suit. Monaco’s Sitmar Cruises ordered three ships of close to 70,000 gt. Two had entered service by 1990, although by this time Sitmar had been bought out and subsumed into Princess Cruises, which was then part of the business empire of UK-based P&O.
Carnival Cruise Line had also jumped into the megaship game. In 1990 it took delivery of the 70,367-gt Fantasy, which would become the prototype of a series of eight identical ships.
From 1990 onwards, megaships began to dominate the industry, growing in number and size. Today the world’s largest cruiseship is Royal Caribbean’s 228,081-gt Symphony of the Seas, a vessel three times as large as the old Norway.
Even the 10th-largest cruiseship, the 171,598-gt MSC Bellisima, is more than twice the size of the Norway, and the total gross tonnage of the 10 largest ships of 1990 doesn't come near the combined figure of the bottom four ships of the current top 10.
It is not just the size of 2020’s largest ships that sets them apart from their predecessors. They are almost unrecognisable on board.
The older ships were touted as seagoing alternatives to the land-based resorts on Caribbean islands, their selling points being their lounges and vast sun decks.
Today’s cruiseships are true cities at sea, combinations of amusement parks, shopping malls, and Las Vegas resorts all rolled into one.
