One of the oldest cruiseships still in existence looks set to end its long career on the breakers’ beach at Alang.

Highseas Ltd, a St Vincent & the Grenadines-registered entity that bought the 22,100-gt Marco Polo (built 1965) at auction for $2.77m in October, appears to have U-turned on its plans to keep the vessel trading.

Shortly after Highseas bought the ship from Cruises & Maritime Voyages (CMV), sources within the purchasing company indicated to cruise media that an accommodation ship charter in Dubai had been lined up. Highseas hoped to return it to active cruise service once the industry recovered, they said.

In late November, the Marco Polo was dispatched to Dubai from Avonmouth, where it had been sitting out the pandemic and the subsequent collapse of CMV.

But it departed the Middle Eastern port on 31 December. The vessel’s AIS transponder showed the vessel to be transiting the Strait of Hormuz on Monday, with Alang listed as its final destination.

While TradeWinds was unable to reach Highseas for confirmation, industry sources said the Marco Polo was being sent to India for recycling.

Adventurous existence

The Marco Polo started life as the Aleksandr Pushkin, one of five similar ships built in East Germany for the Soviet Union. Photo: Tony Martin/MarineTraffic

The 850-passenger Marco Polo was originally the Aleksandr Pushkin, the second in a series of five 20,000-gt, ice-strengthened vessels built for the Soviet Union by the former East German yard of Mathias-Thesen-Werft at Wismar between 1964 and 1972.

Although designed as a transatlantic passenger liner, it could also double up as a troopship at short notice.

For most of the ship's Soviet career it was used as a hard currency earner, chartered to European cruise operators for worldwide cruising.

British cruise entrepreneur Gerry Herrod bought the ship in 1991 and sent it for a two-year, $60m upgrade in Greece.

It began operating for Herrod’s new cruise venture Orient Lines in 1993, deployed on cruises to the Mediterranean, Africa, Asia and the polar regions.

The ship was sold to Global Cruise Lines of Greece in 2008 and shortly thereafter was used to launch CMV.

Several years ago CMV twice announced the Marco Polo’s retirement, but pressure from the ship's large and loyal British clientele base caused the company to backtrack and keep the ship in service.

The coronavirus ultimately brought an end to the popular ship’s cruising career when CMV itself became a victim of the pandemic. The company filed for insolvency in July, and its fleet was auctioned in October.