Renamed Ocean Gala-1, the ship is currently off the coast of Egypt and is thought to be en route to Alang.

The sale ends what has been a disastrous investment for Floating Accommodations. The company acquired the cruiseship from Germany’s TUI Group in late 2015 through a Bahamian-registered entity called Cruise Holdings Inc.

It was purchased against what at the time appeared to be a lucrative charter to Sweden’s migration board, Migrationsverket. For a reported $95,000 per day, the ship was to be berthed permanently in the port of Utansjo to house refugees seeking asylum in Sweden. The initial one-year deal worth $32m had four years of options attached.

But the charter was cancelled after permission to dock the ship in Utansjo could not be obtained. This led to a legal dispute between Floating Accommodations, which has steadfastly argued that Migrationsverket had no right to cancel the charter, while the latter has contended that it ended on 3 July, 2016. The dispute has yet to be resolved.

In August last year, the Ocean Gala was put up for sale with the hope that it would fetch $20m from a trading buyer.

But demand for medium-size cruiseships built in the early to mid-1980s is slack as such vessels have become rapidly outclassed by newer generations of much larger cruiseships.

In years past, older ships like the Ocean Gala would still have attracted strong interest from second and third-tier cruise operators, but over the past decade the cruise majors have driven such players to near extinction.

Similarly, the Asian casino cruise trade, another convenient dumping ground for older ships, has also largely died off.

The Ocean Gala is the second 1980s-built cruiseship to have a long career end. Last week, it emerged that China’s HNA Cruises had sold its 47,700-gt cruiseship Henna (built 1986) to cash buyers for onward sale for recycling.

While the Henna was built as the Jubilee for Carnival Cruise Lines, the Ocean Gala was built as the cruise ferry Scandinavia for DFDS Seaways’ short-lived US subsidiary Scandinavian World Cruises.

A luxury cruise and ferry service from New York to Florida quickly failed and the ship was sold to Royal Caribbean, which rebuilt it as the cruiseship Viking Serenade.

It sailed for several other European cruise firms before ending up with Floating Accommodations.