PRINCESS MARIA has been renamed MOBY DADA and moves from St.Petersburg to Naples before a Moby Lines debut.

Long DFDS association with ferry PRINCESS MARIA ends

Ferry DFDS captain Rudolph Tatter has handed over command of the passenger and vehicle ferry PRINCESS MARIA to a colleague from Moby Lines to end six and a half years of DFDS management of the ship while operating in the Baltic for St.Peter Line. Renamed MOBY DADA the 1981-built vessel will next leave icy cold St. Petersburg for a warmer Mediterranean climes at Naples in Italy as soon as a change to RINA (Registro Italiano Navale) has been completed.

Three Lithuanian engineers will stay on board to help the new Italian crew familiarise themselves with the ship. This is a final DFDS farewell to a ferry which first entered the fleet to operate the Copenhagen-Helsingborg-Oslo route as QUEEN OF SCANDINAVIA in 1990. The world’s largest cruise ferry in terms of passenger capacity, beds and tonnage when completed in 1981 as FINLANDIA for Silja Line service between Helsinki and Stockholm, the 1,638 bed vessel was later deployed between Newcastle (North Shields) and IJmuiden and then on the Newcastle-Bergen route until closure in 2008.

Following lay-up and occasional service as a hotel ship, a charter to St. Peter Line in 2010 saw opening of a Baltic service between St. Petersburg and Helsinki as PRINCESS MARIA and with Lithuanian deck and engine room crew and DFDS handling safety and technical management. To counterbalance loss of jobs on PRINCESS MARIA, DFDS have confirmed that Lithuanian crews will be provided for two ro-pax ships currently under construction by FSG in Flensburg, Germany.

Nov 21 2016