Despite their best efforts, and with a charter apparently lined up, the Potamianos Brothers were unable to raise the finance needed to bring the classic cruise ship Princess Daphne up to the required standards, so she has been sold for scrap. She sailed, under the name Daphne, from Souda Bay in Crete on 17 May, bound initially for Port Said and thence to Alang.
She has a long and interesting history, having been built in 1955 by Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson at Wallsend on Tyne as the Port Line passenger and cargo liner Port Sydney. In 1972, as the traditional liner trades were coming to an end, she was sold to Greek interests to be converted into a car ferry, for which use she was to have been renamed Akrotiri Express. In the event, that conversion was never completed, and she was converted into a cruise ship and renamed Daphne.
Eventually she was chartered to Costa, along with her sister, Danae, and Costa later purchased both ships and marketed them under the brand of Prestige Cruises. In 1996 she was sold to Leisure Cruises and renamed Switzerland, and six years later passed to Majestic International Cruises, who renamed her initially as Ocean Odyssey and later as Ocean Monarch. For some summers she operated for the now defunct Hansa Kreuzfahrten.
Classic International Cruises acquired her in 2008, thus reuniting her with her sister. On the demise of that company, she, along with €3 million, were handed back to the Potamianos brothers by the mortgage holding bank, but the cash was insufficient to get the ship back into service.
