Renaissance Cruises

Renaissance Cruises was formed in 1989 by the Norwegian Fearnley & Eger-group and started sailing with a small luxury cruiseyaught from december 1989. In rapid succession eight of these ships entered service for them and they sailed mostly to remote ports that could not be entered by the bigger cruiseships. In 1991, Fearnley & Eger was declared bancrupt and Renaissance Cruises was sold to the Italian Cameli Group. At the end of the nineties, the line had become a well-known name in the modern cruiseworld, and the company decided to built six new and bigger ships to replace the smaller yaughtlike vessels. The first of these ships entered service in august 1998 under the inventive name of R One. R Two followed in november, and R Three sailed in the beginning of 1999. Surprisingly, this naming was continued and two more ships were ordered. The last one that entered service was R Eight in february 2001. Renaissence Cruises announced that real names would be given to the ships in time. This never happened, as Renaissance Cruises itself was declared bankrupt at the 25th of september 2001. The finances of the company had been bad for some time, but the terrorist attacks in America and the global downturn in tourism were the final push. The ships were taken over by Cruise Invest and were chartered out to several companies since then. This big and rapid expansion could simply not be paid.

Below, R Seven is entering the large north lock at IJmuiden in the summer of 2001. She is pulled by a tug from Wijsmuller, the company that operated tug services on the Northsea Canal for a long time. In 2001, Wijsmuller was sold to the multinational Möller-Maersk and also in the same year, Renaissance Cruises was declared bankrupt.

Many former Renaissance Cruises ships are present at castlesoftheseas and they are placed under other operators.

Renaissance IV (1991-1997) is placed under Grand Circle as their Corinthian

Renaissance V (1991-1997) is placed under Quark Expeditions as Sea Spirit

Renaissance VI (1991-1998) is placed under Noble Caledonia as Hebridean Spirit

Aegean 1 (1996-1998 charter) is placed under Voyages To Antiquity as Aegean Odyssey

Renaissance VII (1998-2001) is placed under Noble Caledonia as Hebridean Sky

Because it is very easy to loose track of all these R-class ships I will post an up-to-date history of these ships on this page also. Because they are all added to this site, I also added links to their pages at castlesoftheseas.

R One

1998-2001 R One Renaissance Cruises

2003-2012 Insignia (II) Oceania Cruises

2012-2014 Columbus 2 HAPAG-Lloyd (charter)

2014-now Insignia (II) Oceania Cruises

R Two

1998-2001 R Two Renaissance Cruises

2003 (2-4) Insignia (I) Oceania Cruises

2003 (4-6) Insignia TMR (marketingname Vaissau Renaissance (charter))

2003-now Regatta Oceania Cruises

R Three

1999-2001 R Three Renaissance Cruises