RMS Saxonia

Postcard of RMS Saxonia
Career
Name:	1954—1962: RMS Saxonia 1962—1973: RMS Carmania 1973—1999: SS Leonid Sobinov
Owner:	1954—1973: Cunard Line 1973—1990: Black Sea Shipping Company 1990—1999: Transorient Overseas
Operator:	1954—1971: Cunard Line 1973—1995: Black Sea Shipping Company
Port of registry:	1954—1973: Liverpool, United Kingdom 1973—1990: Odessa, Soviet Union 1990—1999: Valletta, Malta
Ordered:	1954[citation needed]
Builder:	John Brown and Company of Clydebank, Scotland
Yard number:	692
Launched:	17 February 1954
Acquired:	August 1954
Maiden voyage:	2 September 1954
Out of service:	6 October 1995
Identification:	IMO number: 5064324
Fate:	Scrapped in Alang, India in 1999.
General characteristics (as built, 1954)
Class and type:	Saxonia class ocean liner
Tonnage:	21,637 gross register tons (GRT), 8,836 metric tons deadweight (DWT)
Length:	608 ft (185 m)
Beam:	80 ft (24 m)
Draught:	28 ft (8.5 m)
Installed power:	4 × John Brown geared steam turbines H.P. double reduction[citation needed]
Propulsion:	twin propellers
Speed:	19.5 knots (36.11 km/h; 22.44 mph)
Capacity:	925 passengers (125 first class, 800 tourist class)
Crew:	600 crew members[citation needed]
General characteristics (as rebuilt, 1963)
Class and type:	Ocean liner/cruise ship
Tonnage:	21,370 GRT
Capacity:	881 passengers
Notes:	Otherwise the same as built

RMS Saxonia was a 21,637 gross-ton passenger ship of the Cunard Line launched on February 17, 1954 by Lady Churchill. She served with Cunard until 1962 when she was refitted and renamed RMS Carmania. She continued transatlantic crossings and various cruise routes until she was laid up in 1971. In August 1973 she was bought by the Soviet Union-based Black Sea Shipping Company and renamed SS Leonid Sobinov.

History

Among the last of the vessels built for transatlantic passenger traffic in the early 1950s, Saxonia was launched in 1954 and revived a name previously used for a Cunard liner built in 1905 and laid up in 1925. The ship was refitted in 1962 and given another Cunard name from earlier in the century, Carmania. As Carmania, the vessel continued service on the Rotterdam - Southampton - Canada route for several years, and cruised in the Caribbean and Mediterranean in the winters.

During 1968, difficulties with US fire regulations resulted in cancellation of a winter cruise from Port Everglades. Cunard made some minor modifications to the ship before the next sailing in January 1969. On a later cruise the vessel ran aground on a sandbank off San Salvador Island in the Bahamas. Three months after returning to service the ship collided with the Soviet cruiser Frunze, but damage to both vessels was apparently minor.

She was laid up at Southampton in 1971. In August 1973 she was bought by the Soviet Union-based Black Sea Shipping Company and renamed after Leonid Sobinov.

External links

• RMS Saxonia
• Saxonia on Chris' Cunard Page