As Princess Cruises has announced previously, the 4th variant of the Royal Class ships (6 in total) will be the Sky Princess. The name is another rehash of a past guest favorite ship of the Princess. The new and old Sky Princess ships share very little in common, but we thought it would be fun to look back at the original Sky Princess which means also looking at her short lived stint sailing as the FairSky for Sitmar Cruises.
The Sky Princess - Sailing in Alaska
The Sky Princess was on par with the size of most new builds of the 80's, and had a passenger space ratio about about 38 which is decently roomy even for today's ships. As the FairSky, designed and built for Sitmar, she had the unique trait of being the last steam powered passenger vessel of this scale built. This was likely because Sitmar, owned by Mr. BorisVlasov (hence the "V" on some older Sitmar ship funnels) had only steamships in the fleet and believed in dealing with the devil he knew rather than the devil he didn't, that being conventional diesel driven motors. You can read more of the past here as this website does a much better job than we can of describing the back story. After sailing for 4 different lines, she was laid up and scrapped in 2013.
FairSky (Sky Princess) fact sheet
Steam turbine system control panel - an odd juxtaposition, much like making an electric abacus.
Standard ship design for the period with pools on the aft terraced decks, and most cabins forward and lower in the ship. Very similar to the 1983 versions of the ms Noordam and ms Nieuw Amsterdam, built for Holland America.
Decks with major public areas are shown below
Looking down on the Sky Princess from a Sun Class vessel.
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