Information on the late italian cruise ship achill lauro?

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Lew

The Willem Ruys/Achille Lauro - originally built as the Willem Ruys for the Royal Rotterdam Lloyd Line in 1947 to sail on the Rotterdam to Indonesia Service. Maiden Voyage December 2, 1947.
In January 1965, she was officially handed over to the Lauro Line and renamed Achille Lauro after the managing director of the Line.
Work began to rebuild and modernise the liner by CN Riuniti di Palermo. Unfortunately, the vessel suffered an explosion and a resulting fire on August 29, and work was thereby much delayed. Not until April 13, 1966 did the Achille Lauro enter service again.
On October 7, 1985 the Achille Lauro was employed on a ten-day cruise. She was supposed to call at Alexandria in order to allow passengers to go to Cairo, and then rejoining the ship at Port Said. Only about half of the passengers went ashore, while the rest stayed on board to enjoy the ship. During the trip from Alexandria to Port Said, the ship was taken hostage by five Palestinian terrorists
On December 2, 1994 she was cruising in the seas off Somalia when she once again suffered a fire. This time, it was so devastating that all 1,090 passengers and crew had to be taken off. Of them, three people were killed in the blaze before they could be rescued. The fire lasted for three days and the ship became a total loss

Specifications:
Length: 631 feet (192.8 m)
Beam: 82.3 feet (25.1 m)
Tonnage: 21,119 gross tons
Engines: Eight Diesel engines powering two propellers.
Service speed: 22 knots
Passengers: Originally 900 people

Gads, I was in Italy when this occurred.
The ship, Achilli Lauro, was hijacked by terrorists from Sicily for a getaway.
The US sent fighter jets after it.

Chrisss, I was with cousins and we all thought this was the beginning of WW III.

Read more here.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?search=Achilli+Lauro&ei=UTF-8&fr=ks-ans&ico-yahoo-search-value=http%3A%2F%2Frds.yahoo.com%2F_ylt%3DAqzFpE_foFN2JzVbkcerh28azKIX%3B_ylv%3D0%2FSIG%3D11itjdcvs%2FEXP%3D1204385062%2F*-http%253A%2F%2Fsearch.yahoo.com%2Fsearch&ico-wikipedia-search-value=http%3A%2F%2Frds.yahoo.com%2F_ylt%3DAnAjt.V3BAPakuHlaxQmAvgazKIX%3B_ylv%3D0%2FSIG%3D1210ht9h9%2FEXP%3D1204385062%2F*-http%253A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FSpecial%253aSearch&p=Achilli+Lauro

I departed from Italy a few days later out of Rome.
The next day, after my departure, a bomb was exploded in the main terminal.

Tough Guy

It was hijacked by terrorists a few years back. Threw a guy in a whellchair overboard.

Lois Ann C

While in Italy, Sorrento to be exact I was in a restaurant and met the assistant captain of the Achill Lauro. He said he never went to sea after that. Said it was a horrible experience and really didn't want to get into detail. Just that is was enough for him to look for another occupation.

James P

Splendid answer by "Lew". Not much to add except that she was launched from the De Schelde shipyard in 1946, and her original service route was Rotterdam - Port Said - Colombo - Singapore - Djakarta.
History and photographs of "Willem Ruys" under "Rotterdam Lloyd" at http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/

Gayle L

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