Achille Lauro Carried Dreams and Air of Mystery for 50 Years

Like an aging “Love Boat,” the 50-year-old Achille Lauro, now in the hands of Palestinian pirates, has fulfilled many dreams as it sailed the luxury cruise routes of the world.

Big and boxy with its 624-foot length and 82-foot beam, the blue and white liner that has been the pride of Italy’s transatlantic fleet for years began its ill-fated Mediterranean cruise schedule only last spring, under charter to a tour organizing company.

For prices ranging from $750 a person (for a four-berth cabin) to $1,550 (for a two-bed cabin on the posh Lido deck), travelers on 20 planned Mediterranean cruises could spend 11 nights and 12 days in the swimming pool, bars, restaurant and two ballrooms of the modernized old vessel. With its 400 cabins and mixed crew of more than 300 Italians, Greeks and Portuguese, the ship had been booked to capacity for the season, according to tour agencies in Rome.

Nothing worse had happened to Achille Lauro in its troubled half-century, but its very name and a history of severe problems have long given the ship an air of mystery.

The vessel was named for the late Neapolitan shipping magnate Achille Lauro, once a friend and supporter of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who once ruled Naples as a patronage-dispensing mayor and made and lost two fortunes in seaborne ventures.

Lauro died in 1982 at age 95 after his 100-ship fleet went broke and had to be dispersed in the aftermath of the oil crises of the 1970s. The Achille Lauro was the last remnant of his empire to keep his name and was taken over in part after the bankruptcy by an Italian government commission.

Lauro bought the then 11-year-old, Dutch-built ship in 1947 to complement a growing fleet of American Liberty ships he obtained at bargain prices after World War II. During the 1950s and 1960s, it plied the lucrative Atlantic passenger trade, but its history was a troubled one after that.

In 1972, a fire of mysterious origin engulfed much of the ship while it was being refitted in a shipyard near Genoa. Half-destroyed, it took two years to rebuild. A year later, it collided with a freighter in the Strait of the Dardanelles.