This past Friday, the 12-passenger Safari Spirit, the smallest vessel in the fleet of luxury small-ship operator American Safari Cruises, caught fire while docked at Seattle's Fisherman's Terminal, preparatory to beginning its Alaska season. Company founder/owner Capt. Dan Blanchard and the vessel's engineer were aboard when the fire broke out around 1am. Both escaped after being awakened by noise.

Firefighters summoned to the scene eventually brought the fire under control, but not before it had consumed four decks of the vessel, including those housing passenger accommodations. Spirit's aluminum hull resisted the blaze and did not sink, but it's unknown at present whether the vessel can eventually be salvaged.

Passengers booked on upcoming voyages will be offered sailings aboard the line's other ships.

I’m traveling today, flying down to Memphis Tennessee, for the re-christening of American Queen, the flagship (and so far only ship) of new riverboat line Great American Steamboat Company. On Friday at 3pm, the grand vessel is scheduled to get the Champagne-across-the-bow treatment from none other than Priscilla Presley, onetime lady of the house at Graceland.

The vessel's re-debut is a long time coming. Longtime cruise-watchers will remember that American Queen sailed for the late, lamented Delta Queen Steamboat Company from her launch in 1995 until Delta Queen hit rough waters in the aftermath of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. Taken over by the new Majestic America Line in 2006, American Queen continued to sail the Mississippi until 2008, when Majestic folded like a wobbly deck chair. At that point, American Queen became the property of the US Maritime Administration (MARAD), which was one of Majestic America's largest creditors. Great American Steamboat Company bought the vessel from MARAD in August 2011 for $15.5 million, using a reported $9 million supplied by the city of Memphis, which will be the vessel's new homeport.

Following her re-christening, American Queen will sail north toward Cincinnati, beginning her year-round river service. I’ll be aboard for the first few days, and will be posting my impressions.

Yesterday, speaking at a Passenger Ship Safety event in Brussels, European Cruise Council (ECC) Chairman Manfredi Lefebvre announced that the various companies that make up the global cruise industry have agreed on three new safety policies that will be adopted immediately.

The policies are a direct result of an industry-wide operational safety review launched in the wake of January’s Costa Concordia disaster, and include:

• New passage planning rules. Although cruise lines have generally followed International Maritime Organization guidance on creating passage plans (complete descriptions of a vessel's voyage from start to finish) for many years, cruise lines worldwide will now consider passage planning as a mandatory minimum requirement, and each passage plan is now required to be drafted by a designated officer, approved by the vessel’s master, and thoroughly briefed to all bridge team members well in advance of its implementation.
• New limits on access to the bridge. To minimize unnecessary disruptions and distractions on the bridge, access during any period of restricted maneuvering or increased vigilance will now be limited to persons performing operational functions.
• New lifejacket requirements. Cruise lines have long been required to carry enough lifejackets for each person on board, but they will now be required to carry enough additional adult lifejackets to match the total number of persons berthed within the ship’s most populated main vertical fire zone. Translation: There will be a lot more lifejackets around.

In a media statement, Lefebvre noted that “The cruise industry is highly regulated and it is this regulatory regime, complied with onboard by our professional and committed officers and crews, that has given the cruise industry a truly remarkable safety record. But as the Concordia incident demonstrates, there is no such thing as perfect safety. We do strive for a perfect commitment to safety. . . . [and] are convinced that this approach will achieve concrete, practical and significant safety dividends in the shortest possible time and fully reflects the measured and responsible progress on future safety initiatives by both the Commission and European Parliament following the Concordia tragedy."

Citing “a long-term succession plan” but making little mention of January’s Costa Concordia disaster, which left 32 people dead and the $570 million vessel half-sunk off Italy, Costa Crociere announced today that they company’s longtime Chairman and CEO, Pier Luigi Foschi, will give up his CEO duties effective July 1, 2012. He’ll remain on as chairman and managing director of the Costa group (which includes Costa Cruises, German line AIDA Cruises, and Spanish operator Ibero Cruceros), overseeing the company’s government relations and matters related to the Costa Concordia disaster, and spearheading a number of “strategic projects.”

Succeeding Foschi as Costa CEO will be Michael Thamm, who is currently serving as president of AIDA Cruises.

“Pier has made it known for some time that he intended to retire once he turned 65 and today’s announcement is part of our longtime succession plan that allows us to tap into our talented management team to find qualified individuals to oversee our brands,” said Micky Arison, chairman and CEO of Costa parent company Carnival Corporation & plc. “Pier has developed Costa into a very successful and profitable organization and we wish to thank him for his many years of dedicated service. At the same time, Michael has done a superb job managing AIDA Cruises and we have every confidence that Michael will continue these efforts at the helm of Costa.”

Foschi joined Costa Crociere in 1997 and was elected chairman of the board in 2000.

This past Friday, Costa Crociere selected Florida-based Titan Salvage to facilitate removal of Costa Concordia from the waters off Giglio, Italy, where she’s sat since a January 13 underwater collision left her capsized and half-submerged. The incident cost the lives of 32 passengers and crew.

Working in partnership with Italian marine contractor Micoperi, Titan is expected to begin salvage work in early May, with the ultimate goal of refloating the ship so it can be towed to port, where further salvage operations can be conducted. Once Concordia is removed, the sea bottom off Giglio will be cleaned and marine flora replanted. The complete removal job is expected to take about 12 months.

Interestingly, the salvage plan takes pains to spare Giglio any further harm to its tourism sector and general economy. Salvage operations will be based in nearby Civitavecchia rather than clogging Giglio’s picturesque port, and the presence of salvage workers, the line says, will not have “any significant impact” on Giglio’s supply of hotel accommodations during the summer season.

From 1972 into the 1990s, Royal Viking Line was the top name in luxury cruising, building and operating five midsize ships known for their world-ranging itineraries, excellent service and dining, and roomy staterooms. Bought first by Kloster/Norwegian Caribbean Line in 1986 and then by Cunard in 1994, the Royal Viking brand was slowly diluted until it finally just ceased to exist. Its ships were scattered to the wind; its founder, Warren Titus, went on to found Seabourn just after the Kloster sale; and its CEO, Torstein Hagen, went on to found Viking River Cruises, in 1997.

OK, fast-forward to today: With Viking River Cruises in the midst of a downright huge fleet expansion, Hagen is poised to head seaward again, creating a sister-company, Viking Ocean Cruises, and inking a fresh memorandum of agreement with Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri for construction of two 45,000-ton luxury ships, with an option for a third.

According to a press release, Viking Ocean Cruises and Fincantieri “have reached an agreement on the deal and expect to sign the contract shortly, once the final documents and conditions are finalised.”

“We are very excited to be working with Fincantieri,” said Hagen in the same statement. “We started Viking with the goal of bringing the destination back to cruising and we are excited to bring this same destination commitment back to ocean cruising. The ship designed by Ficantieri has a fresh and innovative design well suited to our commitment to destination cruising"

Carrying 998 passengers apiece — a similar number as Crystal’s similar-size Crystal Symphony — the ships will be delivered in late 2014 and late 2015.

Announced last year, the long-term charter of Oceania Cruises’ 684-passenger Insignia to German operator Hapag-Lloyd Cruises is now a reality. After a short conversion period in Barcelona, the vessel was officially renamed Columbus 2 yesterday, April 17, and welcomed into the Hapag-Lloyd fleet.

“Thanks to a few conversion measures, including the addition of a Kids and Teens area, we can now attract families onboard the Columbus 2,” said Hapag-Lloyd Cruises’ managing director, Sebastian Ahrens, in a media statement. “The family-oriented ship will be positioned in the four-star segment, and will offer a range of German-language cruises.”

Hapag-Lloyd currently holds a two-year charter on Insignia/Columbus 2, with an option to extend. The ship’s first cruise for HL will sail from Mallorca to Malta this week.

Hapag-Lloyd is a very old name in passenger shipping — or rather, it's two very old names: The line as we know it today was actually created in 1970 as a merger between the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (Hamburg-American Line, or Hapag) and Norddeutscher Lloyd (North German Lloyd), which had been around since 1847 and 1857, respectively. Now owned by the large travel company TUI AG, Hapag-Lloyd Cruises operates four small and midsize ships that are targeted to four distinct cruise styles: Columbus 2, operating premium mainstream cruises; the 408-passenger Europa, serving the ultra-luxury market; and the 184-passenger Hanseatic and 164-passenger Bremen, offering expedition-style cruises. The line is also building a new ship, the Europa 2, which it says will be designed to provide “a modern lifestyle–oriented version of the fleet’s flagship, the MS Europa.” All cruises on Europa 2 will be fully bilingual and will cater to the English-speaking market. Hapag-Lloyd will produce an English-language brochure in the fall.

The newly named Columbus 2 takes over from the line’s 420-passenger Columbus, which been sailing for the line since her 1997 launch and is scheduled to depart the fleet imminently. Her senior officers and crew will then transition over to Insignia/Columbus 2, ensuring continuity of the cruise experience for Hapag-Lloyd passengers.

MSC Cruises’s newest ship, the 139,400-ton, 3,502-passenger MSC Divina, is one step closer to her debut. This week, the vessel —  a sister ship to MSC Fantasia (2008) and MSC Splendida (2009) — returned from three days of sea trials off the coast of Brittany, France, during which sixty separate tests were performed to judge her maneuverability, speed, sea-keeping abilities, comfort (for example, evident vibration while underway), and the performance of her propulsion systems, navigational equipment, safety equipment, etc. Some 360 people were involved in the tests, including marine, technical, and engineering teams from MSC and the ship’s builder, STX France. According to a press release put out by the line on Monday, “The ship performed to the full satisfaction of the MSC Cruises team.”

Following her trials, Divina returned to the Louis Joubert Lock in Sainte-Nazaire, where further interior construction and testing will be performed continuously until the vessel is officially delivered to the cruise line on May 19. Divina will be christened on May 26 by film legend Sophia Loren, who’s done godmother duties on all the vessels in MSC’s modern fleet.

Guess which cruise line is making a big, big play for the family market? Today, NCL announced that families that book a 2012 cruise between now and May 13 are eligible for what they’re calling the Little Norwegians Explore For Free offer, in which kids 12 years and younger can take shore excursions with their parents/guardians for free, while teens (13–17) pay half price. That’s a heckuva deal, and it applies to all 2012 sailings fleet-wide for all ports of call, excluding only “motorized flight tours” (e.g., flightseeing by plane or helicopter), golf, and excursions to theme parks in Orlando, FL, and the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas. All excursions must be pre-booked before you sail.

The deal follows a recent revamp of NCL’s entire children’s program, and the announcement that the line’s upcoming Norwegian Breakaway, which debuts in April 2013, will have the largest and most elaborate youth facilities in the company’s history.

When the Titanic struck an iceberg on the north Atlantic exactly 100 years ago tomorrow, and sank two and a half hours later, she claimed the lives of 68 percent of the 2,224 people on board. Usually left untold is the fact that the disaster also claimed the lives of 75 percent of the dogs sailing aboard the ship. Twelve are known to have sailed, and only three survived.

Those canine mariners are honored as part of a new exhibition currently running at the Widener University Art Gallery in Chester, Pennsylvania. The main gist of the show is the Philadelphia families affected by the tragedy (including members of the Widener family, for whom the university is named), but it also includes displays on the dogs who were on board. Those who perished included two Airedales belonging to John Jacob Astor; another Airedale and a King Charles Spaniel belonging to coal magnate William Carter; a Fox Terrier belonging to Philadelphia attorney William Dulles; a champion French Bulldog named Gamin de Pycombe, belonging to Robert W. Daniel; a Chow-Chow apparently named Chow-Chow, owned by Harry Anderson; and two dogs of unknown breed: a small toy dog named Frou-Frou, owned by Helen Bishop, and a large dog, possibly a Newfoundland or Great Dane, owned by Ann Isham.

Most of the big dogs were housed in the ship’s kennels, while some of the small dogs were kept surreptitiously by first-class passengers in their staterooms. The survivors were among the latter: a Pekingese owned by Henry Harper (a director of the Harper & Brothers Publishing House, a precursor to Harper & Row and today’s HarperCollins) and two Pomeranians, one belonging to New Yorker Margaret Bechstein Hays and the other owned by Elizabeth Rothschild of Watkins Glen, New York.

A sad image: As the ship was going down, someone thought to open the kennels to give the dogs a fighting chance. Most were last seen running on the rapidly tilting deck. The bodies of some were later recovered from the sea.

“There is such a special bond between people and their pets. For many, they are considered to be family members,” said J. Joseph Edgette, Ph.D., the exhibition’s producer and curator, in a press release. “I don’t think any Titanic exhibit has examined that relationship and recognized those loyal family pets that also lost their lives on the cruise.”

The exhibition is free and open to the public, and runs until May 12. More information is here.

RIP furry friends . . . and of course to all of Titanic’s human victims too.