Prinsendam (II) Historical

She was built in 1988 by Wärtsilä in Helsinki for Royal Viking Line, one of the most prestigious cruise brands of the twentieth century, carrying approximately 740 guests at 37,845 gross tons. Royal Viking Sun was her first name. When the brand folded into Cunard and then Seabourn, she became Seabourn Sun. When Holland America acquired her in 2002, she became the Prinsendam — inheriting a name that carried its own history, from the 1973 ship that had burned in the Gulf of Alaska with every soul saved.

She was the smallest ship in the HAL fleet by a considerable margin throughout her years there. That was the point. At 37,845 gross tons she could navigate the Geirangerfjord in Norway, turn into the smaller channels of the Greek islands, and take a Panama Canal transit with room to spare on both sides. The ports available to her were unavailable to any of her fleet siblings. Passengers who chose her did so specifically for that access — for the places that required a smaller ship than the one HAL usually built.

The interior, shaped by three decades of high-end cruise service, was quiet and particular. The public rooms were scaled for 740 people, not 2,500, which meant the Explorer's Bar had enough space to hear the person across from you. The ship had been built for a level of service and never really left it, regardless of whose name was on the funnel.

Four names. One character. Holland America retired her in the mid-2010s. Some ships are not replaceable. She was one of them.

— In the Wake editorial

I have been to Norway three times. The third time, I specifically booked the Prinsendam because I had been told — by a friend who had done it — that she could go deep into the Nærøyfjord, and that the difference between entering a fjord and watching it from a tender landing was the difference between being there and observing it.

The Nærøyfjord is the narrowest navigable fjord in Norway — about two and a half kilometers at its widest, with granite walls rising up to fourteen hundred meters on either side. Larger ships cannot enter it. The Prinsendam could. We went in on a Tuesday morning in July, and I was on the bow deck an hour before we arrived and I did not go inside until we had come out the other end.

The walls were close enough that you could see individual waterfalls and individual trees and the farms cut into the rock, the white farmhouses with the red barns. I had a cup of coffee I had forgotten about. A woman next to me on the rail said, very quietly, "I don't know what to do with this." I understood exactly what she meant. There is a kind of landscape that requires you to simply stand still and receive it without doing anything else.

We had dinner that night in the dining room and everyone was subdued in the way people get after they have seen something that required a smaller ship than the one they usually book. I was glad I had chosen this one.

— Margaret L.