page_title: MS Sea Diamond
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: MS Sea Diamond / History
caption_attribution_description: English: M/S Birka Princess departing Stockholm, Sweden, sometime in the mid-90's.
context_page_description: MS Sea Diamond was a cruise ship operated by Louis Hellenic Cruise Lines. She was built in 1984 by Valmet, Finland for Birka Line as Birka Princess. The ship sank on 5 April 2007, after running aground near the Greek island of Santorini the previous day, leaving two passengers missing and presumed dead.
context_section_description: Originally named Birka Princess, the ship was built by the Finnish state-owned company Valmet at their Vuosaari shipyard in Helsinki at a cost of 350 million Finnish markka (€58,9 million). She was delivered in 1986 and operated for Birka Line in the Baltic Sea cruiseferry market, sailing on 24-hour cruises between Stockholm in Sweden and the Åland Islands in Finland. Between 1990 and 2003 she also made longer cruises around the Baltic Sea during the summer season.
  Between 1992 and 2002, the ship's exterior was used to portray the fictional ship MS Freja in the Swedish TV soap opera Rederiet.
  As built, she had a small car deck, with space for 80 passenger cars and a ramp on the port side in the rear. Like most cruiseferries in the Baltic Sea, she was built to ice class 1A.
  In 1999 she was extensively refitted at Lloyd Werft in Germany at a cost of approximately US$26 million. The fore superstructure was extended and streamlined and 62 new passenger cabins were added, including a new deck of cabins above the bridge. In October 2004, when the new MS Birka Paradise was delivered, the Birka Princess started making two-night cruises from Stockholm to Turku, Helsinki and Tallinn, as well one weekly 24-hour cruise from Stockholm to Mariehamn. The new itineraries proved largely unsuccessful, and on 2 January 2006, the ship was laid up in Mariehamn and put up for sale.
  In February 2006 she was sold to the Cyprus-based Louis Cruise Lines for US$35 million (€29.4 million). As built, the ship only had an indoor pool in the sauna section on deck 2 in the bow of the ship. A new outdoor swimming pool was installed and the sundeck area increased at Turku Repair Yard, Naantali. She entered service in the Mediterranean Sea as the second former Birka Line ship in the Louis Cruise Lines fleet, after MS Princesa Marissa, the former MS Prinsessan/Finnhansa. After the sale she was registered in Valletta, Malta. She changed flags in late 2006. At the time of her sinking she was owned by Elona Maritime Ltd, a company based in Malta, but registered at Piraeus, Greece.
  Artwork on the ship included two reliefs by ceramic artist Åsa Hellman.
caption: MS Birka Princess in her original exterior appearance and livery.
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