Unfinished and unwanted 9,000-passenger cruise ship to be scrapped

theguardian.com:

What was meant to be one of the world’s largest cruise ships is being prepared for its maiden voyage – to a scrapyard.

Global Dream II, which was designed to hold more than 9,000 passengers, had almost been completed at a shipyard on Germany’s Baltic coast. However, the shipbuilder MV Werften filed for bankruptcy in January 2022 and the administrators cannot find a buyer for Global Dream II.

The German cruise industry magazine An Bord reported that the lower hull of the liner is to be disposed for scrap price.

The administrator Christoph Morgen reportedly told a press conference on Friday that the ship needed to be moved out of MV Werften’s Wismar shipyard by the end of the year because the yard had been sold to Thyssenkrupp’s naval unit, which plans to build military vessels there.

Demand for cruise ships has collapsed since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Global Dream II and its sister ship Global Dream – which is not being scrapped for now – would have been the world’s largest cruise ships by passenger capacity when complete.

At 208,000, tons they would have been jointly the sixth largest cruise ships by size, just behind Royal Caribbean’s five Oasis-class ships.