Many long-time cruisers may have sailed on the 38-year-old cruise ship. Launched in 1968, the Orient Queen was originally built as NCL's Starward. NCL kept the Starward until 1995 when she was sold to Festival Cruises and renamed Bolero. Festival Cruises went bankrupt in 2004 and the cruise ship was sold to a Lebanese company, Abou Merhi Cruises, who renamed her Orient Queen. After a massive refit, she began cruises from Beirut in the spring of 2005. For the winter 2005-2006 season she repositioned to Dubai for a series of cruises from there. Prior to the recent conflict, the Orient Queen had started the 2006 summer season and was operating a week long Mediterranean cruise roundtrip from Beirut every Tuesday. Ports of call included Port Said, Limassol, Rhodes, Marmaris, and Antalya.
The U.S. is not the only country using cruise ships based in the eastern Mediterranean to evacuate its citizens from Lebanon. France hired the Iera Petra, a Greek cruise ship that can carry over 1,000 passengers, and a 650-passenger Norwegian ferry to help move its citizens and other Europeans to Cyprus. Canadian officials leased six cruise ships, each with a capacity of 600 to 900 passengers, to evacuate Canadian citizens from Beirut to Cyprus starting on Wednesday.
How quickly things can change. The Abou Merhi Web site is still advertising cruises from Beirut on the Orient Queen.
On Wednesday, U.S. government officials announced plans to also use the Rahmah, a 1,400-passenger private Saudi-owned ship, for evacuating citizens from Beirut..