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HISTORY
 SS Raffaello was an
Italian ocean liner built in the early 1960s for Italian
Line by the Cantieri Riuniti dell'Adriatico, Trieste. She
was one of the last ships to be built primarily for liner
service across the North Atlantic. Her sister ship was the
SS Michelangelo.
Design and construction
In 1958, the Italian Line began planning new ships to
replace the ageing MS Saturnia and MS Vulcania. Competition
from jet airliners had not yet had a huge impact in the
Mediterranean area and jobs were needed for Italian sailors
and shipyard workers, so constructing new superliners seemed
like an attractive idea to Italian Line executives.
Consequently, the new ships grew from the originally planned
35,000 tons to nearly 46,000 tons. They were the largest
ships built in Italy since SS Rex and SS Conte di Savoia in
the 1930s.
Unable to foresee the change that lay ahead for the shipping
business, the Italian Line planned the ships as true ocean
liners, divided into three classes. Little thought was given
to cruising as an alternative use. Oddly even for a liner,
all cabins below A-deck were windowless. But on the
technical side the ships were among the most advanced of
their time. They featured retractable stabiliser wings,
highly modernised engineering panels, and many other
advantages. The funnels, in particular, were specially
designed to keep smoke and soot from the rear decks. The
funnel design proved to be highly effective, and it is a
testament to their design that most funnels in modern
passenger ships are built along similar principles.
The new ships' interiors were in the Art Deco style so often
associated with liners. The Raffaello's interiors were
designed by architects such as Michele and Giancarlo Busiri
Vici, who had not worked on liner interiors before. As a
result, the Raffaello gained highly futuristic, more
distinctive, but more sterile interiors than her sister.
Despite being planned as identical sisters, the Raffaello
was 0.7 meters (2.3 feet) shorter, 0.40 meters (1.3 feet)
wider, and some 22 tons larger than her sister.
Service
It took five years to finish the Raffaello, a long time even
by the standards of the day. The ship was further delayed
when stern vibrations were discovered during the first sea
trials. The ship's propellers and transmission system were
modified to eliminate the vibrations. The modifications were
successful and the ship was finally ready for service in
July 1965. Senior Captain Oscar Ribari commanded her on the
maiden voyage. The passengers included Italian
Senate-president Cesare Merzagora and his wife, the ship's
godmother.
In 1966 the Raffaello hosted two unusual passengers for an
ocean liner: she carried two Spider 1600 cars bound for
exhibition in the United States. The cars were even driven
on the ship's first-class lido decks, a first for an ocean
liner. 1969 saw Raffaello perform in the Italian film Amore
mio aiutami, made in part to promote the two ships (despite
the film officially being set on board the Raffaello, it was
filmed on board both ships). In 1970 Raffaello became the
first ship whose theatre stage was converted into a skating
rink and skating shows were performed for passengers. In
1970 the ship suffered the most serious accident of her
career when, under command of Senior Captain Luigi Oneto,
she collided with a Norwegian oil tanker off the south coast
of Spain in May 1970. No lives were lost.
Although Raffaello was the larger of the two sisters, and
her interiors more distinctive, she was always the less
important sister in the eyes of Italian Line executives. As
a result, when the transatlantic traffic started declining
due to competition from air traffic, the Raffaello was sent
cruising in order to make more money while the Michelangelo
kept doing crossings. But she was not very well suited for
cruising. Although she did have a large amount of open deck
space, she was too large, her cabins too small, and most of
them too spartan for demanding cruise passengers.
Sale to Iran
The Italian Line decided to withdraw the Raffaello in April
1975, after the Italian Government announced that it would
not further subsidize the ship (by 1975, it was paying 100
million lire per day, or about $151,500 at the then current
exchange rate, to keep it sailing). Initially laid up in
Genoa and later in La Spezia near the scrapyard, the
Raffaello and her sister (which joined her in July of the
same year), were inspected by several potential buyers such
as Norwegian Cruise Line, Costa Amatori, Chandris Group, and
Home Lines. The last even made a serious offer to buy the
ships, despite large rebuilding costs, but the Italia Line
rejected the offer.
In 1976 the Shah of Iran emerged as a buyer the Italian Line
could accept. The former flagships of Italy that had cost a
total of $90 million in 1965, were sold for $4 million a
decade later. Raffaello made her final journey late in the
same year from La Spezia into Bushehr, where she served as
floating barracks for the next seven years.
In 1978 plans emerged to resurrect the Michelangelo and
Raffaello as cruise ships. The Raffaello would have become
Ciro il Grande (named after ancient Achaemenid ruler Cyrus
the Great), a luxury cruiser accommodating 1300 passengers.
But Italian specialists sent to evaluate the ships'
condition realised the ships were too decrepit to make
reconstruction financially viable. As a result Raffaello
stayed in her moorings. She was heavily damaged and looted
during the Islamic revolution in 1979.
In 1983 plans were again made to bring the sisters back into
service as cruise ships. But the Raffaello had been hit by a
torpedo during the Iraq-Iran War in 1983 and partially sank
in shallow waters outside Bushehr. Some time later her wreck
was rammed by an Iranian cargo ship. Local divers further
looted the hull in subsequent years.
As of 2006, the Raffaello's hull remained partially
submerged, and there have been reports of plans to scrap
her. One source indicates that she is not visible from the
surface, but her position (28°49′0.24″N 50°52′36.58″E) is
marked by warning buoys. |
