B/M Vicente PucholCompañía Transmediterránea
Advertising postcard published by Fotografía Industrial, S.A. (1969).
The Vicente Puchol ship was built in the shipyards of the Unión Naval de Levante, in Valencia, launched on 27 April 1968 and delivered to the Transmediterránea Company on 8 January 1969. It was a mixed cargo and passenger ship, with a capacity for 400 people and 60 cars. She set sail from Valencia, on her maiden voyage to Ibiza, on 11 January 1969 and continued sailing on bound for Alicante. She later covered the lines between Ibiza, Barcelona, Valencia and Alicante, and later the lines from Malaga and from Almería to Melilla. In 1980, the Vicente Puchol was de facto withdrawn from the active fleet of the Transmediterránea Company, being used exclusively in occasional services. After some unsuccessful sales attempts, on 14 January 1986 it left Ceuta bound for Palma de Mallorca, where it was dismantled at the Levante dock and in December 1986 it was sold to the Greek shipowner Attika Shipping Co., who used it for cruises in the Aegean Sea under the name Arcadia. In 1988 she passed into the hands of the Italian operator Star Lauro who renamed her Angelina Lauro and used her for cruises between Venice and the Aegean. In 1992, recovered by Attika, she was chartered by Central de Cruceros for cruises to Seville, on the occasion of EXPO92, with departures from Barcelona and Valencia. In March 2000 she was chartered by Great Lakes Cruises Inc. to cruise the Great Lakes of Canada and the United States during the summer season of 2001. In 2002, after the suspension of payments by Great Lakes Cruises, on 14 July, the Arcadia was seized and moved to Montreal to be sold at auction. On 6 December of the same year, she was auctioned and reacquired by Attika Shipping through its instrumental subsidiary Anaconda Maritime Inc., which renamed the vessel Caribic Star for Caribbean cruises. Later, under the name Coco Explorer 2, it passed into Taiwanese and Filipino hands, to date.
Traveler's collection.
