Freewinds

Overview

Freewinds is one of the most unusual vessels in this directory: a 1968 Finnish-built cruise ship, the first cruise ship ever built in Finland, which since the mid-1980s has served not a cruise line but a church. Built as Bohème for Commodore Cruise Line's Caribbean services, she was bought in 1985 by a company affiliated with the Church of Scientology and converted into a seagoing retreat and training centre — the venue, within that church's structure, for its most advanced courses. She has now spent far longer in that second career than she ever did as a commercial cruise ship. The dataset's headline dates require immediate correction in prose: it records a launch year of 1986, but the ship was launched on 12 February 1968; 1986 belongs to the era of her Scientology refit and re-entry, not her construction. The dataset's maiden-voyage date of 7 December 1968 is the correct service entry — of Bohème.

Key specifications

Wärtsilä's Turku shipyard built her as hull 1161. The dataset gives 9,780 GT, a length of 134.32 m and a speed of 20.0 knots, all consistent with her reference article's "as Freewinds" characteristics. Two figures diverge. The dataset's beam of 19.91 m conflicts with the article's 21.04 m, which is also the beam of the ship as built; the article's figure is followed here. And the dataset's capacity of 540 is the ship's as-built passenger figure from 1968; in her Freewinds configuration the article gives 360 passengers, the reduction reflecting her conversion to a residential training vessel with extensive course and accommodation space. As built she measured 10,328 GRT, with two Wärtsilä-Sulzer diesels of about 10,444 kW combined driving twin propellers.

Design and construction

Her origins were not in cruising at all. She was ordered by Sweden's Lion Ferry as the second of a pair of car and passenger ferries for a Bremerhaven–Harwich service, to a design shared with Finnlines' Finnhansa class then building in Helsinki, with winter cruising in mind. Lion Ferry cancelled the second ferry when traffic disappointed, and the half-complete hull was sold to Wallenius Lines, which had her completed instead as a pure cruise ship: cabins replaced the car decks in the design, the superstructure was reshaped for sun decks suited to warm climates, and although she retained her ferry lineage she never received bow or stern doors. Delivered to Wallenius's Bremen subsidiary on 12 November 1968 and named Bohème, after Puccini's opera in Wallenius's operatic naming tradition, she holds the distinction of being the first cruise ship built in Finland — a landmark for the Finnish yard industry that later produced many of the world's largest cruise ships.

Naming, launch and maiden voyage

Launched at Turku on 12 February 1968 as Bohème, she was delivered that November, registered at Bremerhaven, and entered service on 7 December 1968 with Commodore Cruise Line in the Caribbean. She carried the name for seventeen years. In 1985 ownership passed to San Donato Properties, a company affiliated with the Church of Scientology, and after conversion she emerged under her second and current name, Freewinds — a name she has now carried for around four decades, far longer than the opera title she was launched with.

Career by operator

The Bohème years were a conventional early-Caribbean career for a ship of her size: Miami-based cruising under Wallenius ownership until 1981, then a less settled period under new ownership with charter work for several small operators. The 1985 sale changed her function entirely. As Freewinds she became the Church of Scientology's ship — a controlled, self-contained environment used for religious retreats, conventions and the delivery of the church's highest-level course, Operating Thetan VIII, which is given only aboard the ship. The dataset accordingly lists her operator history as the Church of Scientology and International Shipping Partners, the professional ship-management company associated with her operation.

Onboard character

As Bohème she was a typical late-1960s cruise ship: intimate in scale, with 540 berths, generous open deck for her size and interiors fitted for Caribbean itineraries. The conversion to Freewinds kept that small-ship skeleton but changed its purpose. Course rooms, counselling spaces and long-stay accommodation replaced much of the conventional cruise plant; the article's reduced capacity of 360 reflects a vessel arranged for residents on programmes lasting weeks rather than holidaymakers on seven-night rotations. She also hosts public-facing events in her Caribbean home region, including concerts for residents of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, as part of the ship's community programme. The result is a ship that looks like a period cruise liner and functions like a floating religious campus — there is nothing else quite like her in service.

Major refits and incidents

The great refit of her life was the 1985–86 conversion from cruise ship to Scientology centre. Her most serious documented episode came decades later: in April 2008 the ship was sealed and refurbishment work stopped after "extensive contamination" with blue asbestos was found aboard — a legacy material in a 1968 hull undergoing intrusive refit work. The affair drew international attention because of her owner's profile, but by June 2009 her classification listing again showed her in operation, and she marked twenty-one years of Caribbean operation that month. No collision, grounding or fire defines her record in the sources consulted.

Sister ships and class

Her reference article classifies her with the Finnhansa class of passenger ships, the Finnlines ferries whose design hers shared. Her nearest relative by origin is Prins Hamlet, the first Lion Ferry ship from the same Turku programme, delivered in 1966 for the ferry service Bohème never joined. She is thus a ferry design completed as a cruise ship — an ancestry visible in her hull form — and no true cruise sister was ever built to her exact configuration.

Fate and where she is now

Freewinds remains in service in her Scientology role, a 1968 hull approaching six decades afloat — an exceptional lifespan explained by her second career: a single devoted owner, a sheltered operating pattern and a function for which no replacement has ever been sought. The dataset lists her status as active, and nothing in the sources consulted contradicts that. She is, by some distance, the oldest ship in this batch still working, and the only one whose passengers are also, in effect, her congregation.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freewinds