| IMO | 9106297 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 76,998 GT |
| Length | 259.7 m |
| Beam | 32.2 m |
| Passenger capacity (double) | 1924 |
| Passenger capacity (max) | 2172 |
| Service speed | 21.5 knots |
| Builder | Meyer Werft |
| Hull number | 638 |
| Launched | 1996 |
| Maiden voyage | 1996 |
| Class | Century-class cruise ship |
| Operator | Marella Cruises |
| Status | Active |
| All names | Marella Explorer; Mein Schiff 1; Mein Schiff; Celebrity Galaxy; Galaxy |
Overview
Marella Explorer is a ship of three careers. She was built as Galaxy for Celebrity Cruises, the premium brand of the Royal Caribbean group, and spent twelve years as a Celebrity ship. She then became the founding ship of a new German line — literally Mein Schiff, "My Ship", the first vessel of TUI Cruises — and spent nine years in the German market. Since 2018 she has sailed for Marella Cruises, TUI's British cruise brand, as Marella Explorer. Few hulls illustrate so clearly how the modern cruise industry cascades good ships between its own brands rather than scrapping them.
Built by Meyer Werft at Papenburg in Germany under yard number 638, she is the second and enlarged member of Celebrity's Century class. Her maiden voyage, in December 1996, was documented by the BBC television series The Cruise — the programme that made a star of singer Jane McDonald — which gives her a small but genuine place in British popular culture as well as in cruise history.
Two dataset figures should be read with care. The dataset gives her length as 263.9 metres; her own article gives 259.70 metres. Both are recorded here, the discrepancy is logged, and the article figure is used in the prose. The dataset also omits Celebrity Galaxy from its operator history in sequence terms — its names list does include the name — and the full chain is restored in the table below.
Key specifications
On her article's figures, Marella Explorer measures 76,998 GT — the dataset figure, matching her article — with a length of 259.70 metres, a beam of 32.20 metres and a draught of 7.70 metres. She carries 1,924 passengers, the figure given by both dataset and article, with a crew of 909 on her article's figures. Her installed power is from MAN B&W diesel engines — two nine-cylinder and two six-cylinder units, 29,250 kW combined — driving twin propellers, for a service speed recorded in the dataset as 21.5 knots. She has been registered at Valletta, Malta, since 2008, having begun under the Liberian flag at Monrovia and then the Bahamas at Nassau. Her build cost was put at $320 million.
Design and construction
Celebrity ordered its Century class from Meyer Werft in March 1993, taking an option for additional ships beyond the lead vessel, Century. For the second ship, the design was stretched: Galaxy received a hull 15.4 metres longer than Century's, a completely redesigned galley and pantry arrangement, and, in the passenger areas, a small atrium-like space ahead of the aft lifts that provided an extra bar, extra lounge seating and a sushi bar on successive decks. She is therefore a near-sister rather than an exact sister to Century — a distinction that matters when the class is described.
Her keel was laid on 25 May 1995. She was launched from drydock in May 1996 and delivered to Celebrity on 10 October 1996. After promotional visits on both sides of the Atlantic — Southampton, then Boston, Philadelphia and Port Canaveral — she began commercial service from Port Everglades in Florida.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
She entered service under the single-word name Galaxy, in the style Celebrity then used for its fleet — Century, Galaxy, Mercury, all astronomical, all understated. Her first commercial sailing was a week-long Caribbean cruise from Port Everglades on 21 December 1996. The BBC's cameras were aboard for that maiden season: The Cruise, broadcast in 1998, followed the ship's crew and entertainers, and its success turned both the programme's singer and, to a degree, the ship herself into familiar names in Britain — a full two decades before she would return to the British market under Marella.
In February 2008 Celebrity restyled its fleet names with the company prefix, and Galaxy became Celebrity Galaxy — a pure renaming, with no change of operator, that lasted barely a year before her transfer to TUI.
Career by operator
The dataset's name and operator history, deepened by research, gives a five-name, three-operator career:
| Period | Name | Operator | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1996–2008 | Galaxy | Celebrity Cruises | Delivered 10 October 1996; entered service 21 December 1996 |
| 2008–2009 | Celebrity Galaxy | Celebrity Cruises | Renamed February 2008 under Celebrity's fleet naming scheme |
| 2009–2010 | Mein Schiff | TUI Cruises | Transferred May 2009 after a €50 million refit at Lloyd Werft; renamed 15 May 2009; first ship of the TUI Cruises fleet |
| 2010–2018 | Mein Schiff 1 | TUI Cruises | Renumbered when a second ship joined the fleet |
| 2018–present | Marella Explorer | Marella Cruises | Transferred within the TUI group after a four-week refit at Cádiz; announced first as TUI Explorer, then under the new Marella brand name |
Onboard character
As built for Celebrity, Galaxy embodied the line's 1990s idea of premium cruising: a main dining room seating 1,088 diners in a single sitting, decorated in the Art Deco style borrowed from 1930s ocean liners, a serious art collection, and a restrained, hotel-like atmosphere.
Each transfer since has rewritten that character for a new national market without rebuilding the ship. The 2009 Lloyd Werft conversion for Germany cost about €50 million over 38 days and, most visibly, added balconies to existing outside cabins. The 2018 Marella conversion at Cádiz was a four-week, multi-million-pound makeover for Britain. The pattern is the point: a well-built 1990s hull, successively re-dressed, while the steel and general arrangement endure underneath.
Major refits and incidents
The two defining refits are the 2009 TUI conversion and the 2018 Marella conversion described above. Her incident record includes three documented episodes. On 2 June 2001, departing Amsterdam in heavy northwesterly squalls, Galaxy touched bottom near IJmuiden and badly damaged her port propeller; she returned to Amsterdam, disembarked her passengers and drydocked at Blohm + Voss in Hamburg, where the repair required two spare propeller blades flown in from her sister Mercury in the Caribbean because she carried only two spares of the four needed. She re-entered service on 16 June 2001.
As Mein Schiff 1, she was struck in Bergen on 10 August 2014 by the 76-metre service vessel Princess Marseilles, sustaining minimal damage. Two months later, on 12 October 2014, a fire broke out in the incinerator room on deck 3 on a Barcelona–Palma sailing with more than 2,000 passengers aboard; the crew extinguished it quickly, the theatre show was interrupted, and the ship docked at Palma on schedule the next morning.
Sister ships and class
The Century class comprises three Meyer Werft ships for Celebrity: Century (1995), Galaxy (1996) and Mercury (1997), the latter two being the enlarged version of the design. In one of the neater fleet stories in modern cruising, all three ended up with Marella Cruises: Century became Marella Explorer 2, Galaxy became Marella Explorer, and Mercury — after her own long TUI career as Mein Schiff 2 and Mein Schiff Herz — became Marella Voyager. The class that Celebrity created in the 1990s thus survives, complete, in British service under a single brand.
Fate and where she is now
Marella Explorer is in active service with Marella Cruises, as the dataset and her article agree. No sale or withdrawal is recorded. Her fate to date is not an ending but a demonstration: a 1996 hull, on her third brand and fifth name, still trading because her original design — mid-sized, balcony-rich after conversion, and mechanically conventional — suits the British mid-market as well as it suited American premium cruising and the German market before it. In line with this directory's evergreen policy, no current itinerary is stated.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marella_Explorer