| IMO | 8006397 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 1,523 GT |
| Length | 70.0 m |
| Beam | 10 m |
| Passenger capacity (double) | 106 |
| Crew | 34 |
| Service speed | 12 knots |
| Launched | 1988 |
| Maiden voyage | 1988 |
| Operator | Cruceros Skorpios |
| Status | Active |
Overview
MV Skorpios II is a small Chilean cruise ship owned and operated by Cruceros Skorpios, the family company that created glacier cruising in northern Patagonia. Built in 1988 at the company's own shipyard in Chile, she is a 70 m, 1,523 GT vessel built to ice-class standards for the fjords, channels and archipelagos south of Puerto Montt, and for nearly four decades she has worked a single, famous route: the Chonos route through the Chonos Archipelago to the San Rafael Glacier. She is the middle ship of the three purpose-built Skorpios cruise ships — successor to the pioneering Skorpios I of 1978 and larger fleetmate of Skorpios III of 1995 — and, with a capacity of about 106 passengers, the largest of them. Her dataset row is thin — no builder, beam, capacity, crew or speed is recorded — so the researched figures from the ship's article and the operator's own ship description are given below, with conflicts flagged rather than smoothed over.
Key specifications
From the ship's article and the operator's published ship description: Skorpios II measures 1,523 GT (dataset figure, matching), about 70 m in length, with a beam of 10 m and a draught of 2.87 m — her shallow draught being essential to her fjord work — and a displacement of 1,210 tonnes. She was built under SOLAS and IMO rules to American Bureau of Shipping classification, class number 890.56.66, A1 ice class. Her installed power is 1,497 hp on twin screws, giving a speed of 12 knots, with a reported autonomy of 2,000 miles. Capacity is up to 106 passengers in 53 double cabins (the operator's description), distributed over four to five decks depending on how the decks are counted; some operator-derived listings give 55 cabins and a maximum of 130 passengers, which appears to count additional berths. Crew is 34. She is registered at Puerto Montt, Chile, registration number 2567 with the Chilean maritime authority, call sign CBKP.
Design and construction
Skorpios II was built in 1988 at the Skorpios shipyard in Chile — the operator building its own ship, in its own yard, for its own route, a vertically integrated model almost unknown in modern cruising. The company behind her, founded by Constantino Kochifas Cárcamo, had begun carrying passengers to the San Rafael Glacier in 1976 aboard a small cargo ship, the Mimi, with just 12 passengers, and in 1978 built Skorpios I, Chile's first purpose-built tourist cruise ship. Skorpios II was the scale-up of that proven concept: a steel, ice-classed expedition vessel sized to the channels she would work — small enough for narrow fjords and close glacier approaches, large enough for a full hotel operation of dining room, lounges and bars for just over a hundred guests.
Her design priorities are written in her numbers: ice class A1 for brash ice and iceberg water at the glacier; a draught under 3 m for the shallow channels of the archipelagos; twin screws and modest power for manoeuvrability rather than speed; and open deck space maximised for viewing, because on this ship the landscape is the entertainment.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
The name Skorpios — "scorpion" in Greek, reflecting the Kochifas family's Greek origins — has been the company's brand since its first passenger voyages, and the ship was named as the second of the line: Skorpios II. She was launched, christened and entered service in 1988, per her article, taking over and enlarging the San Rafael Glacier route that Skorpios I had opened a decade earlier. No separate naming ceremony is documented in the sources used here; for a company-owned ship from a company-owned yard, launch and entry into the family fleet were a single event. The route she inaugurated her career on — the Chonos route — remains her employment today, and is treated in the career section rather than as a current itinerary.
Career by operator
Skorpios II has had one name, one owner and one operator throughout her life.
| Period | Name | Operator |
|---|---|---|
| 1988–present | Skorpios II | Cruceros Skorpios |
Her career is a study in continuity. When Skorpios I was withdrawn in 2008, after more than 600 voyages to San Rafael, Skorpios II maintained the original route alone; when the company opened its second route, the Kaweskar route from Puerto Natales to the Southern Ice Field glaciers in 2003, that work went to Skorpios III, and Skorpios II stayed on the Chonos route from Puerto Montt. The company itself has grown around her into one of the larger shipping groups of the Chilean south — cargo ships, terminals and its own shipyard alongside the two cruise ships — while the ship's own employment has not changed in kind since 1988.
Onboard character
The onboard character is that of the classic small expedition ship, Chilean style: wooden panelling and traditional fittings, picture windows, and an open ship in which passengers have access to areas — bridge, galley, even engine room — that large ships close off. Two lounges and a single ample dining room serve the whole passenger complement at once, and the social centre of the ship is that dining room: traditional international cooking built around the products of the Chilean south — king crab, giant mussels, salmon, conger eel and Juan Fernández lobster among them — with Chilean wines and the company's traditional open bar. Excursions at the San Rafael Glacier are made from the ship by smaller boats among the icebergs to the glacier face. There is no casino, no theatre programme and no formal dress code tradition; the ship was built to look at Patagonia, and everything aboard is arranged to that end.
Major refits and incidents
The ship's article records a remodel of her cabins, bathrooms and dining room completed in 2010; operator-derived sources variously date the remodelling to 2010 or 2012, and the later date may refer to completion of the same programme across the fleet. No other major refit is documented in the sources used here, and no casualty, grounding or fire is recorded for the ship — a clean record across nearly four decades of fjord navigation, in waters where the parent company's route knowledge is generational. The loss of her predecessor is a fleet event rather than an incident of this hull: Skorpios I was decommissioned in 2008 and finally scrapped on 25 October 2018.
Sister ships and class
Skorpios II has no identical sister. Her fleetmates are bookends rather than sisters: Skorpios I (1978), the 1978 pioneer of the San Rafael route, smaller than Skorpios II and scrapped in 2018; and Skorpios III (1995), built to the same operator's-yard model at the same 70 m length and 10 m beam but with a deeper draught (3.30 m), a capacity of 90 passengers in 45 cabins, and employment on the Kaweskar route from Puerto Natales. The three ships share a design philosophy — ice-classed, shallow-draught, purpose-built for Chilean fjord cruising by the company that operates them — rather than a common hull design.
Fate and where she is now
Skorpios II remains in active service with Cruceros Skorpios, the status recorded in the dataset — one of the longest continuously held employments of any ship in this directory: the same operator, the same home waters and substantially the same route since 1988. No sale, replacement or retirement has been announced in the sources used here. In a fleet and an industry defined by churn, she is the opposite case: a ship built by her owners for one job, still doing it.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Skorpios_II, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruceros_Skorpios