| IMO | 9000259 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 77,441 GT |
| Length | 261.0 m |
| Beam | 32.25 m |
| Service speed | 22.0 knots |
| Builder | Fincantieri |
| Hull number | 5909 |
| Launched | 1995 |
| Maiden voyage | 1995 |
| Class | Sun-class cruise ship |
| Operator | Peace Boat |
| Status | Active |
| All names | Pacific World; Sun Princess |
Overview
Pacific World is the 1995 Fincantieri-built lead ship of Princess Cruises' Sun class, sailing since 2020 for the Japanese non-governmental organisation Peace Boat. For her first twenty-five years she was Sun Princess, one of the largest cruise ships in the world when she debuted in 1995 and the ship that anchored Princess's expansion in Australia and Japan. Sold during Carnival Corporation's pandemic-era fleet reduction in September 2020, she became Peace Boat's largest-ever vessel, renamed Pacific World and converted in role — if not much in hardware — from a premium cruise ship into a floating platform for educational, peace and sustainability voyages. The dataset renamed this row to Pacific World in its step 1c pass, recognising that the hull's second career had long since eclipsed her build name in currency.
Key specifications
The dataset records her at 77,441 GT, 261.0 m in length, 22.0 knots, Fincantieri hull 5909, IMO 9000259. Her own article refines several figures: length 261.31 m, beam 32.25 m — the dataset's beam field is blank — draught 8.10 m, speed 22.4 knots, capacity 2,010 passengers and crew 924, with diesel-electric plant of 28,000 kW driving twin propellers. Peace Boat's own ship page independently confirms the dataset's headline figures of 77,441 tonnes, 261.3 m length and 32.25 m width, and gives her capacity as 2,419 — a maximum-berth figure rather than the article's standard capacity, which is why both numbers appear in sources. One variant deserves noting: her article's tonnage line also carries a rounded 77,000 GT figure, while its registry-derived sources and the operator both support the dataset's 77,441 GT, which is the figure used here.
Design and construction
She was built by Fincantieri at Monfalcone, Italy, as hull 5909, at a reported cost of US$300 million, and launched on 21 January 1995, completing on 8 November 1995. As the first of the four-ship Sun class, she set the template the class repeated through 2000: a hull of roughly 77,000 GT — very large for 1995 — with a four-storey atrium at its heart and, on Pacific World and her first sister, exterior bridge wings, where the later pair received enclosed wings. The Sun class was Princess's bridge between its earlier Crown class and the much larger Grand class that followed, and its ships were designed for worldwide deployment rather than a single region, a flexibility that later made this hull attractive to an operator planning global voyages.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
She was launched at Monfalcone on 21 January 1995 as Sun Princess, a name with Princess lineage, and was christened by Dorothy Sterling, per CruiseMapper's record of the ship. Her maiden voyage followed on 2 December 1995 — the dataset records maiden voyage only as 1995, and the precise date comes from her article — after completion on 8 November 1995. She debuted in the Caribbean as, at the time, among the largest cruise ships afloat, a status contemporary Princess material and the line's own later farewell release both emphasise. Her registry moved with her career: Monrovia, Liberia (1995–2000), London (2000–2004), Hamilton, Bermuda (2004–2020) and Panama City, Panama, from 2020 under Peace Boat.
Career by operator
| Period | Name | Operator |
|---|---|---|
| 1995–2020 | Sun Princess | Princess Cruises |
| 2020–present | Pacific World | Peace Boat |
Her Princess career had distinct chapters: Caribbean beginnings, Alaska and Panama Canal seasons, then an Australian homeporting from October 2007 that made her a fixture of that market, and in 2013 a pioneering role as the first foreign-flagged cruise ship to offer cruises designed specifically for the Japanese market. She was also a television ship, standing in as the setting of the 1998–99 revival series Love Boat: The Next Wave. The September 2020 sale — announced by Princess on 21 September 2020 as part of Carnival's accelerated removal of less efficient ships — ended that career; Peace Boat acquired her, renamed her Pacific World, and, after a lay-up of more than three years, finally brought her into its service in April 2023.
Onboard character
As built for Princess, she embodied mid-1990s premium cruising: a light-filled, four-storey atrium as the ship's social hinge, a large theatre and lounges arranged around it, and interiors planned for long, varied itineraries rather than short party cruises. Peace Boat's own description of the ship stresses the same bones — nine passenger decks, a spacious theatre, lounges and event halls — repurposed for lectures, language programmes, cultural exchange and conferences at sea. The conversion is best understood as a change of programme rather than of architecture: the atrium, theatre and lounges that sold premium cruises now host the floating-university life that has defined Peace Boat since 1983. Her operator notes a 2018 refurbishment under Princess (below), so the ship Peace Boat received was a recently refreshed 1995 hull rather than a tired one.
Major refits and incidents
Her best-documented refit came in July 2018, when a two-week dry dock under Princess brought a new livery design, a new stateroom category, refreshed shops and other onboard changes, per her article; Peace Boat's ship page likewise dates her refurbishment to 2018. In October 2007 she made the news constructively, becoming the largest ship to that date to pass beneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge, with roughly 2.5 m of vertical clearance at low tide. No major casualty — no fire, grounding or collision — is recorded in her article or in the sources consulted, an unusually clean sheet for a hull of her age and intensity of use. Her longest interruption was not an incident at all but the pandemic: sold in 2020, she spent over three years out of service before her Peace Boat debut in April 2023, as Cruise Industry News reported when she finally sailed from Yokohama on a 108-day global voyage.
Sister ships and class
The Sun class comprised four Fincantieri-built ships: this hull (1995), Dawn Princess (1997), Sea Princess (1998) and Ocean Princess (2000). All four have left Princess, and the class now sails scattered across second careers — the class article lists current operators including Star Cruises, Cheng Zhen Cruises and Seajets alongside Peace Boat — with the ships effectively identical apart from the bridge-wing difference noted above. Pacific World is the class leader and, in Peace Boat service, its largest-capacity survivor in regular global operation. Confusingly, her original name now belongs to a different hull: the 2024 Sphere-class Sun Princess took the name in Princess service, which is precisely why this directory keys the 1995 hull by IMO 9000259 and by her current name.
Fate and where she is now
Pacific World is in active service with Peace Boat, flagged in Panama and based around Yokohama for its programme of global educational voyages; the dataset status of "active" and its operator field of Peace Boat are both confirmed by her article and by Cruise Industry News' report of her April 2023 entry into Peace Boat service. A hull that Carnival judged surplus in 2020 has found, in non-profit hands, a second career as substantial as her first — the largest ship Peace Boat has ever operated, and the platform for voyages it has run, in one ship or another, for over forty years.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_World, https://pbcruise.com/pb_03/facilities, https://cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news/2023/04/pacific-world-enters-service-for-peace-boat/