Hondius

Overview

Hondius is a Dutch expedition cruise ship owned and operated by Oceanwide Expeditions, a small company based in Vlissingen in the Netherlands that specialises in expedition-style voyages to the Arctic and Antarctic. Delivered in 2019, she was Oceanwide's first purpose-built new ship after years of operating chartered or converted second-hand tonnage, and according to her owner she is the world's first-registered Polar Class 6 ice-strengthened cruise ship. At just 6,603 gross tons and carrying around 170 passengers, she sits at the opposite end of the cruise industry from the floating resorts: everything about the ship is arranged around getting passengers off the ship and onto the ice, the water and the shore as efficiently as possible. She is named for Jodocus Hondius (1563–1612), the Flemish cartographer whose name is bound up with the great age of Dutch map-making — a fitting namesake for a ship whose work is exploration rather than entertainment.

Key specifications

The dataset records Hondius at 6,603 GT, 107.6 metres long overall and 17.6 metres in beam, built by Brodosplit at Split in Croatia as hull number 484, with IMO number 9818709. Her register details fill out the picture: a draught of about 5.36 metres, net tonnage of 2,057 and deadweight of 1,154 tonnes. Propulsion is by two Anglo Belgian Corporation 12-cylinder diesel engines of 2,130 kW each, geared to a single controllable-pitch propeller, giving a service speed of 15 knots; bow and stern thrusters allow her to hold station without anchoring during shore landings. Her hull and propulsion are strengthened to Polar Class 6, the category intended for summer and autumn operation in medium first-year ice that may include old ice inclusions. The dataset leaves passenger capacity, crew and speed blank; the ship's own published figures, given in the sections below, are 170 passengers in 80 cabins, with 57 crew plus 13 expedition guides and a doctor.

Design and construction

Oceanwide ordered the ship from Brodosplit in late 2016 — the order was announced in November of that year — at a reported cost of around €100 million. First steel was cut on 22 August 2017, the keel was laid on 11 December 2017, and the hull was launched on 10 June 2018. (The dataset's "launched 2019" field appears to record her completion year instead; the discrepancy is logged in the batch notes.) The completed vessel was delivered on 22 May 2019. The design brief was unusual for a modern cruise ship: a Polar Code-compliant expedition platform with a strengthened hull, an indoor Zodiac boarding platform so passengers can embark the inflatable landing craft under cover, and two separate gangways to speed shore operations. Expedition practicality extends to the energy systems, which use LED lighting, steam heating and biodegradable paints and lubricants to reduce environmental impact in sensitive polar waters.

Naming, launch and maiden voyage

The name Hondius honours the cartographer Jodocus Hondius, who bought the plates of Mercator's atlas and republished it in 1606 as the Mercator–Hondius atlas, one of the landmarks of Dutch golden-age cartography. Oceanwide has continued the cartographic theme across its fleet — her later sister is named for Hondius's son-in-law and collaborator, Johannes Janssonius. The ship was launched at Split on 10 June 2018 and delivered just under a year later. Her maiden voyage began on 3 June 2019, departing Vlissingen for Spitsbergen in the Norwegian Arctic — an appropriately polar debut for a ship designed from the keel up for ice-strengthened expedition work rather than warm-water cruising.

Career by operator

Hondius has had a single owner-operator throughout her career, so her name and operator table is short:

Her career pattern has been expedition cruising in the two polar regions, with the ship spending seasons in the Arctic and in Antarctic and sub-Antarctic waters. In December 2019 she took part in the search for the Chilean Air Force C-130 transport aircraft that disappeared over the Drake Passage; she was the closest ship to the position where the aircraft vanished from radar, some 11 nautical miles away, and her crew and passengers assisted in the search for several hours. In March 2026 Oceanwide signed a letter of intent for two further Hondius-class vessels with hybrid sail propulsion, planned for launch in 2029 and 2030 — an indication that the design is regarded within the company as the template for its future fleet.

Onboard character

The onboard character of Hondius is defined by deliberate restraint. Interiors are described as cosy and classically conceived in mid-century modern décor rather than resort style, and the public rooms are few and functional: a dining room, a lecture room that occupies a full deck for multilingual presentations, and an observation lounge. Cabins are all outside cabins — 80 of them in eight categories, from four-berth staterooms to grand suites with private balconies. There is no casino-and-waterpark layer to the ship at all; the defining "amenity" is the expedition infrastructure — the fleet of Zodiac inflatables, the twin gangways and the sheltered indoor boarding platform that together let the whole passenger complement get ashore quickly when weather and wildlife opportunities appear. On a ship of this size, the destination is the entertainment, and the design accepts that completely.

Major refits and incidents

As a young ship, Hondius has had no major refit, but she has one major incident in her record. In April–May 2026 an outbreak of hantavirus — subsequently confirmed as the Andes virus — occurred on board during a voyage that had departed Ushuaia, Argentina, on 1 April 2026. Three people died and others were seriously ill. The ship was placed under isolation, anchored off the Cape Verde Islands in early May with passengers unable to disembark, and reached Tenerife on 10 May, where passengers were flown home. She arrived at Rotterdam on 18 May 2026, where the 27 people remaining on board were quarantined and the ship was disinfected. The outbreak received worldwide news coverage and is the subject of its own reference articles; the episode stands as the most serious health incident recorded aboard a modern expedition cruise ship. The dataset continues to list the ship as active and in service.

Sister ships and class

Hondius has one direct sister: Janssonius, ordered from Brodosplit on the day Hondius was delivered and launched into service in 2021. The two ships are near-identical in dimensions and tonnage — the dataset likewise records Janssonius at 6,603 GT and 107.6 metres — and share the same Polar Class 6 expedition brief. They are not part of a wider industry class design; the type is Oceanwide's own, developed with Brodosplit for the company's polar programme, and the two eco-sail Hondius-class vessels announced in 2026 are described as an iteration of the same design with additional sustainability features including hybrid sail propulsion.

Fate and where she is now

There is no "fate" to record yet in the usual sense: Hondius remains an active expedition cruise ship in the Oceanwide Expeditions fleet, listed as operating in the frozen dataset with status "active". Her career to date divides into three chapters — a pioneering debut in 2019 as the first-registered Polar Class 6 cruise ship, a steady run of Arctic and Antarctic expedition seasons alongside her sister Janssonius, and the grave interruption of the 2026 hantavirus outbreak, after which the ship was quarantined and disinfected at Rotterdam. For a directory of ships she is best understood as a marker of where small-ship cruising went in the 2010s: away from scale and spectacle, and toward ice-classed, activity-led vessels built to land a hundred and seventy people on the most remote shores on earth.

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Hondius; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Hondius_hantavirus_outbreak