Cruise West was an American small-ship cruise line based in Seattle, Washington. It grew out of Chuck West's Alaska tour business, and dated its own history to 1973. Cruise West helped create the modern market for close-up cruising in Alaska, operating United States-flagged vessels small enough to work the Inside Passage and call where large cruise ships could not, and for a time it was the largest small-ship operator in Alaska. Its fleet was built up from secondhand American coastal ships, most of them renamed under a house system of Spirit of names. The line ceased operations in September 2010, after 64 years of family business, when efforts to sell it failed. The three entries below are therefore historical, and are kept in this directory because the hulls themselves have longer stories. Pacific Explorer was a small expedition ship Cruise West chartered, rather than owned, from Costa Rica's Temptress Cruises, while Spirit of Alaska and Spirit of Columbia were among its small Spirit ships, hulls that passed to other Alaska operators after 2010.
The fleet — 3 ships in this directory
Spirit of Alaska
launch year not recorded · Active
Spirit of Columbia
launch year not recorded · Active
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_West, https://www.cruisecritic.com/articles/defunct-cruise-lines-history?stay=1&posfrom=3