| IMO | 7904889 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 9,570 GT |
| Length | 139.3 m |
| Beam | 17.5 m |
| Builder | Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft |
| Hull number | 163 |
| Launched | 1980 |
| Status | Laid up |
| All names | Dream Goddess; Berlin; FTI Berlin; Spirit of Adventure; Orange Melody; Princess Mahsuri |
Overview
This guide is about the first Saga ship called Spirit of Adventure — not the 2021 Meyer Werft newbuild of the same name, which has its own entry in this directory. This Spirit of Adventure was a small German cruise ship built in 1980 as Berlin for Peter Deilmann, famous in Germany as the original star of the ZDF television series Das Traumschiff. Saga bought her in 2005 and, after a season chartered out as Orange Melody, operated her from 2006 to 2012 under the Spirit of Adventure name for its more adventurous, younger-leaning cruise brand. She then went back to the German market as Berlin again, survived the collapse of her operator in 2020, and — against expectations of scrap — was sold for a further refit and a new life in Asia.
The dataset row for her is the emptiest in this batch: no IMO, no tonnage, no dimensions, no builder, and a "launched" date of 2006 that is actually her Saga service-entry year. Almost everything below therefore comes from research, and the dataset's gaps and errors are logged with this batch's notes.
Key specifications
From her ship histories: IMO 7904889 — absent from the dataset — built by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft at Kiel, yard number 163. As completed in 1980 she measured 7,812 GRT and 122.5 m in length; after her 1986 lengthening she measured 9,570 GT and 139.3 m, with a beam of 17.5 m and a draught of 4.82 m. Speed is given as 18 knots. Capacity was 330 passengers as built, 420 after lengthening, and 352 in her Saga configuration, where doubles were converted to singles. She is a twin-screw diesel ship. None of these figures is in the dataset, which carries no specifications for her at all.
Design and construction
Her keel was laid on 4 September 1979 at HDW's Kiel yard, she was launched on 12 January 1980 and she was completed on 27 June 1980, delivered to Peter Deilmann interests. She was a compact, traditional small cruise ship — her original passenger complement was said to have been based on roughly a jumbo jet's load — with an ice-strengthened hull, aimed at worldwide cruising for the German market. Her defining structural event came at the end of 1986, when Nobiskrug at Rendsburg lengthened her by 16.8 metres, inserting a new mid-body section that took her from 122.5 m to 139.3 m and raised her capacity from 330 passengers in 150 cabins to 420 in 210 cabins. Few ships of her size were ever stretched; the surgery is central to her identity.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
She was launched as Berlin — the name she has returned to repeatedly — and entered service in 1980. Her name history, in order, runs: Berlin (1980), Princess Mahsuri on charter (1982–1985; the dataset spells the name "Mahsuri," and variants including "Masuhri" circulate), Berlin again (1985–2005), Orange Melody on charter (2005), Spirit of Adventure (2006–2012), FTI Berlin (2012–2014), Berlin again (2014–2020), Dream Goddess (from 2020), and Berlin Oceanis for her Asian relaunch. The dataset's name list captures only four of these and misses both her FTI and post-2020 names entirely.
Career by operator
| Period | Name | Operator |
|---|---|---|
| 1980–1982, 1985–2004 | Berlin | Peter Deilmann Cruises |
| 1982–1985 | Princess Mahsuri | Chartered — Singapore-based operation |
| 2005 | Orange Melody | Metropolis Tur (charter from Saga) |
| 2006–2012 | Spirit of Adventure | Saga Cruises (Spirit of Adventure Cruises) |
| 2012–2014 | FTI Berlin | FTI Cruises |
| 2014–2020 | Berlin | FTI Cruises |
| 2020–2024 | Dream Goddess | Dreamliner Cruises (largely laid up) |
| 2025– | Berlin Oceanis | Malaysian operation, refit at Ningde, China |
In outline: Deilmann's ocean-cruising pioneer until the end of 2004; laid up at Genoa, then sold to Saga in 2005; chartered for one season to the Russian operator Metropolis Tur as Orange Melody; refitted with capacity cut to 352 and launched as Saga's Spirit of Adventure in 2006. In August 2011 the German FTI Group bought her; from May 2012 she sailed as FTI Berlin, reverting to plain Berlin in March 2014. When FTI shut its cruise business in the pandemic in 2020, she was bought by Dreamliner Cruises and renamed Dream Goddess for a planned yacht-charter conversion that never happened; she was laid up near Piraeus and widely expected to be scrapped. Instead, sold on again, she left Greece in late 2024 for an extensive refit at Ningde, China, emerging renamed Berlin Oceanis for a planned luxury operation homeported at Penang, Malaysia.
Onboard character
Her fame in Germany was televisual before it was nautical: from 1986 to 1998 (in the usual telling, thirteen years and 21 episodes) she was Das Traumschiff — the dream ship of the ZDF series — which fixed her image as the archetypal small, friendly, white German cruise ship. On board, the reality matched the image at modest scale: a main dining room and a casual Verandah restaurant, a well-regarded library, fixed-sitting shared tables in her Saga years, and an unpretentious, destination-a-day style of cruising. Berlitz rated her a comfortable three-star-plus ship for couples and solo travellers. She had virtually no balconies and no casino glamour; her selling point was size, familiarity and ports that big ships could not reach — the qualities Saga bought her for.
Major refits and incidents
The 1986 Nobiskrug lengthening, described above, is the major refit of her life and one of the more remarkable structural operations performed on a ship of her tonnage. Later refits were conversions of use rather than of structure: the 2005–06 Saga conversion reducing capacity to 352 by making cabins single, regular German-market refurbishments under FTI (including in 2017), and the gut-and-rebuild interior refit in China from late 2024, in which trade reporting says her accommodation was stripped out and rebuilt entirely. Her career was untouched by any defining casualty in the sources used here.
Sister ships and class
She has no sister ship. Yard number 163 at HDW Kiel was a one-off design for the Deilmann operation, and the 1986 stretch made her unique even by the standard of one-offs. Comparisons are of role, not of hull: in Saga's fleet she was the small, adventurous counterpoint to the line's larger, more traditional ships.
Fate and where she is now
The dataset calls her active with Saga Cruises; she left Saga in 2012, and Saga itself has operated a different, new Spirit of Adventure since 2021. This hull's fate is more interesting than the scrapyard ending predicted for her in 2020: laid up as Dream Goddess, sold, and refitted in China for a return to service as Berlin Oceanis in Southeast Asia — a fifth decade and at least a ninth name for a ship launched in 1980.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saga_Cruises, https://www.cruisemapper.com/news/14344-former-german-cruise-ship-reborn