| IMO | 9219331 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 43,188 GT |
| Length | 196.53 m |
| Beam | 29.8 m |
| Passenger capacity (max) | 385 |
| Service speed | 18.5 knots |
| Builder | Bruces Shipyard |
| Yard | Landskrona |
| Hull number | 247 |
| Launched | 2001 |
| Maiden voyage | 2002 |
| Operator | ResidenSea |
| Status | Active |
Overview
The World is the largest privately owned residential ship in service — a cruise ship in hull and machinery, but a condominium in ownership and purpose. Her 165 residences are owned by their occupants, who live aboard for part or all of the year while the ship sails a continuous global itinerary, staying in most ports for several days rather than the few hours of a conventional cruise call. She was conceived by Knut Kloster Jr., former chairman of Royal Viking Line and of Norwegian Cruise Line, delivered in 2002, and is managed for her resident-owners by ROW Management Ltd. of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, through the ResidenSea organisation recorded in the dataset.
Nothing else afloat is quite like her: conventional cruise ships sell cabins by the week; The World sold homes. The idea had been talked about for decades before Kloster's organisation built it, and two decades of continuous operation since 2002 are the proof of concept. In maritime terms she is a 43,188 GT ocean-going passenger ship — crew, Bahamian flag, IMO number — whose passengers happen to own their accommodation.
Key specifications
The dataset records The World at IMO 9219331, 43,188 GT, 196.53 m by 29.8 m, a speed of 18.5 knots, builder Fosen Yard with yard location Landskrona and hull number N.71, launch and maiden voyage in 2002, and a maximum capacity of 200. That last figure needs explanation rather than correction: 150–200 is the ship's typical complement of residents and guests on board at any one time, not her legal passenger capacity. Contemporary technical summaries give accommodation for up to about 385 passengers and a crew in the region of 260–280; because most owners are ashore at any given moment, the ship habitually sails far below her certificated capacity. Her residences are counted consistently across sources: 165 in total, comprising 106 two- and three-bedroom apartments, 19 studio apartments and 40 studios.
Two dataset fields compress a two-yard build. The hull was built by Bruces Shipyard at Landskrona, Sweden, as its yard number 247, and completed and fitted out by Fosen Mekaniske Verksted at Rissa, Norway, as Fosen's number N.71 — the number the dataset carries. She has 12 decks, a draught of about 6.7 m, and twin Wärtsilä 12V32 diesel engines driving controllable-pitch propellers. The dataset's "launched 2002" is the completion-year convention discussed in section 4.
Design and construction
The original concept was far larger: a residential vessel first projected at about 80,000 tons. Because no one could know how many buyers would commit, the design was scaled down to 43,188 GT and the residences roughly halved, to 165 — small enough to sell out, large enough for a full hotel operation.
Construction was split between two Scandinavian yards. The hull was ordered on 10 July 1999, laid down on 18 September 2000 at Bruces Shipyard, Landskrona, and launched there on 28 February 2001, then towed to Fosen Mekaniske Verksted at Rissa and completed under Fosen's number 71 — which is why references credit both a Swedish and a Norwegian builder. Her build cost is reported at about US$266 million. She was delivered on 12 March 2002.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
The ship has carried the name The World from her hull launch on 28 February 2001. After delivery at Rissa on 12 March 2002 she worked south through Norwegian waters, reaching Oslo on 28 March, from where she sailed on 29 March for Amsterdam and her first cruise with residents. The dataset's 2002 launch and maiden-voyage dates therefore describe completion and entry into service; the hull first floated a year earlier, a discrepancy logged in the batch notes. No godmother christening story is recorded in the sources used, and none is invented: her debut was a delivery and a first voyage, marketed to prospective resident-owners, not to the cruise trade.
Career by operator
| Period | Name | Operator |
|---|---|---|
| 2002–present | The World | ResidenSea / ROW Management Ltd. (for The World Resident Holdings) |
The dataset's operator history — "ResidenSea; ROW Management" — is the whole story: a management history, not a succession of cruise lines. The ship was transferred in November 2005 to The World of ResidenSea II Ltd., the residents' owning vehicle, and has been managed throughout by ROW Management of Fort Lauderdale; by then about 95 per cent of the residences were reported sold.
Her employment is one continuous pattern: a circumnavigation over roughly two to three years, around a hundred ports in a typical year, staying multiple days in most. Residents, from some 40–45 countries in published counts, live aboard three to six months a year in most accounts; a minority stay nearly full-time. Not a route — a rhythm.
Onboard character
The World is a small town that happens to move. Her apartments have real kitchens, so the ship carries a grocery store and deli; for those who do not cook, there are multiple restaurants and bars, pools, a spa, a cinema, a library and a medical centre — plus a putting green, a golf simulator and a full-size tennis court, described in reporting as the only one aboard any ship.
The deeper difference is temporal. A cruise ship's population turns over weekly; The World's community persists, shapes its itinerary with resident input, and treats the crew — who commonly outnumber residents aboard — as the staff of a home. The defining experience in residents' accounts is continuity: the same neighbours, the same apartment, a different country outside the window.
Major refits and incidents
A residential ship refits continuously as apartments change hands, but her documented technical programmes are systems refits. In 2016 Wärtsilä was contracted to retrofit an advanced wastewater treatment system — a membrane bioreactor treating black and gray water to the strictest discharge standards — and a Nacos Platinum navigation system with ice radar, for delivery in April 2016. The work marks her operating reality: she must meet every jurisdiction's standards, indefinitely, as a home address.
No major casualty is recorded for The World in the sources used. Her slow, port-intensive pattern and resident-ownership model have produced an unusually quiet public record for a ship of her age, and this section records the documented systems work rather than speculating about undocumented hotel refurbishments.
Sister ships and class
The World has no sister and belongs to no class: a one-off built to a residential brief no other owner has executed at her scale. Later residential-ship projects have been announced, but she remains the only large, continuously operating condominium ship at sea. Her nearest relatives are conceptual — Kloster's earlier Royal Viking Line, whose service culture the ResidenSea founders knew well.
Fate and where she is now
The World remains in active service under her original name and management, exactly as the dataset records, owned by her residents through their holding company and operated by ROW Management. There is no sale, lay-up or end-of-life story to tell: the ship's experiment — selling the cabins instead of renting them — is still running, more than two decades after delivery, and the hull that two Scandinavian yards built between them in 2001–02 continues the slow circumnavigation that is both her itinerary and her idea.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships; Wikipedia, "MS The World" (ship history, residences and particulars); ShipStamps / ship technical summary, "THE WORLD cruise vessel" (Bruces yard 247, Fosen yard 71, delivery 12 March 2002); MarineLog, "Wärtsilä to upgrade world's largest residential ship" (2016 retrofit), https://www.marinelog.com/news/wartsila-to-upgrade-worlds-largest-residential-ship/; U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, "See The World — Run Away to Sea" (May 2006).