In August 2015 the Semester at Sea programme’s new vessel will be renamed the World odyssey for her role as a floating campus. The ship is the former 22,496gt and 175m long cruise ship Deutschland which has been meticulously maintained since her construction in Germany in 1998.

The ship is to undergo a refit in readiness for her new role having been at anchor off Gibraltar for several weeks awaiting her fate. The former Semester at Sea ship was the Explorer, now the Celestyal odyssey. The World odyssey is the sixth ship in Semester at Sea’s (SAS) 51-year history.

The new ship, like her predecessors, will serve as a travelling home and campus that brings approximately 600 undergraduate students to the farthest reaches of the globe. The ship will embark on her first SAS voyage on 13th September from Southampton. In early June the ship was in Kiel, Germany, and received a yellow funnel for a charter to Plantours, replacing the 15,067gt/1997 built Hamburg whilst the latter underwent repairs at Lloyd-Werft, Bremerhaven.

The Bremen-based operator used the Deutschland during the period from 9th June to 29th July, first for a group charter and then, from 20th June, on three cruises to Spitsbergen, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Shetland islands.