HAL and Westours

[2rg]

It never ceases to amaze me what is available thru the internet. Keep in mind I consider myself electroniclly challeged, to say nothing about my spelling.

 

I was reading a piece on line about a small cruise ship being sold to become a private yacht and it mentioned the ship had been owned by Westours. If your interested it can be found on maritimematters.com under Xanadu 2.

 

Anyway the ship was built in 1955 with 1600 pax capacity, 293' long and 2496 gt. as a ferry type ship. By the time it was sold to Westours in 1967 and named the Polar Star its pax capacity as a cruise ship was 186. It was later transfered it to a subsidary, West Lines, and named the Pacific Star. So I started wondering when HAL got involved. Through a bit of searching I found that in 1971 HAL bought Westours.

 

Westours was started under a different name by Chuck West in 1946. About 1973 he formed a new company Cruise West.

 

Just some fun information for those of you interested.

[cdkempton]

I remember Westours having brought most of the passengers on to the original Prinsendam which we sailed in 1975 and always being associated with HAL for the next few years but that's about it. I also remember having a brochure (may still have it.....somewhere deep) for the Xanadu cruises back in that same time period. Don't know if that was related. You might go to the "whatever happened to" threads and check there for more info. Happy hunting.