Olau Line MS
Olau Hollandia was the first newbuild ever to be built for
Olau Line. Up until that point the company had operated with used ships purchased or chartered from other companies, but after
TT-Line acquired Olau in 1979, the new owners invested in building two new cruiseferries for the company. The
Olau Hollandia and her sister
MS Olau Britannia were more than twice the size of the largest ferries operated by Olau before that point (they were also larger than any ships operated by TT-Line at the time). The
Olau Hollandia was built to be "
NATO-compatible", so that she could easily be converted to a troopship if required. She was also built with a thicker hull than normal, enough to be classified under Finnish
ice class 1 A Super (the highest possible class) when she began service on the
Baltic Sea without any structural changes to her hull. On 21 March 1981 the
Olau Hollandia was delivered to her owners, and four days later she started operating on Olau Line's
Sheerness (
United Kingdom)–
Vlissingen (the
Netherlands) route. In the late 1980s TT-Line decided to replace the
Olau Hollandia and
Olau Britannia with two newbuilds, also called and . In preparation for delivery of the new
Olau Hollandia, the old
Olau Hollandia was sold to
Nordström & Thulin,
Sweden in August 1989, to be delivered in October 1989.
Gotlandslinjen In 1987 Nordström & Thulin had won the state concession to operate ferry services between the island of
Gotland and the Swedish mainland for the years 1988–97. N&T marketed their service as
Gotlandslinjen, for whose traffic they bought the
Olau Hollandia. Between October and December the
Olau Hollandia was rebuilt at AG Weser Seebeckwerft and renamed MS
Nord Gotlandia. After rebuilding she sailed to
Stockholm where the ship was displayed to the public. On 1 January 1990 the
Nord Gotlandia began service with Gotlandslinjen, on routes from
Visby to
Nynäshamn and
Oskarshamn. In July 1997 the
Nord Gotlandia suffered a fire in the engine room. In the same year the Swedish government held a tender for the state concession for traffic to Gotland for the years 1998–2004, but this time N&T lost the concession to
Destination Gotland. At the time N&T also owned 50% of
EstLine, but the company decided not to transfer the
Nord Gotlandia to EstLine. Instead she was sold to
Eckerö Line, Finland in December 1997, to be delivered in January 1998.
Eckerö Line On 1 January 1998 the
Nord Gotlandia left Visby for
Turku Repair Yard,
Naantali, Finland, where she was taken over by
Eckerö Line the following day. After being rebuilt for her new service, the ship emerged as MS
Nordlandia and was placed on Eckerö Line's
Helsinki–
Tallinn service on 10 February 1998. The ship damaged one of her propellers when leaving Helsinki on 30 April 2003 and had to be docked in Naantali for five days for repairs. During a hard storm on 28 October 2006 she rammed the quay in Tallinn, resulting in a hole above the waterline. The damage was quickly repaired, and the ship was back in traffic on 1 November. In January 2011, the ship was docked in
Naantali for eleven days (3–14 January 2011). In December 2012 she was replaced by MS
Finlandia. ==References==