The Sitmar Liners and V Ships

the long version

In 1928 Alexandre Vlasov chartered his first vessel, named after his son Boris, thus starting the shipping activities of the Vlasov Group, nowadays one of the biggest shipping concerns in the world, which owns 25 ships and manages another 400. This examines in individual chapters the story of each of the passenger vessels owned by the Sitmar Line (the most famous of all Vlasovs companies) as well as the most recent cruise ships MINERVA and SEVEN SEAS NAVIGATOR. Also to each of the pioneer freighters owned by Sitmar (CASTELVERDE, CASTELBRUNO and CASTELMARIO) is given a full chapter containing her detailed history, accompanied by rare photographs of these long-forgotten coal tramps which actually constitute the earliest, interesting years of the Vlasov Group. In addition a complete fleet list gives technical and historical details of all the vessels owned by the Group in its 70 years of activity while over 270 photographs and 32 line drawings, almost all of them never before published, show all the ships owned by the company, from the 150-ton fishing-trawler CORVINA to the supertankers of the seventies. The iconography of the book pays particular attention to the earliest vessels of the thirties, the War Years and the emigrant ships. Diagrams, chronology, the history of Silver Line after its 1975 purchase by Vlasov and a chapter on the activities and the organisation of the present V. Ships complete this excellent title.