a ship called the "Dolphin" anyone know?

Can anyone tell me who a ship called the "Dolphin" belongs to? We were in Grand Cayman two weeks ago, and saw it there, it looked odd among the Carnival ships, Royal Carribbean, and NCL ships. It looked older, and a lot smaller that all of the other ships in the water that day. I just couldn't figure it out, thought that maybe it was a European liner?

Can anyone tell me who a ship called the "Dolphin" belongs to?

There are no passenger ships presently called DOLPHIN, so I assume you are referring to the DELPHIN (German for "dolphin" I believe).

This small-to-mid-size (16,000 GT) ship is operated by Hansa Kreuzfahrten for the German market. She had previously been operated by their more upscale sister company, Delphin Seereisen (hence her name) until last year when they acquired the former R SEVEN which was renamed DELPHIN RENAISSANCE. Initially DELPHIN was chartered to the Israeli operator Mano Maritime however this was not sucessful and so she was eventually transferred to Hansa Kreuzfahrten, who are owned by the same German entrepreneur as Delphin Seereisen (as well as the technical management and catering companies which manage the technical and hotel operations of these ships). She has reportedly been extremely successful with the lower-priced Hansa Kreuzfahrten - so successful in fact that I have heard that she is actually taking some business away from the more expensive DELPHIN RENAISSANCE!

She is indeed as you suspected an older ship; having been built in 1975 she celebrates her thirtieth birthday this year. She is a ship with an interesting history. Originally named BELORUSSIYA, she was built at Wartsila in Finland as the first of five dual purpose passenger ship/ferries for Morflot, the Soviet state shipping company (the maritime equivalent of the Soviet-era Aeroflot - Aeroflot = Air Fleet; Morflot = Sea Fleet), allocated to the Odessa-based Morflot subsidiary Black Sea Shipping Company (Blasco). Despite having been built with a car deck, she was used from the beginning as a cruise ship, often chartered to Western tour operators as were many of the newer and higher-quality Soviet passenger ships. She was successful enough as a cruise ship that in 1986, during a refit at Lloyd Werft in (then West) Germany, her car deck was removed entirely and replaced with cabins. She continued her rather uneventful career right through the fall of the USSR until 1993 when she capsized in a drydock in Singapore during a refit. Seriously damaged, she was towed to Lloyd Werft where she was completely rebuilt from the hull up to an extremely high standard. Renamed KAZAKHSTAN II, she entered service with Delphin Seereisen who have operated her ever since. She was renamed DELPHIN in 1996 and continued with Delphin Seereisen until they acquired DELPHIN RENAISSANCE last year. I've already recounted the rest of her history above.

Even as built, she was of a much higher quality than her Soviet origins might suggest. You can see some excellent interior photos of BELORUSSIYA (some may be of her sister ships) here (the site is in Swedish; click "Nasta" at the bottom of each page for more photos - there are three pages in all) which show the high quality design and decor of her original interiors, a result of her having built for charters to Western operators as well as Soviet ferry operations. Indeed from the photos she looks much more a Scandinavian than a Soviet vessel. She and her sisters were built at Wartsila just after they'd finished building three ships each for Royal Caribbean and the now-defunct Royal Viking Line, and the BELORUSSIYA-class design was rather closely related to that of these ships.

None of her original decor remains; the 1993 refit gave her completely new interiors in a much more traditional, very Germanic style. There are good pages (in German, but the photos require no translation) on the ship here and here which show her present interiors off to good effect.

Yep, that was it! Thanks for all of the info! Wow- that ship and I are the same age.

I thought it was a European liner, it just looked so unique in the water among all of the major mega-liners. I do like the logo- really cute.