Karlsen Shipping Co Ltd

Karlsen Shipping Co Ltd was the parent company of Polar Star Expeditions. Through its expedition brand, the company operated the icebreaker Polar Star on voyages to the northern and southern polar regions. The Polar Star was a Swedish icebreaker built in 1969.

The Polar Star as an expedition ship

The ship originally sailed as the Njord for the Swedish Maritime Administration. Karlsen Shipping bought it from the Swedish government in 2000 and had it put to use for expeditions; from 2001, the Polar Star sailed as a cruise ship. Its itineraries combined Arctic and Antarctic cruising regions. One documented example from the summer of 2010 was the voyage “Remote Coast of East Greenland”: it was scheduled to begin in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, on August 26 and explore Greenland’s east coast through September 8. Another itinerary for the 2009/10 year-end period took in the Antarctic Peninsula, South Georgia, and the Falkland Islands. The 25-day voyage included 17 days ashore, seven of them on the Antarctic Peninsula. The route thus connected several Antarctic and sub-Antarctic cruising regions.

Alongside its expedition voyages, technical incidents had already occurred in 2010: after one engine failed, the Polar Star operated with just one engine for part of the season. In July, it also ran aground off Svalbard. On January 31, 2011, the ship struck an uncharted rock near Detaille Island in Antarctica while returning from there to Argentina. The outer hull was damaged, but the inner hull was not. The Polar Star remained under its own power; passengers and some of the crew were taken aboard three nearby ships. A report the following day said that no one had been injured and no oil had leaked. After the damage was assessed, the voyage was initially expected to continue to Poland’s Arctowski Station on King George Island and then to Ushuaia. The remainder of the 2010/11 Antarctic season was cancelled; the ship then sailed to Las Palmas for repairs.

End of the company

The technical failure and interruption for repairs came during the company’s final phase. In May 2011, Karlsen Shipping announced in Halifax that it was ceasing operations. Toronto-Dominion Bank then applied to have PricewaterhouseCoopers appointed as receiver of the company’s assets. The Polar Star was the company’s most important asset and was in Las Palmas for work. The hull later bore the name POLAR S; in 2022, the ship was taken out of service and scrapped in Aliağa.