Neptun bags a dozen more for Viking

The six firmly-booked 134.9m long and 11.45m ‘Longships’ are for delivery in spring 2016 to Swiss-based Viking Cruises. They bring to 17 the number of ships on order at Neptun for Viking, 11 of which are being delivered by the Warnemuende yard next year.

The ships now ordered join more than 30 Longships already completed for Viking by the Meyer Werft subsidiary, which has to date built a total 48 inland cruise ships for various owners.

Shipyard and owners have never officially detailed the engines on the Longships other than saying they are energy-efficient, eco-friendly hybrid systems which are future-oriented and “produce fewer vibrations for a smoother ride”.

However The Motorship has now learned that the four-deck newbuilds will each have two C32 Caterpillar ACERT (advanced combustion emissions reduction technology) engines of 994kW along with 2 x C18 ACERT units each of 492kW and a C7.1 emergency Diesel.

Each ship will also boast four Schottel STP 200 300kW twin propellers and two SPJ 82 RD 340kW pump jets.

The ships will have a cruising speed of about 17 knots and draw 1.6m. They will carry 190 passengers and a crew of 50 on European waterways like the Rhine, Main, Mosel and Danube.

The cost of the latest newbuilds has not been revealed. However financing for an earlier series of 10 Longships, secured in July 2013 from the German Government’s KfW IPEX-Bank in Frankfurt and Switzerland’s UBS, totalled €236 million.