American Queen Steamboat Company has agreed to acquire Victory Cruise Lines. Victory started up in 2016 with the Victory I (ex- Cape May Light, Sea Voyager, St Laurent) and Victory II (ex-Cape Cod Light, Sea Discoverer). The former they acquired from Haimark lines and the latter was acquired from MARAD. These two 200-pax coastal ships sail the Great Lakes and New England during the summer and sail to Cuba and Mexico in the winter.
American Queen will acquire the two ships, as well as the brand, all Great Lakes charters, group bookings, individual passenger reservations, and related assets. The transaction expected to close in January 2019.
They also announced that they will build an expedition ship for the Victory brand. Miami based technical manager SunStone Ships have an agreement the yard CMHI (China Merchants Heavy Industry) to build a series of Ulstein designed small expedition ships. The first two are long-term time chartered to Aurora Expeditions and the third will be chartered to Victory for an undisclosed period of time. This ship will be launched in China in March 2021.
Cruise Line entrepreneur Bruce Nierenberg will likely leave Victory to start up something else and Victory will most likely be run by their President Hans Lagerweij.