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Gambling ship was ferry, eye hospital
By BRYAN GILMER, Times Staff Writer
ST. PETERSBURG -- The 450-foot ship slated to host gambling cruises from the Port of St. Petersburg was formerly a car ferry and a floating eye surgery center, a spokesman for the startup cruise line said Tuesday. The ship was built in Poland as a ferry that held cars on one deck, passenger cabins and cruise ship amenities on other decks, said Paul Barbour, chief financial officer of Titan Cruise Lines. The ship was used in the Baltic Sea and the Mediterranean Sea for 24- to 36-hour ferry voyages, he said. An eye surgeon later bought the ship and converted the car-carrying deck to an eye surgery center, leaving the other amenities intact, Barbour said. When the surgeon died, he said, the ship was put up for sale and Titan bought it. "We're stripping out all the hospital stuff, and we're going to donate that to Mercy Ships," a Texas-based charity that takes medical care to countries around the world using hospital ships, Barbour said. The details were offered Tuesday, a day after Barbour's company declined to provide information about the ship's history. Titan officials announced Monday that the company, incorporated in the Cayman Islands, planned to bring a ship to St. Petersburg for eight-hour cruises featuring gambling and other entertainment. Mayor Rick Baker was on hand to support the plan, which the City Council will consider Thursday. Titan officials said they had purchased the ship and that it was being modified in Europe. They said it would put them at a competitive disadvantage to disclose the name. On Tuesday, Barbour said the company had agreed in the sale contract not to divulge the name. "At the time of the contract, we thought, 'Who should care?' " Barbour said. But Tuesday he said Titan officials wished they had not agreed to that provision. He said the company would contact the seller and ask for permission to release the ship's former name in the next day or two. A ship named the Mikhail Suslov was built in Poland as a car ferry and launched in 1982, the St. Petersburg Times has learned. The Soviet eye surgeon who developed radial keratotomy, or RK vision correction surgery, bought the ship and converted it to a floating eye hospital named Petr Pervyy (Peter I) in 1989. Svyatoslav N. Fyodorov was a pioneer of capitalism who advocated economic reforms before the Soviet Union dissolved. Fyodorov prospered because of his surgical discoveries and the techniques he developed. Fyodorov sent his ship at locations such as Dubai and Gibraltar, where people paid for surgeries that were not available locally. Fyodorov died in a helicopter crash in 2000, according to an obituary in the New York Times. His ship was sold in 2001 and renamed the Ocean Empress. A 1989 photo of the ship at www.shipphotos.co.uk shows the ship with the Soviet hammer and sickle painted on a red band. The photo bears strong resemblance to an artist's rendering of the Titan ship released on Monday. When asked about the Ocean Empress on Tuesday, Barbour said, "I really can't confirm or deny if that's it or not," but he promised again that the company is seeking permission to release the ship's former name. Also Tuesday, Barbour said his company's ship can travel about 23 mph. That means it will take the ship about an hour to travel the 21 miles from its St. Petersburg port to international waters in the Gulf of Mexico, where gambling is unregulated. He also said company officials had ridden aboard the ship in the Baltic Sea and found the large ship to be remarkably stable. That's important, he said, because the company doesn't want passengers to get seasick. If approved, the company plans to begin cruises in March or April, Barbour said. -- Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report.
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