The Asuka II recently completed 35 years of cruising after entering service for Crystal Cruises on June 21, 1990.

As the first Crystal ship at the time, the Harmony was built at the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Shipyard in Nagasaki.

Then described as the most luxurious ship ever built, the 50,142-ton vessel had its name chosen in a public contest that resulted in more than 2,100 entries.

After spending a few weeks in Japan, the Harmony set sail to North America ahead of its naming ceremony, which took place on July 20, 1990.

Television star Mary Tyler Moore served as the vessel’s godmother during the ceremony held in the Port of Los Angeles.

The Crystal Harmony then welcomed its first paying guests on July 24, 1990, kicking off a summer season in Alaska and Canada.

For its inaugural voyage, the vessel offered a 12-day roundtrip cruise from San Francisco before repositioning to the Caribbean later in 1990.

As reported by Cruise Industry News at the time, the ship’s inaugural season was marked by a fire in the Caribbean.

While there were no injuries to passengers or crew onboard, the incident left the ship with no power for nearly 16 hours and led to a cruise cancellation.

In 1991, the Crystal Harmony marked the company’s debut in Europe with itineraries in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe.

After 16 years of service for Crystal Cruises, the Harmony was transferred to a then-sister brand of the company, Asuka Cruises, at the end of 2005.

Renamed Asuka II, the vessel replaced the original Asuka, becoming the largest cruise ship sailing under the Japanese flag.

Now sailing along with the new Asuka III, the vessel continued to offer cruises aimed at Japan’s domestic market.

Sailing from Yokohama and other ports in the country, the ship’s itineraries feature visits to destinations in the Far East and the Pacific.

Earlier this year, the Asuka II also completed its final world cruise, a 103-night journey that included visits to 18 destinations in 12 countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and more.

MSC Cruises is deploying six ships to U.S. ports during the summer of 2027, the company recently announced in a press release.

The lineup is highlighted by the MSC World America, which is set to continue sailing from Miami after being named at the port earlier this year.

Offering itineraries from Port Canaveral, Miami, Seattle and Galveston, six additional ships are set to join the 205,800-ton vessel.

PortMiami

The MSC World America and the MSC Seaside will continue to sail from PortMiami during the summer of 2027.

The former is set to operate an alternating schedule of seven-night cruises to either the Western or the Eastern Caribbean, while the latter offers three- and four-night cruises to the Bahamas.

In addition to other ports of call in the region, itineraries from Miami are set to visit MSC’s private island of Ocean Cay.

Port Canaveral

Two MSC ships will sail from Port Canaveral during the season, including the MSC Grandiosa and the MSC Seashore.

After debuting in Central Florida in late 2025, the Grandiosa will continue to offer weeklong cruises to destinations in the Caribbean during the summer of 2027.

With both vessels visiting Ocean Cay, the MSC Seashore is scheduled to operate three- and four-night cruises to the Bahamas.

Galveston

Set to reposition to its new homeport in Texas later this year, the MSC Seascape will continue to sail from Galveston in 2027.

Sailing on Sundays, the 2022-built vessel will offer seven-night cruises to the Western Caribbean that include visits to ports in Mexico and Honduras.

Seattle

After marking the company’s debut in Alaska in 2026, the MSC Poesia is scheduled to return to Seattle for a second season in the region in 2027.

According to the company, the ship’s specific itineraries for the season will be confirmed at a later date.

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Extreme-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has managed to turn Israel into a 21st century version of the Flying Dutchman. Britannica tells us that Europe produced the legend of the “Flying Dutchman,” a ghostly vessel that is fated to sail forever. When sailors descry it in the distance, they know a catastrophe looms. One common version of the tale concerns a Captain Vanderdecken, who wagers his immortal soul, vowing to round the Cape of Good Hope amid a tempest. He and his ship end up being doomed to ply those same waters forevermore. The legend forms the subject matter of Richard Wagner’s opera, Der fliegende Holländer [The Flying Dutchman] (1843).

Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” also refers to the story:

“The naked hulk alongside came,
And the twain were casting dice;
‘The game is done! I’ve won! I’ve won!’
Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

The Sun’s rim dips; the stars rush out;
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper, o’er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark.”

Tuesday morning last week the Crown Iris cruise ship full of Israeli tourists tried to stop off at Syros island just south of Athens. They were blocked by a massive popular demonstration at the Ermoupolis harbor, conducted despite a curfew issued by the municipal authorities for local residents, forbidding traffic and circulation at the port in hopes of allowing the Israeli tourists to get off. People ignored the traffic ban to assemble anyway. In the end the cruiser had to cast off its moorings and depart without unloading any of its 1600 passengers.

The protest that blocked the disembarkation was staged by trade unionists and civil society groups, whose members flew large Palestinian flags and raised a banner emblazoned with the logo, “Stop the Genocide!”

Despite the attempt of Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar to get Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis to intervene, the protesters proved victorious. The center-right Greek government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis condemned the actions of the protesters.

The Crown Iris did manage to dock at Limassol in Cyprus, and then returned to Israel, before returning to Crete with the intention of going to the island of Rhodes.

But the unions and civil society organizations in Rhodes are now mobilizing against the visit, with a demonstration set for Monday afternoon (i.e. tomorrow) at the Old Commercial Port half an hour before the Crown Iris is scheduled to dock.

Organizers issued the following call:

“On Monday, July 28, 2025, in the afternoon (3:30 pm), the Israeli cruise ship Iris Crown will arrive at the port of Rhodes (old commercial port – customs office). This is the same ship that recently approached Syros, provoking the symbolic protest of the islanders against the genocidal policy implemented by the extreme-right [ακροδεξιά] Netanyahu government against the Palestinian people. Residents, together with visitors to the island, managed to prevent its docking at the port, necessitating that it turn around and leave…

“The Municipal Employees’ Association of Rhodes calls on its members, as well as on those who refuse to compromise with the very idea of slaughtering civilians, of their extermination by enforced starvation, and of systematic genocide — but who at the same time seek a just and viable solution to the Palestine issue — to gather at the old commercial port/ customs office at 3:00 PM on Monday, July 28.

“The message of our protest is clear: we resist the ongoing murderous policy of the extreme-right Netanyahu [ who they point out was indicted by the International Criminal Court as a war criminal] and his supporters — while we have nothing against those Israelis or Jews-by-religion who oppose the crime or do not participate in it.”

Although Israeli propagandists lambaste the protests as antisemitic, the organizers, at least, deny that they are about Jews or Jewishness or even about Israelis. They are protests against the genocidal policies, they say, of a particular Israeli government, which they characterize with the same Greek word typically used to refer to neo-Nazi parties in Europe such as as Germany’s AfD.

“Flying Cruise Ship,” Digital, ChatGPT, 2025

The episode, which has turned Israeli cruise ship passengers into the Flying Dutchmen of the Mediterranean, shows not rising anti-Jewish bigotry but the ways in which Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bezalel Smotrich and a rogues gallery of war criminals at the top of the Israeli state have made Israel a pariah state. Their propaganda was always that Zionist state-making is crucial to Jewish safety, but their hard Right policies have boomeranged, making Israelis and Jews less safe. What would have made Israelis safe was an implementation of the Oslo Peace Accords, signed by Yitzhak Rabin in 1993, and which Netanyahu loudly and interminably boasts he destroyed.

There have been lots of protests against Israeli cargo ships — in Oslo, Istanbul, and San Francisco — and Spain declines to let Israeli ships believed to be carrying arms shipments dock at Spanish ports.

Alas, this is only the beginning. As images of the emaciated corpses of Gaza Palestinians, including children, emerge onto the world’s smartphone screens in the coming weeks — for all the world like the photographs taken by the American soldiers who liberated Nazi death camps such as Auschwitz — the pariah status of the Israeli state will be ever more solidly cemented.

Personally, I don’t agree with boycotting individual Israelis. People should be judged by their deeds, not by their origins. But this crime of the 21st century will unfortunately and inevitably cast a long shadow. And nor should Americans, who are joined at the hip with Netanyahu and his millenarian crazies, think they will themselves escape this gathering global opprobrium.