MV Savarona in 2007 |
|
| Career (US) | |
|---|---|
| Name: | M/Y Savarona |
| Owner: | Emily Roebling Cadwallader |
| Builder: | Blohm & Voss Hamburg, Germany |
| Yard number: | 490 |
| Launched: | February 28, 1931 |
| Completed: | March 1931 |
| In service: | 1931–1938 |
| Fate: | Sold to the Republic of Turkey |
| Career (Turkey) | |
| Name: | M/Y Savarona |
| Owner: | Republic of Turkey |
| Completed: | Rebuilt 1989–1992 |
| In service: | 1938–1979, 1992–present |
| Status: | State Yacht |
| General characteristics | |
| Tonnage: | 4,646 GT (gross tonnage) |
| Length: | 408 ft (124 m) waterline 446 ft (136 m) - stern to bowsprit |
| Beam: | 53 ft (16 m) |
| Height: | 52 ft (16 m) |
| Draft: | 20 ft (6.1 m) |
| Installed power: | 2 × 3,600 HP (2.7 MW) diesel |
| Speed: | 15.5 knots (28.7 km/h) cruising 18 knots (33 km/h) maximum |
| Capacity: | 34 |
| Crew: | 44 |
The MV Savarona (also sometimes M/Y, for motor yacht) is a luxury State yacht. She was the largest in the world when launched in 1931, and remains with a length of 136 m (446 ft) one of the world’s longest. She is owned by the Republic of Turkey and is currently leased by Turkish businessman Kahraman Sadıkoğlu from the Turkish State.
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Named for an African swan living in the Indian Ocean, the ship was designed by Gibbs & Cox in 1931 for American heiress Emily Roebling Cadwallader, granddaughter of John A. Roebling, engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge. The ship was built by Blohm & Voss in Hamburg, Germany. She cost about $4 million ($57 million in 2010 dollars).[1] Equipped with Sperry gyro-stabilizers, she was described in 1949 by Jane's Fighting Ships as "probably the most sumptuously fitted yacht afloat."
In 1938, the Turkish government bought the yacht for ailing leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who spent only six weeks aboard before dying a few months later.
Throughout World War II, the ship lay idle in Kanlıca Bay on the Bosporus. In 1951, she was converted to the training ship Güneş Dil (English: Sun Language). In October 1979, the ship was gutted by fire at the Turkish Naval Academy off Heybeliada Island in the Sea of Marmara. She lay virtually abandoned for ten years.
In 1989, she was chartered for 49 years by Turkish businessman Kahraman Sadıkoğlu. Over three years, his firm completely refurbished her for about $45 million, removing the original steam turbine engines and installing modern diesel engines. The ship was rebuilt at Tuzla Shipyards in Tuzla, a suburb of Istanbul, for the purpose of serving famous and important guests and helping to keep the memory of Atatürk alive.
On 28 September 2010 teams of the gendarmerie raided the yacht with assistance of the coast guard and in other places across the country eight persons were arrested for organized human trafficking and detained of 15 women and six foreigner male guests aboard for prostitution. The yacht was rented by a Kazakh businessman three days before in Bodrum for one week and was en route Antalya, said the yacht's operator, Kahraman Sadıkoğlu.[2] Yusuf Hakkı Doğan, a public prosecutor in Antalya, who conducted the operation, revealed that the yacht had been used twice for prostitution purposes, the first time in Bodrum.[3][4] From the 30 September 2010, the MV Savarona became solely a State Yacht.
Savarona features a swimming pool, a turkish bath, a 282-foot (86 m) gold-trimmed grand staircase that survived from her original construction, a movie theater, and a library suite dedicated to Atatürk, which is furnished with many of his personal artifacts. Under its charter operator the yacht was available for charter including the crew but not provisions.
Source[5]