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Want to buy If anyone is interested in buying a passenger liner, there will be an opportunity in Honolulu tomorrow. The 1,212-passenger ms Patriot will be sold to the highest bidder in a public auction at 10 a.m. on the steps of the federal court building.
a cruise ship?
The passenger liner is most likely
Shipboard items on block Saturday
to sell to previous owner
Holland America LineBy Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.comThere may be only one bidder, Holland America Line, which sold the ship to American Classic Voyages Inc. in 1999 for $114.5 million and filed court papers late last year showing it was still owed more than $79 million.
The shipping line, part of Carnival Corp., has received court permission to make a "credit bid," which means it can offer the amount it is owed. That is equivalent to repossessing the ship since the deal won't require money unless Holland America finds itself having to bid more than it is owed. That could happen if there are other bidders.
Federal marshals seized the ship on Holland America's behalf on Oct. 26 at Honolulu's Pier 24. The shipping line had brought a foreclosure action saying American Classic stopped running the ship without paying off all of the purchase price.
American Classic, hard hit by the travel slowdown after Sept. 11, filed for bankruptcy Oct. 19, cut short the ships' current voyages and tied them up in Honolulu.
The 860-passenger SS Independence, which had cruised Hawaiian waters since 1980 and was operated by American Classic under the American Hawaii Cruises brand, sailed out of Honolulu Harbor Oct. 30 with a fireboat escort, headed for San Francisco and probable mothballs.
The Patriot, which underwent a $21 million refurbishing before going into service around the islands in December 2000 under American Classic's United States Lines brand, was not permitted to leave and remains tied up at Pier 24 with a small maintenance crew aboard.
The Patriot was part of American Classic's $1 billion-plus Project America plan to build two new 1,900-passenger ships in the United States and put them to work in Hawaii. American Classic received a special exemption to run the foreign-built Patriot, originally the Nieuw Amsterdam, between Hawaii ports while the new ships were being built.
The bankruptcy put an end to all that with the first $400 million ship 40 percent completed at a Mississippi shipyard.
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Three-quarters of a million dollars worth of stuff from American Classic Voyages Inc.'s failed interisland cruise business will be auctioned off Saturday. Ship may have come in
for collectors at auctionBy Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.comThere are ash trays, plates and silverware, mostly from the ms Patriot since that ship is still in Honolulu, but there are some items from the SS Independence, said Marty McClain.
His McClain Auctions will take the bids from 10 a.m. Feb. 2 at a warehouse on Pier 24, where the Patriot is docked.
"The ship itself is set for a foreclosure auction (tomorrow) but on Feb. 2 we sell everything else," McClain said.
That means shirts, T-shirts, other clothing and gift items with logos representing the failed shipping line.
"There'll be everything out of their office space -- computers, desks, art work from the walls, even two large carved wooden eagles in glass cases," which represented the U.S. patriotic theme of the shipping line, McClain said.
Aside from the consumer goods and the office items there are ship-related items, such as forklifts, passenger ramps, even spare parts for the Patriot.
"It's more than 600 pieces of inventory," McClain said. Potential buyers will be able to view the items in the warehouse from 8 a.m. Saturday, he said, and he hoped to set up viewing times for Friday as well.
What: American Classic Voyages auction Shipping out
When: 10 a.m. Saturday
Where: Pier 24
More info: Call 538-7227