A Finnish businessman whose efforts to save the final vessel of the Swedish America Line failed plans to relaunch the company by building a vessel the company had contemplated after it had taken delivery of what was to be its last ship in 1966, a Swedish media report say.

Johnny Sid, the Turku based businessman, attempted to raise funds and secure a permanent berth at its former home port of Gothenburg in Sweden for the 1966 built former Kungsholm, which had last been used as an accommodation vessel in Oman and called Veronica.

However, the efforts failed, but he has now gained possession of the drawings Swedish America Line had for its planned next ship that it was working on soon after taking delivery of Kungsholm, the Swedish Shipping Gazette reports on its website. The design would have to be modified to modern safety standards and passenger tastes. It would cost about €300 million to build the ship, he was cited as saying

An image on the website shows a vessel quite like Kungsholm was after 1979, when P&O Cruises introduced it as Sea Princess after a major refit in Germany that included removal of the dummy forward funnel and extending the remaining one.

Swedish America Line was founded by Axel Brostrom, a wealthy Swedish ship owner, in 1915. For the first decade of its life, the company operated second hand and chartered tonnage. However, in 1925 it introduced its first newbuilding, the 17,000 gross register ton Gripsholm, which was one of the first diesel powered liner on the North Atlantic.

The company gained reputation as an upscale cruise operator, with its 1957 built Gripsholm and the Kungsholm of 1966 being regarded as one of the finest ships of their day, but it went out of business in 1975 after the price of oil had soared and inflexible trade unions blocked every effort proposed by the line to bring down operating costs.