BREVARD HISTORY: The Carla C ocean liner inspired “The Love Boat” and called at Port Canaveral in 1979

Cruise Hive Awards: Port Canaveral voted best cruise homeport in the United States, expected to welcome 7.3 million passengers in 2024

BREVARD COUNTY • PORT CANAVERAL, FLORIDA – Port Canaveral has once again come out on top in the Cruise Hive Cruise Ship Awards, an annual event honoring the best in the industry.

Port Canaveral is the second busiest cruise port in the world with more than 4.5 million cruise passengers last year, but long before it became a major cruise port, the ocean liner Carla C visited Port Canaveral in September 1979.

Carla C inspired The Love Boat, a romantic comedy-drama television series that aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986. The 20,469 gross ton ship was 599.7 feet long with a beam of 80.3 feet and was originally launched as French ocean. liner named SS Flandre in 1952, sailing for the French Line.

For comparison, Carnival Cruise Line’s Mardi Gras, which was built at the Meyer Turku shipyard in Turku, Finland, is a 180,000 gross ton, 1,130-foot-long ship with a capacity of 6,500 passengers and which was to have its home port at Port Canaveral in 2020.

A group of producers are said to have come up with the idea for the popular TV series “The Love Boat” and wrote the first scripts aboard the Carla C.

Costa purchased the former SS Flandre in the late 1960s, renaming her Carla C. She was later renamed Carla Costa and sailed to various Caribbean itineraries.

In 1992, Costa sold the ship to the now-defunct Epirotiki Line, who renamed her Pallas Athena. The ship was broken up after a major fire on March 23, 1994.

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