Since time immemorial, the sole reason for building merchant ships has been to earn money with them. Nothing else! The asbsolute top priority has never been to please or to offend the eyes of casual, amateur or enthusiast observers.

Yep,,that,s about it :-))
It goes by making money,,not by looks,,as you well can see on the modern cruise liners and box ships,,understandably from the money point of view,,but the eyes hurting !!!!!

So they lengthened the ship, raised the accommodation by adding one cargo deck and wacky sponsons for stability... Hm, Ok.

Those side sponsons weren't added just to make the ship look ugly but to stop it being unstable and uncomfortable in anything other than a flat calm.

Well one thing is for sure, I'd have neither wanted to work on this ship nor travel on her as a passengers. She looks as though it would have been a very uncomfortable experience in any thing other than a totally flat calm.

Turning it into a square box almost doubled its ro-ro intake and indubitably kept it in service much longer than it would have in its original Fred Olsen layout.
While I agree that older ships did often have finer lines, they were usually also much less efficient.
Probably one's views on ships' aesthetics varies with whether one simply ogles at them, pores over ship pictures travels as a passenger or actually has to work on or with them.

Well Clive,,it is not the square box looking,,it is more that the shape of a shoe box is rather not associated when someone thinks of a ship , they have for sure their place and purpose in shipping, but I would say it comes down to ones personal likes and dislikes, but the most enthusiast of box like ships will concede most probably too that older vessels usually have finer lines.

Well, there are some of us on here that often criticise ships for being square and boxy-looking but his has to be the most box-like of them all!