Would you believe this was originally a Mariner-class cargo ship from the early 1950s? It was also a financial boondoggle on which millions of dollars were lost. The Monterey was intended to resurrect the U.S. flag cruise ship industry, but it never did. The refurbished Monterey scarcely ever carried a paying passenger before being sold to a foreign operator. All of the money spent on modernizing it in a Finnish shipyard were wasted. In fact, I believe that the shipyard went bankrupt, as well.