RMS Transvaal Castle

Transvaal Castle set out on her maiden voyage from Southampton to Durban on 18 January 1962. In July 1965, the mail service was accelerated with the Southampton-Cape Town voyage cut from 13½ days to 11½ days. The previous departure from Southampton at 4 PM on Thursday, every week was altered to 1 PM every Friday.[5]

S.A. Vaal in Southampton, 1967

S.A Vaal in Southampton, 1967

In order to meet South African demands for a greater share in the running of the mail service, the Transvaal Castle and her fleetmate RMS Pretoria Castle (respectively the youngest and oldest units of the fleet) were transferred to the South African Marine Corporation (Safmarine) in 1966.[5] The Transvaal Castle was taken over by Safmarine on 12 January 1966 and renamed S.A. Vaal. The ship's hull was repainted white and her funnel changed to Safmarine's mid-grey, with three thin lines of the then South African national colours: orange, white and blue. Although now under Safmarine ownership, both ships were bareboat chartered back to Union-Castle and continued to be manned by the same crews as the other mail ships. RMS S.A. Vaal remained registered in London[4] and continued to operate on the same service as before. Thus the UK—South Africa service became a joint operation between Union-Castle and Safmarine.[5] In February 1969 the S.A. Vaal and S.A. Oranje were re-registered in Cape Town.[4] but continued to be managed and crewed by Union-Castle, with a few Safmarine officers in later years. The mail ship operation was always managed from London.

The Union-Castle/Safmarine joint mailship service declined heavily during the 1970s. This was due to a combination of adverse economic factors including the loss of earnings from high value cargoes, which were increasingly being carried in the more efficient, revolutionary new container ships. With the large increase in oil prices in 1973, the mail ship schedule was extended by one day to allow more economical steaming. After Pendennis Castle was withdrawn in June 1976 just two mailships remained on the route – Union-Castle's Windsor Castle and Safmarine's S.A. Vaal – in addition to Union-Castle's last cargo/passenger vessels RMMV Good Hope Castle and RMMV Southampton Castle (carrying just 12 passengers each) and other chartered cargo-only tonnage. The jointly owned passenger liner service ceased completely in October 1977, with the S.A. Vaal being the last to arrive in Southampton on 10 October 1977.[5]

The Big Red Boat III and Rembrandt laid up in Freeport's harbor on 25 August 2001.

A model of the ship at the South African Maritime Museum

S.A. Vaal was sold to Carnival Cruise Line and renamed SS Festivale. Carnival converted her into a cruise ship in Japan at a cost of $30 million,[1] removing former cargo holds and doubling the vessel's passenger capacity, installing lounges, discothèques and casinos. The vessel became one of Carnival's "First Generation" fun ships. Although the former mail ship's superstructure was greatly enlarged, registration in Panama resulted in her tonnage dropping to 26,632 (by UK rules it would have been around 38,000). Soon after entering service in 1978, the Festivale was used as a floating location for the TV miniseries The French Atlantic Affair, starring Telly Savalas, Chad Everett and Michelle Phillips.[10]

Carnival chartered the Festivale to Dolphin Cruise Line in 1996. They renamed her IslandBreeze, and she annually operated cruises under charter to Thomson Holidays.[6] In 1998, she was sold to Premier Cruise Line,[7] but continued under charter for Thomson until 2000,[11] when she was renamed The Big Red Boat III and repainted red for Texas based cruises.[3]

Premier Cruises filed for bankruptcy in 2000,[8] and their ships were seized in various ports in the Caribbean, North America, and Europe. By now ageing, outmoded and in need of repairs, the Big Red Boat III could find no work and was sold to shipbreakers in Alang, India in the summer of 2003. She was scrapped in 2003–2004.[9]