The Norwegian Fruit Ship “Folías” (1963-1972)

After the sale in August 1963 of the first “Folías”, the Swedish company Svea –one of the major shipping companies of its time, closely linked to the export traffic of fruit harvest from the Canary Islands– renamed the ship “Fortuna”, which had been in service since April 1955, with this emblematic genre in the island's musical culture.

The second “Folías” was slightly larger than its predecessor and also newer. It was part of a series of four ships –“Gudmundra”, “Dorotea” and “Farida”– the last of which also served the traffic of the fruit harvest from the Canary Islands for several seasons.

Construction number 355 from the historic Finnboda Varv shipyard –located to the NW of Sickla Island, at the entrance of Stockholm (Sweden) and operational for a century, until 1981– was launched on December 14, 1954, with the customary ceremony and was inaugurated on April 5, 1955, under the name “Fortuna”.

In reality, the ship “Folías” was owned by the Norwegian company A/S Fortuna and managed by Hans Magensen, based in Bergen, to which it had been sold in December 1963 by Svea Line, and chartered by it for almost seven years, leading us to assume that the mentioned A/S Fortuna was a company controlled by the famous Swedish shipping company then led by Emanuel Högberg.

In July 1972, the second “Folías” was sold to the Nicaraguan Merchant Marine, being registered in that country under the new name “Hope” and managed by El Porvenir Shipping. In June 1979, it was resold to Ope Shipping Co. Ltd., a Cayman Islands company, but the operation failed, as in October of that year it returned to Nicaraguan control and was docked in Puerto Cabezas, where it would be scrapped in 1984.

Weighing 2,409 gross tons, 1,052 net tons, and 3,665 deadweight tons, it measured 104.78 m in overall length, 14.35 m in beam, and 5.10 m in maximum draft. It had accommodation for four passengers and 28 crew members and was powered by a FIAT 529T engine, with a power of 3,950 horsepower on a shaft, allowing it to maintain a speed of 14.5 knots. IMO Code 5118412.

Photo: Teodoro Diedrich via Alberto Mantilla