Louis Cruise Lines announced May 11th that it had acquired a 26-year-old cruise ship to replace its ship Sea Diamond, which inexplicably rammed underwater rocks last month and sank just off the Greek island of Santorini.

A statement from Louis Cruise Lines said it had acquired the MV Opera, a 25,611-ton cruise ship with the capacity to carry 1,278 passengers in 483 cabins.

Unless Louis changes the name of the ship, it seems likely to create some confusion.

For the past three years, MSC Cruises has operated a new cruise ship also named Opera which is more than twice the size of the Louis ship and carries up to 2,260 passengers.

Louis said its cruise ship, purchased for $49 million, will be put into service in July, sailing three and four-day Mediterranean cruises from the Greek port of Piraeus. MSC's Opera will spend the summer sailing seven-day Northern European cruises out of Copenhagen.

The MV Opera, which originally started out in 1980 as the ferry Viking Saga, has had a checkered existence. In January 1990, the Sally Albatros, as she was then named, was swept by fire while in regular maintenance at a shipyard in Sweden. Practically the entire superstructure of the ship was damaged beyond repair.

The burnt out hull was towed to Finland where sections were used as the basis of the present day ship. In March 1994, Sally Albatros ran aground in the ice covered sea outside Porkkala and partially sank. She was ultimately towed to Italy where she was repaired.

After several uneventful years sailing for NCL and Star Cruises, she returned to Finland where she resumed sailing as Silja Opera. In September 2003, she collided with three cargo-ships in St. Petersburg. Two months later, she collided with a Russian icebreaker.

In 2006, she was put up for sale and her name was shortened to Opera.

The ship she is replacing, Sea Diamond, sank on April 6, a day after running aground off Santorini forcing evacuation of more than 1,500 passengers and crew. A French tourist and his daughter are still missing and believed drowned.

The Greek newspaper Kathimerini reported that the ship's data recorder -- which was recovered from the depths -- has been sent to the U.S. where it is being analyzed by experts.

Meanwhile, several New York residents who survived the sinking are suing Louis and a travel agency for what they claim was negligent handling of the accident.

The lawsuit cites several alleged instances in which both Louis and Globus, a New York tour agency, did not do enough to protect the passengers and their safety.

In the case of Louis, the lawsuit states that the company failed to avoid colliding with a "well-marked" reef, operate the vessel safely and organize an "orderly evacuation of the passengers."

Globus is accused of negligence in its selection and hiring of Louis as the shipping company for the tourists, the lawsuit said.