Lisbon's Laid-Up Liner Funchal Is Sold for Scrap to the Turkish Breakers Who Took the Lisboa and the Porto

The Funchal, the 1961 passenger liner that has sat idle in Lisbon for more than a decade, has been sold for scrap. According to Jornal de Negócios, a Turkish ship-breaking group has bought her for 802,000 euros, and she will leave the Tagus for Aliağa, on Turkey's Aegean coast, to be broken up. The paper places the ship, in a decrepit state, at Cais da Matinha, beside Parque das Nações. For anyone who walks that stretch of the riverside, a familiar silhouette is now likely to go.

The buyer, the paper says, is the same group that bought two of the Funchal's former fleet mates, the Lisboa and the Porto. Both belonged, along with the Astoria, to the cruise venture of businessman Rui Alegre, which collapsed owing Montepio around 150 million euros. Lusa reported in 2018 that a Turkish group had bought the Porto and the Lisboa to be scrapped.

A sale forced by insolvency

The sale comes out of the insolvency of Teamson, Lda, the ship's last owner, which Jornal de Negócios says paid 1.6 million euros for her in 2020. Court notices on the Ministry of Justice's Citius portal show that ten people asked the commercial court in Funchal, Madeira, to declare Teamson insolvent in June 2025, and that the insolvency judgment was published on 16 January 2026 (case 3124/25.8T8FNC). A notice for the verification of creditors' claims followed on 30 July. On 9 October, the paper reported that the process had drawn two foreign offers, one Turkish and one Greek, and that the crew had gone 25 months without wages. That first report said the Greek bid had come out ahead; the paper's report of 16 October names the Turkish group as the buyer. No departure date has been made public.

Sixty-five years of service and false dawns

Built in Denmark for the Empresa Insulana de Navegação, the Funchal was launched on 10 February 1961 and made her maiden voyage from Lisbon on 4 November 1961, calling at Funchal, Ponta Delgada and Angra do Heroísmo, according to Lusa. For years she ran a weekly service linking Lisbon with Madeira and the Azores. In 1972 she carried the remains of King Pedro IV to Brazil with the President of the Republic, Admiral Américo Thomaz, on board, and she was later refitted for international cruising. Her last trip was a New Year cruise to Madeira over 2014 to 2015, and she has been laid up in Lisbon since early 2015.

Several rescues were attempted. A British hotel group, Signature Living, bought her at auction in December 2018 for 3.91 million euros, then failed itself. In December 2023, ECO reported that American investors led by Brock Pierce had moved her from the Matinha quay to begin a restoration meant to make her an icon of Portuguese culture again. That plan never put her back in service.

What happens next

Neither the buyer nor the insolvency administrator has said when the ship will leave the Tagus. In the sources we could check, we found no heritage classification process or public campaign to keep her in Portugal. The loss sits alongside other recent goodbyes to the river's maritime past, such as the last picareto entering the Navy Museum, and comes as the city collects Europe's leading cruise destination title. Montepio's losses on the Alegre loans form part of a wider story at the bank, whose former chief is heading to trial in a separate case. And the Teamson case is one of many slow insolvencies: most of the oldest cases in the lower courts are of this kind.