The photograph  above was taken in South Dock, BA, in January 1965, by Howard Cook, when he was on the sister ship Padova Star on her first voyage after being bought from Laietz of Hamburg. The purchase of the Barcelona Star was done at very short notice. She only did one or maybe two voyages, Mediterranean to River Plate before being the first transferred to Calmedia Line. She was only on a temporary Certificate of British Registry with Tony Cheshire as Master and Bernie Illingworth as Mate. All the engineers including the C/E were the Germans from Laietz, sailing under a special dispensation. Howard Cook remembered that when she went to the Italian flag, the reefer, who was Austrian rather than German, remained with BSL.

The other dispensation which the two ships had, was to operate with an ammonia fridge system which was normally not allowed under British flag. The difference between the two was that the Padova Star (Parthenon) was newer, but the first to be fitted with variable pitch propeller which had proved useful in the West African creeks for which she was designed, but resulted in lesser performance on a sea passage: It is likely that the Barcelona Star (Piraus), although older performed better with conventional fixed propeller.

Calmedia Line was set up for political reasons in 1965 to expand the Italian refer trade, under Italian Flag and with Italian crews. Several Blue Star Line vessels were progressively transferred to the line.