The Olympic Princess was designed by Marin Teknikk in Dragsund, Norway and was built by Brattvaag, entering service in 1999. Admittedly it was not the first MT6000 but at the time it was by far the most impressive with its elegant upperworks and crenelated monkey island. The first was the Skandi Marstein, a slightly less imposing vessel but with the same innovative propulsion which is by  azimuthing thrusters. Of course by then a number of platform ships had been provided with azmuthing propulsion but not, azipods or azipulls (both these names apparently being coyrighted) or, as I have chosen to name them aziprops, although even this is also claimed by someone as their own (I think they would have to provide me with the date they chose to register it in order for me to stop using it). But whatever it is called,  this propulsion system has not been without problems, requiring a slightly different mindset from that necessary for conventional steering and manoeuvring. In 2010 the Skandi Foula, another MT6000 collided with ship alongside in the port of Aberdeen, apparently because the Mate who was driving at the time was not absolutely familiar with the manual handling techniques required. The incident was not totally dismilar from one involving the Skandi Caledonia in the same port. At least some of the problems seem to stem from the apparent requirement to add more power if the vessel initially does not respond, causing even more damage if that was not the problem. The Skandi Marstein had been constructed in 1996 but the first time my organisation photographed it in Aberdeen was in 2001 so it may have been hiding somewhere else before then. Shell in particular were keen on it and so it spent some years working out of Torry Dock. When the Olympic Princess (Photographed by the author in Aberdeen in 2004) arrived it seemed to have impressed a number of operators who like nice elegant shiny ships, which might have caused several other MT6000s to be built after the turn of the century, most of them to be owned by District Offshore. One identical to the Olympic Princess, the Skandi Buchan entered service in 2002 and went to work for Total out of Aberdeen. It still employed on that contract, which has been extended to 2020. The design spawned a number of derivatives, the MT6006, 6009, 6010, 6012, 6015 and probably most impressively the MT6019 which is a pipelayer, two of which have been been built, the Skandi Neptune and the Skandi Navica. The latter was was sold to Subsea7 in 2008 to become Seven Navica(Photographed in Dujavik by Jan Plug in 2008). It was glimpsed laid up in Leith in August 2016 with others of the Subsea7 fleet, and may well be still there.