Before she became one of the world's most famous mega-yachts, the Yacht Christina was a frigate built by Canadian Vickers and serving in the Canadian Navy's River Class.

Named HMCS Stormont when launched in 1943, the ship was used during the Second World War for convoy protection and anti-submarine warfare in the North Atlantic. 

She also took part in the Normandy landings.

Four years after she was commissioned, once peace had returned, the wealthy Greek shipowner Aristote Onassis bought her for $34,000 and turned her into the world's largest yacht by completely renovating her for just over $4 million, with the help of the German architect Cäsar Pinnau.

When the renovations were completed, the ship was the most luxurious yacht in the world. With room for up to 250 guests, she is also famous for her lavish interior design. 

The yacht houses 17 staterooms, as well as the Onassis Suite, the master cabin comprising three areas: the bedroom with its baccarat crystal bedside lamps, the white marble bathroom and the study with its large oak bookcase.

The rest of the ship is filled with richly decorated living spaces, including the dining room, which seats 24, the mosaic swimming pool on the deck, the Lapis Lounge, with its Lapis Lazuli fireplace, and the Callas Lounge, which has witnessed a number of performances by the stars of the era, such as Franck Sinatra and Maria Callas, accompanied by the imposing Steinway piano in its centre.

One of the many curiosities on board is Ari's Bar, a solid wooden bar made from the hull of an old Spanish galleon. Covered in rope, it is adorned with whalebone bar handles to match the whale skin stools. It was in this room that Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy are said to have met for the first time, in 1957.

HMCS Stormont was renamed Christina after the renovations, in honour of Christina Onassis, the billionaire's daughter.

From then on, Aristote Onassis organised sumptuous parties there, to which some of the greatest personalities of the time were invited, including Marilyn Monroe, Maria Callas, Winston Churchill, John D. Rockefeller, Grace Kelly and many others.

The yacht Christina became the gathering point for some of the world's most eminent celebrities every summer, and also witnessed two weddings during this period, that of Prince Rainier III of Monaco to Grace Kelly in 1956, and that of Aristote Onassis himself to Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis in 1968.

In 1975, after the death of Onassis, his daughter Christina decided to bequeath the yacht to the Greek government. The vessel was renamed Argo and used as a presidential yacht. But the recent political upheavals in the country made the yacht an 'ill-timed' present, as the Greeks were just emerging from seven years of military dictatorship. 

The yacht was neglected. Left to decay, she deteriorated. 

In 1998, a Greek businessman, John Paul Papanicolaou, a friend of the Onassis family, bought the yacht with the Tauck company and restored it for around 50 million dollars. In 2001, after three years of painstaking restoration, the Argo was once again known as the Christina yacht, with the addition of the Onassis 'O'.

She had regained her former glory.

In 2010, when Papanicolaou died of cancer, the yacht kept a low profile until 2015, when her new owner, Ivor Fitzpatrick, founder of one of Ireland's best-known and most respected law firms, decided to refit her.

The work lasted until 2017 and enabled the mega-yacht to add a helicopter landing pad, a spa and a fitness room.

Today, the yacht is available for charter from Morley Yachts for €700,000 a week. It was also used as the backdrop for a film released in 2022: Triangle of Sadness, directed by Ruben Östlund, which won the Palme d'Or at the 75th Cannes Film Festival.