PONANT receives delivery of Le Commandant Charcot Share On Thursday 29 July, PONANT took delivery of Le Commandant Charcot, the first hybrid electric polar exploration ship powered by Liquefied Natural Gas. A flag exchange ceremony took place at the VARD shipyard, a subsidiary of Fincantieri, in Norway. It took six years of hard work to bring this unique ship, 13th in the PONANT fleet, to this point. The French company partnered with a vast range of experts in their fields to design and build this exceptional vessel, including Stirling Design International, Aker Arctic and VARD. “Delivery of Le Commandant Charcot is both a culmination and the beginning of a new kind of odyssey for the company. The construction of this prototype ship demanded extremely high standards in terms of quality. I am proud of the work that our teams have accomplished. We are welcoming into our fleet a ship that will offer so much more than just a voyage of exploration, but rather a truly inspiring and fascinating discovery of a still little-known polar world,” said Hervé Gastinel, CEO of PONANT.