“The Cunarder” boat train departs the Southampton Ocean Terminal bound for London Waterloo with passengers from the RMS Queen Elizabeth. The boat train is hauled by SR Bulleid “Battle of Britain” class steam locomotive No 34088 213 Squadron.
BOAT TRAINS TO SOUTHAMPTON – From Cunard Lines to the Titanic and the SS United States.
Colonel John J. Astor IV waiting to board the First-Class boat-train at Waterloo Station for the ill-fated RMS TITANIC.
Cruising the past looks at the boat train.
Website of the Month – The Gjenvick-Gjønvik Archives – The Future of Our Past… Cruising the Past salutes The Gjenvick-Gjønvik Archives – with a visit to their excellent coverage of The Baltimore Mail Steamship Company.
Gjenvick-Gjønvik is one of the largest private archives of historical documents from the 1800s through 1954 with concentrations in Steamship and Ocean Liner documents and photographs, Passenger Lists, materials covering World Wars I and II, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Immigration documents from Ellis Island, Castle Garden and other Immigration Stations.
Featured on today’s Cruising The Past are excellent photos from The Gjenvick-Gjønvik Archive’s piece on The Baltimore Mail Steamship Company.
Click here to visit the Gjenvick-Gjønvik Archive.
Passengers Sailing Home aboard the Baltimore Mail Ships
Cruise History: The Baltimore Mail Steamship Company
Addison Mizner (left) and his career as an architect of fact and fable. From mansions to yachts.
More Social History in Palm Beach from a great story in New York Social Diary.
Cruising The Past also looks at one of Mizner’s first clients: Edward Townsend Stotesbury and his yacht Neveda.
Our thanks to Wayne C. Wilcox and his STOTESBURY.COM website for photos and background.
El Mirasol, Palm Beach, FL; from a c. 1920 postcard published by the E. C. Kropp Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Designed by architect Addison Mizner, the winter home of Edward Townsend Stotesbury was completed in 1919. Razed in the 1950s, the 37-room mansion’s fittings and furnishings were sold at auction, and its 42 acres (17 hectares) were redeveloped as a 14 lot subdivision.
(Left: The Stotesbury’s yacht Neveda cruising in front of EL Mirasol.) Even though Henry Morrison Flagler founded Palm Beach, it took Eva and Edward Stotesbury to put it on the map
In 1917, when the Stotesburys decided to build ‘El Mirasol,” they were a couple in the right place. at the right time.
Cruise History: MS STOCKHOLM – Collided with the Italian Line’s Andrea Doria and, as the MV ATHENA, was attacked by pirates. The Italian press called the Stockholm the “ship of death” (La nave della morte).
The Stockholm returning to New York after her collision with the Andrea Doria. Her bow severely damaged.
MV Athena (formerly the MS Stockholm) is a cruise ship owned and operated by Classic International Cruises. She was built in 1948 as the MS Stockholm by Götaverken in Gothenburg for the Swedish America Line. Since her career with SAL she has sailed under the names MS Völkerfreundschaft, MS Volker, MS Fridtjof Nansen, MS Italia I, MS Italia Prima, MS Valtur Prima and MS Caribe, before beginning service under her current name. As the Stockholm she was best known for colliding with the SS Andrea Doria in 1956, resulting in the sinking of the latter ship.
Philadelphia lunching Ikea shoppers have a view of the SS United States, at Pier 82 since 1996.
CRUISE SHIP HISTORY: SOS for faded liner – SOS for faded liner – Is the SS United States headed for the scrap yards or will Philadelphia save her?
Bill Clinton was in his first term as president when the peeling hulk of the SS United States was towed up the Delaware River for temporary moorage. The massive ocean liner has now idled in the shadow of the Walt Whitman Bridge for so long that its 12-story stacks are virtually part of Philadelphia’s skyline, hardly noticed by the thousands who drive overhead each day.
But the once-grand ship could soon slip away as quietly as it arrived.
Its owner, Star Cruises of Hong Kong, has put the vessel up for sale. Though the United States was the world’s fastest, and arguably most luxurious, liner when it made its maiden voyage in 1952, career prospects for middle-age ocean liners aren’t particularly bright these days.
“Scrap” gets mentioned a lot.
Check out full details at the SOS SS United States website by clicking here.
CRUISE SHIP HISTORY: OLD BAY LINE – PRESIDENT WARFIELD BECAME THE FAMOUS SS EXODUS. The President Warfield was named after the Old Bay Line’s president. Warfield’s niece Bessie Wallis Warfield (Mrs. Wallis) shook the British empire to its foundations when she married Edward VIII.
PRESIDENT WARFIELD – “Old Baltimore At Twilight” by Paul McGehee. The beautiful inner harbor of Baltimore holds memories for many people … memories of the days when you could go down to the “Long Dock” to buy watermelons brought in by the Chesapeake Bay skipjacks and bugeyes … memories of the downtown smells of roasting coffee and spices coming from McCormick’s. In 1934, the Baltimore Trust building towered over the port, witness to the daily comings and goings of the passenger steamers that would dock along Light Street, close to the end of the steamboat era.
Peter Knego at Alang with SS RITA (ex WINDSOR CASTLE) in late September of 2005. Photo by Kaushal Trivedi.
Cruise News: Peter Kengo’s MIDSHIP CENTURY has received a new shipment of cruise ship furnishings after his recent visit to India. His collection covers everything from furniture, to ship’s fittings and art work from the cruise ships of yesterday.
Click here to visit Peter’s website and see his new items that are for sale.
Union Castle’s RMS WINDSOR CASTLE in its prime on the UK to South Africa run.
Midship Century was founded in 2005 by ocean liner historian and journalist Peter Knego as a logical outlet for the container loads of materials he salvaged from a long procession of celebrated vessels scrapped on the beach of Alang, India in recent years. Many, such as Sun Line’s STELLA SOLARIS, were fitted out with important designer furniture and valuable artwork, while others, such as the former Cunard Liner IVERNIA, were unchanged relics filled with mid-1950s and early 1960s fixtures and furnishings.
Rare, Original Emanuele Luzzati Double Sided Screen From MV STELLA OCEANIS.
Their replacements, today’s mega cruise ships, offer a myriad of amenities to make the passenger forget he or she is even at sea. But unlike ocean liners, these boxy monoliths are fitted out like modern hotels with store-bought furnishings and fire resistant materials. The era of the individual ship representing the best of its nation’s artisans and craftsmen ended in the mid 1960s (although there were a handful of exceptions like the STELLA SOLARIS in the early 1970s).
Cruise History: The sinking of the actual RMS Titanic and the fictitious sinking of the Titan. Was it coincidence?
Art doesn’t just imitate life — sometimes it anticipates it. Fourteen years before the RMS Titanic was built, the American Morgan Robertson wrote a novel called Futility or The Wreck of the Titan (1898) that prefigured the real ship’s destiny with remarkable precision.
The Titanic and the Titan were both triple-screwed British passenger liners with a capacity of 3,000 and a top speed of 24 knots.
Both were deemed unsinkable; both carried too few lifeboats.
And both sank in April in the North Atlantic after colliding with an iceberg on the forward starboard side.
Futility, 1898 Edition About the Titan
Morgan Robertson’s novel described the ship’s loss. It struck an iceberg and went down in April.
The Titanic struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on April 14, 1912 and sank a little over two hours later at 2.20 a.m. on April 15, 1912. The novel was republished, after the Titanic sank, with the title Futility and the Wreck of the Titan. Some of the Titan’s statistics were changed.
John Rowland, Futility’s hero, is a disgraced former Royal Navy lieutenant, who’s a drunkard. After being dismissed from the Navy, he’s a deckhand on the Titan. Then ship hits an iceberg and sinks. There aren’t enough lifeboats. He saves a former lover’s daughter by jumping onto the iceberg with her. Rowland finds a lifeboat washed up on the iceberg and they’re rescued by a passing ship.
Cruising the future. The stylish French tradition of cruising will return with the revived Paquet Cruises in 2010.
The Costa Allegra will be chartered by Paquet.
The Paquet cruise brand in France is to be revived by Jean-Maurice Ravon through his company TMR. TMR will apparently charter the 820-berth Costa Allegra to operate Med cruises in the summer of 2010. He has apparently chartered the Costa Romantica for various cruises in the past.
TMR had also chartered one of the ex-Renaissance ships for a while before Oceania grabbed it up.
As Costa control the Paquet brand they seem to have come to an agreement with Ravon’s TMR to market the ship under the revived name in an attempt to test the French market against Royal Caribbean’s Croisières de France and their 800-berth Bleu de France.
Whether the Italian ship will carry French officers and/or staff has not been stated.
But a new brand in the underperforming French market may help it grow.
France has a long maritime history, but its inhabitants seem to be among the most reluctant in Europe to embrace cruising, but with two new Ponant Cruises ships being built by Fincentieri as well who knows, maybe France will soon have three cruise brands.
Earlier – classic late mid-century cruise ships operated by Paquet Cruises included:
Rhapsody – (Paquet: 1982-1986) – Rhapsody was built as the Statendam of Holland America Line in 1957. She was bought by the Paquet group in 1982 and renamed Rhapsody, but sold again to the Lelakis group in 1986, and named Regent Star in the Regency fleet. Her steam turbines were replaced by diesels in 1987. She has been inactive since the Regency Cruises bankruptcy.
Mermoz – (Paquet: 1965-1998) – Mermoz was built as the Jean Mermoz of Cie. Fraissinet of Marseille in 1958, sailing to West Africa. She was sold to the Nouvelle Cie. de Paquebots in 1965, initially retaining her name. She was later converted to be more suitable for cruising and renamed Mermoz. Mermoz was sold in 1998 but soon passed to Louis Cruise Lines as the Serenade.
Ancerville – (Paquet: 1962-1973) – Ancerville was built in 1962 for the Marseille-Dakar service of Cie. Navigation de Paquet, and passed to Nouvelle Cie. de Paquebots in 1970. She was sold to the People’s Republic of China in 1973.
Johnny Depp and J. P. Morgan Jr. seen aboard their respective yachts.
Cruising the past and the future: Actor Johnny Depp and the famous financier J. P. Morgan Jr. have one thing in common – classic yachts!
Depp’s VaJoliroja.
Morgan built the yacht Corsair and Depp refurbished his yacht VaJoliroja (pronounced along the lines of “The Jolly Roger”).
J. P. Morgan’s Corsair.
Although Depp’s yacht is much smaller than Morgan’s – they both share classic lines.
Depp’s yacht is the ex Antolia. She is 143-feet on deck (156′ including bow sprit), and was built in Turkey in 2001. The yacht is a modern classic luxury superyacht 47m (156ft) long and was built by Proteksan Turquoise Yacht built in turkey in 2001. Depp did an extensive refit in 2007.
Classic accommodations aboard the VaJoliroja.
The actor looked at a lot of more modern “Explorer” yachts, but in addition to being attracted to her graceful looks with long wooden bowsprit, saucy counter stern and yards of gleaming bright work, her narrow beam and fuel efficient Caterpillar 3406 engines also satisfied his requirements for fuel efficiency. (25.4 GPH at 12 knots with both engines and generator running.)
Depp’s yacht has received yachting awards and opposed to other celebrity yachts – is built in great taste and is nothing like the “super boat” grossness of mega-billionaires such as David Geffen.
Deck Plan of Depp’s Yacht.
Depp’s yacht accommodates 12 guests, requires an 8 man crew and has a 229 ton displacement.
She has 5 guest cabins including the large owner’s suite.
The name Vajoliroja is a combination of Johnny’s family’s names, Va for Vanessa, Jo for Johnny, LiRo for his 9 year old daughter Lily Rose and Ja for his son Jack.
If you say it just right, it sounds like ‘The Jolly Roger’.
For more information on Morgan’s Corsair click this link on New York Social Diary.
