If anything, the French Line’s SS Normandie was too beautiful. She was never as popular as Queen Mary because SS Normandie was like a floating art gallery that overwhelmed? the passengers, whereas Queen Mary was more traditional and felt like a home to the passengers. It’s a disgrace what happened to SS Normandie. To think such a revolutionary, innovative, and dazzling vessel was destroyed due to sheer stupidity breaks the heart.
A link to the elegance of the past – our 2012 choice and review for one of the best boutique hotels in Paris – the Renaissance Vendome Hotel.
Video of Paris – during the 1920s.
One can never capture the feeling of cruising the past in most hotels today. That chic traveling public is gone. Clients arriving from a trans-Atlantic crossing on the France or United States are history. No one travels with maids and trunks today. One barely hopes your baggage (and the plane) makes it to your destination – except of course when flying in your own jet.
So in all great cities the experienced traveler is always looking for that special small hotel.
The Renaissance Paris Vendome combines many of those values – with a very up to date modern atmosphere.
It is one of the top small hotels in Paris and beautifully run by Marriott’s Renaissance Group. What I like about Marriott is that they are one of the best hotel chains operating. They don’t forget details no matter where you are visiting – and their benefits club is operating at the highest level.
French Line SS FRANCE at Le Harve, France.
Grace Line SS SANTA ROSA arriving in New York Harbor.
Cruise and Liner History: THE BOOTH LINE from LIVERPOOL SHIPS.
The HILARY sailing up the Amazon.
The Booth Steamship Company’s HILARY of 1931 operated the Booth Line service from Liverpool to Manaus, 1,000 miles up the AMAZON.
Ordering the passenger-cargo liner HILARY at the height of the depression was a mark of considerable faith by the Booth Line, and the placing of the order locally on Merseyside was much appreciated.
The HILARY in her original form with a black hull and a funnel without the houseflag…
The HILARY was launched on 17th April 1931 and was completed by August. She sailed on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to Para and Manaus on 14th August, The new HILARY could easily be recognized by her distinctive three-note triple-chime steam whistle.
Passengers on the promenade viewing the Amazon.
Staff magazine of the Cunard Steamship Company, Christmas 1928
The Cunard Line has a long and fascinating history. It was created in 1839 when Samuel Cunard won the Admiralty’s tender to provide a transatlantic mail service to be carried by steamships between Great Britain and North America. The service was inaugurated in 1840 when the steamship Britannia made the first crossing to Halifax and then Boston.
Cunard’s ‘ocean greyhounds’ soon faced stiff competition from other American, British and especially German companies, who all wanted a share in the profitable business of ferrying mail, European emigrants and wealthy passengers across the Atlantic.
THE M/V HIKAWA MARU was operated by the NYK Line (now Crystal Cruises). She was the only Japanese passenger vessel to survive WW 2. In her 30 years of service, the HIKAWA MARU crossed the pacific 254 times, carrying around 25,000 passengers and a great volume of cargo.
Ocean Liner Posters is a wonderful book telling the story of shipping companies and their ships through the art they produced – their posters. For a century, ocean liners were the only way to travel from one continent to another. Millions of passengers travelled on transatlantic routes: millionaires, occupying luxurious suites with dream decors, signed by the best artists of the time, and emigrants in search of a future, meager savings in hand, huddled in third class – all sharing their journeys with tourists, soldiers and traders on the largest form of transportation ever built. This book charts the evolution of ocean liner posters from the first ship poster reproductions of the latter part of the nineteenth century, when the vessel’s image appeared alongside information about the routes taken, through the Art Nouveau era, when the image of the ship began to take a key role in terms of visual importance. The Art Deco period allowed masters of poster art such as Adolphe Mouron Cassandre to create enduring works for the likes of Normandie or the Atlantique. The book continues tracing the timeline of these posters, through the postwar period until the demise of transatlantic routes, through to the sixties, which saw the poster being modernized. Cruise Line and Liner History – The White Star Line – Video: A Voyage on a White Star Liner circa 1932…
The first company bearing the name White Star Line was founded in Liverpool, England by John Pilkington and Henry Wilson, and focused on the UK–Australia trade, which had increased following the discovery of gold there. The fleet initially consisted of chartered sailing ships, RMS Tayleur, Blue Jacket, White Star, Red Jacket, Ellen, Ben Nevis, Emma, Mermaid and Iowa. The fate of Tayleur, the largest ship of its day, haunted the company for years, for it was wrecked on its maiden voyage to Australia at Lambay Island, near Ireland. The company acquired its first steamship in 1863, the Royal Standard.
The original White Star Line merged with two other small lines, Black Ball and Eagle, to form a conglomerate, the Liverpool, Melbourne and Oriental Steam Navigation Company Limited. This did not prosper and White Star broke away. White Star concentrated on the Liverpool to New York service. Heavy investment in new ships was financed by borrowing, but the company’s bank, the Royal Bank of Liverpool, failed in October 1867. White Star was left with an outstanding debt of £527,000, (£34,029,969 as of 2011), and was forced into bankruptcy.
Cruise and Liner History: Passenger Liners and Great Warriors – Lost Ships – Ghosts of the past…
Cruise history and liner history: The MS WILHELM GUSTLOFF was the worst maritime disaster in the history of the world, with more fatalities then the Titanic and the Lusitania combined.
August 1, 1936 at Blohm & Voss shipyards in Hamburg. Robert Ley, head of the DAF and KdF drove in the ceremonial first bolt.
The MS WILHELM GUSTLOFF
The MS Wilhelm Gustloff was a German KdF flagship during 1937-1945, constructed by the Blohm & Voss shipyards. It sank after being torpedoed by the Soviet submarine S-13 on 30 January 1945. The ship was named after Wilhelm Gustloff, the assassinated German leader of the Swiss Nazi party. It was requisitioned into the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) on 1 September 1939 and served as a hospital ship in 1939 and 1940. Beginning on 20 November 1940, it was stripped of medical equipment and repainted from its hospital ship colors (white with a green stripe) to standard naval grey. The Wilhelm Gustloff was then assigned as a floating barracks for naval personnel in the port of Gdynia which was located in Nazi occupied Poland (renamed during German occupation to Gotenhafen), near Gda?sk, Poland.
