In the 1950s, you could cruise from Miami to Havana, Cuba for $42.00 per person aboard the S.S. Florida. This fare included all transportation, two nights aboard ship, a day in Havana and all meals.
YouTube video of cruise ship arriving in Havana – this was recent – but it would have been the same view in 1958 aboard the S. S. Florida. Nothing much has changed including the cars which are mainly American – vintage 1950s. [Read more...]
Wonderful historical youTube video of P&O Line’s S.S. HIMALAYA.
SS Himalaya was a passenger liner of 27,955 grt built for the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company by Vickers Armstrong’s Barrow Yard and delivered to them in 1949. She was initially employed solely on the Company’s service from the UK to Australia but was latterly also employed on crusing duties as well. She served the Company well until 1974 when she was sold for scrapping in Taiwan. This shot is taken from an early 1960s PLA Handbook and shows “Himalaya” sailing from Tilbury Landing Stage
In 1946 P&O Lines had ordered its first new passenger liner of the postwar period. The Himalaya finally emerged in 1949 and was a splendid ship and the fastest and largest ship P&O had ever owned until that time. She had a top speed of 25 knots.
The Himalaya was a contemporary of Orient Line’s Orcades and these ships marked a gradual coming together of the new liners of each company in the postwar era.
She was a record breaker and cut the UK to Bombay passage by 5 days and reduced the overall voyage to Australia from 38 days to just 28 days.
Indeed the six ships worked closely together on their Australian service with their sailing schedules organized so that sailings alternated between P&O and Orient. Thus they formed a Southern Dominions “Big Six” fleet.
In January 1958 P&O and Orient services to Australia were extended across the Pacific in a joint service marketed as Orient & Pacific Line.
The Himalaya inaugurated the operation and sailings continued from Sydney to Auckland, Suva, Honolulu, Vancouver and San Francisco. In 1974 the venerable Himalaya was finally retired from service.
S/S Himalaya was the first new passenger liner of the postwar period for P&O. The Himalaya was a splendid ship and the fastest and largest ship P&O had ever owned until that time. She had a top speed of 25 knots.
The Himalaya was a contemporary of Orient Line’s Orcades and these ships marked a gradual coming together of the new liners of each company in the postwar era. She was a record breaker and cut the UK to Bombay passage by 5 days and reduced the overall voyage to Australia from 38 days to just 28 days. Indeed the six ships worked closely together on their Australian service with their sailing schedules organized so that sailings alternated between P&O and Orient. Thus they formed a Southern Dominions “Big Six” fleet. In January 1958 P&O and Orient services to Australia were extended across the Pacific in a joint service marketed as Orient & Pacific Line. The Himalaya inaugurated the operation and sailings continued from Sydney to Auckland, Suva, Honolulu, Vancouver and San Francisco. In 1974 the venerable Himalaya was finally retired from service.
In the 1950s, you could cruise from Miami to Havana, Cuba for $42.00 per person aboard the S.S. Florida. This fare included all transportation, two nights aboard ship, a day in Havana and all meals.
YouTube video of cruise ship arriving in Havana – this was recent – but it would have been the same view in 1958 aboard the S. S. Florida. Nothing much has changed including the cars which are mainly American – vintage 1950s. [Read more...]
Cruise News: P&O cruise ship passengers revolt over ‘prison’ conditions aboard World Cruise. Bad luck for ship where champagne bottle did not break as liner was blessed. A bad omen?
The Aurora has suffered a string of bad luck since its naming ceremony went awry.
Holidaymakers compared their round-the-world voyage on the Aurora to being in prison after engine problems forced the travel operator to cut five stops.
More than 600 passengers on the 93-night cruise attended an emergency meeting and formed a protest committee after missing three ports in New Zealand and two Pacific Islands. [Read more...]
American Export Line’s SS CONSTITUTION
Courtesy of a wonderful website called LAST OCEAN LINERS
Until the early 1970s, it was routinely possible to schedule extensive world journeys by transferring between three, four or more different ocean liners on point-to-point line voyages. The services were promoted to take advantage of a coordinated system of fares and schedules among cooperating shipping companies known as the “Interchange Lines.”
In January 1962, for example, one could begin at New York with an 11 day Atlantic crossing on American Export Lines’ Constitution (above) to Tenerife, Gibraltar and Naples. After visiting Italy, passengers caught the Asia of Lloyd Triestino outbound for 25 days via the Suez Canal to Pakistan, India, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Luncheon on deck aboard American President Line’s SS CLEVELAND – 1960s
Then the traveler could sail home across the Pacific for 19 days on American President Lines’ President Cleveland via Kobe, Yokohama and Honolulu to San Francisco. In those days fares for this alluring around the world voyage began at only US$935 in Tourist Class or US$1488 in First Class.
Here we survey a sample of the 1962 schedules and services of the Interchange Lines as they weaved together these romantic routes on splendid ships over exotic seas. Come along. It’s sailing hour, so let’s enjoy a pleasant journey back into the not-so-distant past when ocean liners could take you almost anywhere!
| HOME PORT | 1962 Ocean Liner SAILING SCHEDULES |
Last TRANSATLANTIC Ocean Liners |
Last Ocean Liners To AFRICA, ASIA & AUSTRALIA |
Last AROUND-THE-WORLD Ocean Liners |
By Paul Ash – Accidental Tourist (Times, Johannesburg, South Africa)
US Line’s SS AMERICA waited 15 years to be converted to a hotel and then was wrecked while being towed.
Some people think the QE2 should have been scrapped, like so many other famous liners, on the beaches of Alang in India. Others say better a floating hotel than being turned into spoons. I’m not so sure — the track record of floating hotels is not a good one.
The first (RMS) QUEEN ELIZABETH gutted by fire in Hong Kong.
The first RMS Queen Elizabeth, retired in 1968, was sent to become a university at sea (gigantic floating dormitory) in Hong Kong, where one fine night she was gutted by fire, while the American beauty, the SS America, spent 15 years waiting to become a floating hotel before being wrecked while being towed to Thailand.
P&O’s RMS CANBERRA was ravaged and scrapped in India.
P&O’s SS Canberra took me from Cape Town to Southampton in 1992. She was filled with trophies from her career, like the bronze plaque marking her service as a troopship during the Falklands War. A year later, I had my own QE2 moment when, sitting on a friend’s balcony in Bantry Bay, we saw the Canberra slipping off across the darkness of Table Bay, lit up like a Christmas tree. I didn’t know it, but that was the last time we would see her. A few years later she was gone, sold for scrap to Alang. Spoons.
US Line’s SS UNITED STATES doomed to rotting away.
America’s own sea greyhound, the SS United States — whose westbound transatlantic record of three-and-a-half days remains unbroken — is rusting away in Philadelphia. She has sweeping lines that tug at the heart and big, fat funnels that hint at powerful machinery beneath them. There are — expensive — plans to put her back in service but these days, it’s often cheaper to build a new ship with modern engines.
Which is exactly what all the cruise companies are doing. And magnificent ships they are. Huge, stately things, stuffed with diversions. But there’s something missing, like the fables that surround the old, great liners like a cloak. Maybe the new ships will get it too — if their careers span decades and they pick up the scars that working ships do.
One thing they will never have, though, is the distinction of being a working ship rather than a floating palace. This, perhaps, is why the end of the QE2’s career is a gloomy thought. She was launched in 1967 and christened by her namesake. But the jet age and cheap air travel had arrived and ocean liners no longer held the keys to the world. Airliners were cool and air travel was glamorous — remember those sexy airline ads of the ’60s? If we knew then what we know now, maybe we would have stuck with the ships and the world would have been a slower place, which would be no bad thing.
The QE2 is a link to a world a little more innocent than ours, and when we lose those things, we get a little harder and a little more jaded. Losing the QE2 is like losing the grandmother you love.
I hope she has a happy retirement in the boiling Arabian Gulf, away from the freezing Atlantic. And I hope, truly, that someone doesn’t give me a spoon one day made from the steel hull plates of the world’s most beautiful ship.
Florida’s Peninsular and Occidental Steamship Company was a pioneer in today’s billion-dollar Florida cruise business. Until Castro’s regime closed Cuba to cruise ships in 1960, the SS FLORIDA was sailing three times a week from Miami. The SS FLORIDA had first sailed from Key West to Cuba until the 1934 devastating hurricane destroyed the terminal and rail connections to Miami. Built in New Port News, Virginia, in 1931, the SS FLORIDA accommodated 612 passengers in first class and 130 in second class. After World War 2 the overnight ship was turned into a one class liner.
Today, Americans can travel to China but not Cuba. Seems one kind of Communist regime is okay for the current administration but not another.
Maybe that will change in November and Americans will be able to sail again to Havana!
Painting of the SS FLORIDA.
Postcard from the SS FLORIDA arriving in Maimi, Florida.
SS FLORIDA and the SS IROQUOIS.
