Cruising the past: Steamboats such as the SS Amelia and SS Olympian docked at the Turner, Beeton and Tunstall wharfs in Victoria, BC, Canada during the 1890s providing service to Alaska.
Ocean liner to the north: Captain Carroll aboard the SS Olympian.
SS Olympian and the Muir Glacier.
Wake of the SS Olympian and the Muir Glacier in the distance.
Floating ice in the Takou Inlet.
The new TV Series PAN AM takes you back to a time when flying was fun, and not like the nightmare one experiences today.
PAN AM – WHEN FLYING WAS FIRST CLASS
From the 1920′s until its demise in 1991, Pan American Airlines symbolized all that was luxurious in air travel. Elite fliers packed some of the first commercial use jumbo jets and were treated to delicious rounds of meals served by bright and beautiful girls in couture uniforms. Celebrities, businessmen and “Rainbow Class” alike jetted-off to far-flung vacation spots across the globe on this mega airline, the US’s first International carrier.
Like its iconic stewardesses, Pan Am had beauty and brains; they were the first carrier to adopt Boeing’s 747, revolutionized radio communication and emergency equipment, and broke records with a New York to New York ’round-the-world trip.
Social and Travel History… PAN AM… White-Glove Service
More than years ago, flying had a certain glamour: the luxurious seats, the doting (and beautiful) flight attendants, the gourmet meals… Today, most of the majesty of commercial air travel has been scrapped thanks to cutbacks and tight security. Miss the old days? We look back at what it used to mean to fly commercially.
Pictured: In 1968, a Pan Am flight attendant embraces and Aeroflot Stewardess before their first transatlantic flights from New York to Moscow.
LIFE photos featuring the glamour of air travel in the 1950s and 1960s… When passengers didn’t travel in cargo pants and t-shirts…
Pan American Airways System Sikorsky S-42B flying boat over Miami in the 1930s…
Interior of S-42B Sikorsky – wide aisle – two seats on either side. While the S-42B service was for but a brief time it demonstrated the type of passenger service Pan Am would offer in the future – from the DC-3 DC-4 – DC-6 – Boeing 377Strato-Cruiser – and the Boeing 707 Jet aircraft until the service was suspended in 1957 – every aspect of the service was First Class.
Pan American Airways System in flight food service aboard a S-42B Sikorsky.
The SS EXODUS… former SS PRESIDENT WARFIELD… night boat of the “honeymoon fleet”
CRUISE SHIP HISTORY: OLD BAY LINE – NIGHT BOAT PRESIDENT WARFIELD BECAME THE FAMOUS SS EXODUS.
The SS President Warfield was named after the Old Bay Line’s president. Warfield’s niece was Bessie Wallis Warfield (June 19, 1896 – April 24, 1986), best known as Wallis Simpson and later still the Duchess of Windsor, was a mistress, and later wife, of the former Edward VIII of the United Kingdom and was indirectly responsible for his abdication of the throne, though it has been argued that his probable Nazi sympathies were a factor.
PRESIDENT WARFIELD (EXODUS) – “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.
President Warfield (Exodus) - Painting by Melvin O. Miller
The OLD BAY LINE Dock in Baltimore.
The Baltimore Steam Packet Company, also known as the Old Bay Line, was an American steamship line from 1840 to 1962, providing overnight steamboat service on the Chesapeake Bay, primarily between Baltimore, Maryland, and Norfolk, Virginia.
Called a “packet” for the mail packets carried on government mail contracts, the term in the 19th century came to mean a steamer line operating on a regular, fixed daily schedule between two or more cities.
By the time the venerable packet line ceased operation in 1962 after 122 years of existence, it was the last surviving overnight steamship passenger service in the United States.
A VIEW AT SUNSET – from BALTIMORE TO NORFOLK aboard A OLD BAY LINE NIGHT BOAT DURING THE LATE 1950S…
CITY OF NORFOLK – Chesapeake Bay night boat. She was built at Sparrows Point, MD in 1911 for passenger and freight service between Baltimore and Norfolk. She operated in this service, first for the Chesapeake S.S. Co. and then the Old Bay Line, until 1962 when the company ceased operations. This view shows her backing from her Baltimore wharf at 7:30 AM on Oct. 31, 1949 on her way to dry dock.
Dancing on the OLD BAY LINE.
Services on the OLD BAY LINE.
In addition to regularly calling on Baltimore and Norfolk, the Baltimore Steam Packet Company also provided freight, passenger and vehicle transport to Washington, D.C., Old Point Comfort, and Richmond, Virginia, at various times during its history.
The Old Bay Line, as it came to be known by the 1860s, was acclaimed for its genteel service and fine dining, serving Chesapeake Bay specialties. Walter Lord, famed author of A Night to Remember and whose grandfather had been the packet line’s president from 1893 to 1899, mused that its reputation for excellent service was attributable to “… some magical blending of the best in the North and the South, made possible by the Company’s unique role in ‘bridging’ the two sections … the North contributed its tradition of mechanical proficiency, making the ships so reliable; while the South contributed its gracious ease.”
Old Bay Line steamer arriving in the early 1960s.
One of the Old Bay Line’s steamers, the former President Warfield, later became famous as the SS Exodus ship of book and movie fame, when Jewish refugees from war-torn Europe sailed aboard her in 1947 in an unsuccessful attempt to emigrate to Palestine.
THE PRESIDENT WARFIELD as the Exodus in 1947.
(Left) The SS Exodus, formerly the Baltimore Steam Packet Company’s President Warfield, arriving with 4,515 Jewish refugees at Haifa on 20 July, 1947.
On July 12, 1942 SS President Warfield was acquired by the War Shipping Administration (WSA) and converted to a transport craft for the British Ministry of War Transport.
Manned by a British merchant crew led by Capt. J. R. Williams, it departed St. John’s, Newfoundland on September 21, 1942, along with other small passenger steamers bound for the United Kingdom. Attacked by a German submarine 800 nautical miles (1,500 km) west of Ireland on September 25, the ship evaded one torpedo, and, after the scattering of its convoy, reached Belfast, Northern Ireland. In Britain, it served as a barracks and training ship on the River Torridge at Instow.
Returned by Britain, it joined the U.S. Navy as President Warfield on May 21, 1944. In July it served as a station and accommodations ship at Omaha Beach at Normandy. Following duty in England and on the Seine River, it arrived at Norfolk, Virginia, July 25, 1945, and left active Navy service September 13. President Warfield was struck from the U.S. Naval Vessel Register on October 11 and returned to the War Shipping Administration on November 14.
(Left) President Warfield enroute to Europe from the USA in 1947, where she would be renamed Exodus 1947.
On November 9, 1946 the WSA sold President Warfield to the Potomac Shipwrecking Co. of Washington, D.C., who were acting as an agent of the Jewish political group Haganah. The ship eventually ended up with Hamossad Le’aliyah Bet—the underground Jewish organization in Palestine intent on helping underground Jewish immigrants enter Palestine. It was renamed Exodus 1947 after the biblical Jewish exodus from Egypt to Canaan.
The ship was deliberately chosen because of its derelict condition. It was risky to put passengers on it, but it was felt this would compel the British to let it pass blockade because of this danger or put the British in a bad light internationally. The President Warfield left Baltimore February 25, 1947 and headed for the Mediterranean. With Palmach (Haganah’s military wing) skipper Ike Aronowicz as captain, and supervised by Haganah commissioner Yossi Harel as the operation’s commander, it sailed under false orders and left at night with 4,515 passengers from the port of Sète, France, on July 11, 1947, and arrived at Palestine’s shores on July 18.
1,282 women, many being pregnant, 1,600 men and 1,672 children boarded the ship in Sète. (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C.).
(Left) The President Warfield in Séte harbor awaiting the refugees. (Archiv Ursula Litzmann, Düren).
The British Royal Navy cruiser Ajax and a convoy of destroyers trailed the ship from very early in its voyage, and finally boarded it some 20 nautical miles (40 km) from shore. The Exodus had been purposely refitted to make boarding impossible with barriers and barbed wire along the top decks and steam hoses hooked to the boilers fitted for defense. Attempts had been made by the British to keep the Exodus from leaving France and interception at sea was decided upon as the ship was unseaworthy and presented the continual danger of sinking. The boarding by the British was difficult and had to be managed from the bridges of the destroyers and was challenged by the passengers and Haganah members on board. Two passengers and one of the crew, 1st mate William Bernstein, a U.S. sailor from San Francisco, died as a result of bludgeoning and several dozen others were injured before the ship was taken over.Due to the high profile of the Exodus 1947 emigration ship, it was decided by the British government that the emigrants were to be deported back to France. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin suggested this, and the request was relayed to General Sir Alan Cunningham, High Commissioner for Palestine, who agreed with the plan after consulting the Navy. Before then, intercepted would-be immigrants were placed in internment camps on Cyprus, which was at the time a British colony. This new policy was meant to be a signal to both the Jewish community and the European countries, which assisted immigration that whatever they sent to Palestine would be sent back to them.
Not only should it clearly establish the principle of REFOULEMENT as applies to a complete shipload of immigrants, but it will be most discouraging to the organizers of this traffic if the immigrants… end up by returning whence they came. The damaged former President Warfield remained moored to a breakwater at Haifa harbor as a derelict until it burned to the waterline August 26, 1952. Later towed to Shemen Beach, Haifa, it was raised in 1963 and scrapped by an Italian firm.
SS President Roosevelt.
The SS President Roosevelt was a passenger liner of the United States Lines that was involved in a famous heroic rescue of the crew of the British ship Antinoe in the Atlantic Ocean in January 1926. The captain of the ship, George Fried, was given a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan in honor of his heroism.
Helen Keller aboard the S.S. President Roosevelt with Polly Thomson, Anne Sullivan Macy, and Captain Van Beck, 1932.
Newspaper photo announcing the departure of the U.S. Olympic team to Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1928, aboard the S.S. President Roosevelt.
General Douglas McArthur and aide on board the S.S. President Roosevelt, July 1928. Sailing with the U.S. Olympic team to the 1928 events in Amsterdam, Netherlands. [Read more...]
Cruise and Liner History: The RMS QUEEN MARY vs SS NORMANDIE
Cruising The Past salutes: ‘MR. OCEAN LINER” – Author and lecturer – William “Bill” Miller
Preview of new documentary on Bill Miller.
Bill Miller interviewed on NBC News in connection with the recent New York Normandie exhibit.
Bill Miller is probably the major living authority on the subject of ocean liners & cruise ships.
Miller has written some 60 books on maritime history and the “Golden Age” of ocean liners and the modern cruise industry: In all, he has written over 1,000 articles for newspapers, magazines, journals and maritime newsletters, and publishes his own quarterly, the Millergram. He has made 275 or so voyages to date: crossings, cruises, coastal runs and even trips on container cargo ships and tropic banana boats. He has appeared in over two dozen video and television series including Castles of the Sea, The Floating Palaces, The Superliners, Inside the World of a Cruise Ship, Sea Disasters and Deco: Age of Glamour. He has been guest lecturer aboard 50 different liners, sailing with likes of Celebrity, Azamara, Carnival, Cunard, Crystal, Holland America, Princess and Radisson-Seven Seas cruise lines.
A native of Hoboken, New Jersey, the once busy port just across the Hudson from new York City, Miller was named the outstanding American maritime scholar in 1994. He was chairman of the Port of New York Branch of the World Ship Society, served on the selection committee for the American Maritime Hall of Fame, Created the passenger ship database for the Ellis Island Museum and currently serves as adjunct curator for ocean liner studies at New York City’s South Street Seaport Museum. He organized a 14-week college course on ocean liners, helped create the US Merchant Marine Museum and has written commissioning books for three new cruise ships. His private collection includes 3,000 books on ships, over 12,000 photos and some 750 miniature ocean liner models.
Here are a few of Bill Miller’s great books on liners of the past. Including his most recent and upcoming editions.
SS FRANCE – SS NORWAY. Completed in the early 1960s, the France was the last of the great French Line passenger ships on the celebrated run to and from New York. She was not only the national flagship, but the longest liner yet built, and a ship with fantastic interiors, superb service, and the most exquisite food. Highly successful, she did lose out in the end to the unsurpassable speed of jet aircraft, was laid-up, and lingered for five years before becoming a hugely successful cruise ship. In 1979–80, the indoor France was converted to the outdoor Norway.
She became the largest cruise ship in the world, an innovator, a great prelude to today’s mega-liners. She endured until 2005 and has since ended her days at the hands of scrappers in far-off India. Indeed, she was one of the greatest, grandest, most beloved of all 20th-century ocean liners.
THE LAST ATLANTIC LINERS. Profusely illustrated with color and black and white illustrations. Author’s last book was Book of the Month with Ships Monthly.The Author’s 80th book.The decade from 1950 to 1960 was the Golden Age of ocean liner travel. Airliners had yet to make an impact on the transatlantic run, the ships were as glamorous as they had ever been, they were faster than they had ever been – but it was all to end rather abruptly with the advent of the Boeing 707 and the eight hour transatlantic crossing by air. From 1960 onwards, ocean liner travel was in serious decline, a downward spiral that would only have one outcome – the death of sea travel on the Atlantic.
William H. Miller tells the story in words and pictures of this decline and how it affected the liner companies. While we all think of Cunard and the French Line as the main companies on the Atlantic, ships of Holland America, United States Lines, Norwegian American Line, Swedish Amerika Line, as well as the Italian Line and Hamburg Amerika.
SS NIEUW AMSTERDAM – THE DARLING OF THE DUTCH. Entering service in 1938, the Nieuw Amsterdam was the Holland America Line flagship until the construction of the Rotterdam in the late 1950s. Her pre-war life was short and she was used as a troopship during the Second World War, carrying many thousands of Allied troops to all corners of the world. Of 36,000 tons, she was the largest vessel built in Rotterdam and was launched by Queen Wilhelmina in April 1937.
A perennial favorite of the Dutch and their finest Ship of State, Nieuw Amsterdam remained in Holland America Line service until 1974, the last ship to retain the Holland America Line’s familiar green, yellow and white funnels. Despite boiler problems in 1967, she was refitted with US Navy-surplus boilers and sailed on, cruising, until withdrawn from service in 1974. Sailing to the breakers, the Art Deco ‘Darling of the Dutch’, as she was affectionately known, was broken up.
All books can be ordered from Amazon. Click here for full information.
Cruise Line History: DOES MADONNA KNOW THAT EVITA (EVA PERON) HAD TWO CRUISE SHIPS NAMED AFTER HER? The Argentine liners were called the SS EVITA and the SS EVA PERON. They were similar in design to the SS JUAN PERON. The ships ran from Argentina (South America) to Europe and the USA.
Three views of the SS EVA PERON (later renamed the SS URUGUAY). Cia Argentian de Nav Dodero’s EVA PERON was launched in 1949. Named in honor of dictator Juan Peron’s wife, the ship was 12,627 GRT, 530 feet in length and 71 feet in width, carrying 96 first class passengers with a crew of 145. The ship was very deluxe and used by a lot of Peron’s cronies. Her maiden voyage was from London to Buenos Aires and later from Hamburg to Buenos Aires. After the fall of the Peron government in 1955 the ship was named the URUGUAY. She was broken up in 1973.
Left: Eva Peron “Mother of Argentina, the SS EVITA and SS EVA PERON”
Argentina was the only South American country to operate long distance intercontinental ocean liners, although always with ships of moderate size and speed.
While ruling Argentina, Eva Peron had dictator Juan Peron, her doting husband, name two-passenger ships after her. The Argentine liners were called the SS EVITA and the SS EVA PERON.
They were similar in design to the SS PRESIDENTE PERON. The ships ran from Argentina (South America) to Europe and the USA.
In 1964, former SS United States purser Jim Green returned to the ship as a passenger for a West Indies cruise along with his beloved wife Frieda. Here, set to the music of the ship’s own orchestra, is a nostalgic journey back to cruising the past.
Beating the odds, a small group of ship-lovers is finally taking ownership of the object of their affection: the historic ocean liner S.S. United States.
It’s the latest step in the effort to save the down-on-its-luck supership from the scrap heap. On Tuesday, the preservationist group S.S. United States Conservancy will officially become the owner of the Titanic-sized vessel, buying it for $3 million from cruise-line operator NCL Group, according to both parties. The Wall Street Journal reported the planned sale last year.
SS United States is now docked in Philadelphia.
“Now comes the real challenge,” said Dan McSweeney, the conservancy’s executive director. The goal is a “public-private partnership” to find a permanent spot to dock the ship and fill it with hotels, restaurants, classrooms or offices. “We’ve got 650,000 square feet of space,” he said.
For their money, the new owners get a legendary steamship fallen on hard times. Built during the Cold War as an expression of American luxury and industrial prowess, the S.S. United States ferried presidents and royalty during years of trans-Atlantic passenger service in the 1950s and 1960s.
Khedivial Mail Line once operated service between Egypt and New York. As history records the event in Cairo… here is a blog on Egypt’s once excellent trans-Atlantic steamship service.
SS Mohamed Ali el-Kebir
The original name of the company is unknown but it is thought that it was founded in 1858. The Khedivial Mail Steamship & Graving Dock Co. was formed in 1898 to operate ships and docks owned by various departments of the Egyptian Government, but little is known of the early years of the company or it’s ships.
The new fleet was registered under the British flag and operated passenger and cargo services between Alexandria, Constantinople and Syrian ports and between Suez and Red Sea ports. Later services were extended to Piraeus, Malta, Marseilles and Cyprus. P & O Line took control of the company between 1919 and 1924.
In 1936 the company was re-formed in Alexandria as Pharaonic Mail Line and in 1941 was changed to Khedivial Mail Line. Services from the Mediterranean to Boston and New York started in 1948 and from 1951 calls were often made at Charleston, Philadelphia and Baltimore. A Port Said – Bombay – Karachi service started in 1953.
Joanna Coleman’s terrific color footage from her terrific site on YOUTUBE of the Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria in the 1950′s which sunk after colliding with the MV Stockholm.
LINER AND SOCIAL HISTORY — ANDREA DORIA – The fabulous Italian Line ship whose fate was sealed by the Swedish America Line’s STOCKHOLM.
By the mid-1950s, with the postwar passenger boom at its peak, more than 50 passenger liners sailed the sea-lanes between Europe and America.
Among the most splendid were two new ships of the Italian Line, the Cristofor Colombo and the Andrea Doria. They were built for luxury, not speed, and to take advantage of the sunnier southern route.
The Andrea Doria was the first liner to possess three outdoor swimming pools, one each for first, cabin and tourist class. Her lines were graceful, her public rooms lavishly decorated and crowded with artworks and her most desirable first-class suites as rarified as any that had come before. She was a superb expression of her time and nationality, a ship that combined 1950s modernity with a keen awareness of Italy’s extraordinary artistic heritage.
She was also equipped with the latest in navigational equipment, including two sets of radar, the still-developing technology that had transformed the maritime battlefields of World War II and was now standard equipment in the merchant marine. But even if the radar failed and somehow a collision happened, the Andrea Doria was in theory unsinkable. Her 11 watertight compartments were so constructed that she would remain afloat if any two were breached –more than that her builders could not imagine — and so that she would never take on a list of more than 15 degrees. As an extra safety precaution, her lifeboats could still be launched if the list reached 20 degrees. Yet the Andrea Doria was destined to become the last great lost ship of a transatlantic passenger era that was about to fade away.
We are pleased to share the following feature story on the Andrea Doria from NEW YORK SOCIAL DIARY…
SS ANDREA DORIA by Scott Houston McBee
I was initially drawn to the Andrea Doria at the age of 14 after reading the book, Collision Course, by Alvin Moscow. The book tells of the Andrea Doria’s birth, her brief but glorious life, and her tragic end, in the summer of 1956.
To me the Andrea Doria embodied the hope and optimism that Italy was searching for after the War. I was very moved by the story of her master, Captain Piero Calamai, who after a distinguished career with the Italian Line decided never to return to the sea after the Andrea Doria’s sinking.
He was quoted as saying “When I was a boy and all my life, I loved the sea. Now I hate it.”
He died after a long illness in April of 1972.
In the late 1940’s Italy had lost most of her passenger ships to the War. The Italian Line sought to revive its postwar liner fleet in order to restore Italy’s place in international passenger shipping. The creation of the Andrea Doria was based on the principle that Italy’s new postwar fleet had to communicate a new message about Italy itself: Italy was no longer a belligerent adversary but a beautiful country brimming with art and culture.
CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE AND READ THE FULL STORY COURTESY OF NEW YORK SOCIAL DIARY…
