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MS LAFAYETTE

With the success of the Swedish America Lines diesel powered liner MS Gripsholm, the French Line designed the MS Lafayette to a size that could be powered by the largest marine diesel engines available at that time. Before setting out on her maiden voyage from Le Havre – New York May 19th 1930, the French Line operated Lafayette on a weeklong cruise in European waters to test the reliability of the diesel engines. The French Lines second diesel powered liner, the 28,094-ton Champlain, joined Lafayette on the Atlantic run in 1932. This similar sized ship was the French Line’s first liner to incorporate the new sweeping hull design. The French Line’s largest ever liner SS Normandie entered service in 1935 with a similar hull design and almost every ship thereafter.

On a return crossing from New York in March 1934, Lafayette was caught up in a severe North Atlantic storm. Huge waves crashed through about 50 of her promenade windows causing injuries to many of the passengers. Lafayette’s return to France saw her undergo a few weeks of repairs before being re-deployed on the Atlantic run. Four years later, disaster struck when she was undergoing an overhaul at Le Havre. Oil had been spilled on Lafayette’s furnace room floor and caught fire May 4th 1938. The fire spread to one of her fuel tanks setting of a series of explosions. By the time the explosions ceased and the fires were extinguished, Lafayette was damaged beyond repair. The French Line had her burned out shell towed to the ship breakers in Rotterdam to be dismantled. Champlain also had a short life as she hit a German mine near La Pallice on the French coast June 17th 1940 and sank soon after.

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French Line’s famous SS NORMANDIE in color films.

French Line NORMANDIE – Part One

French Line NORMANDIE – Part Two

French Line NORMANDIE – Part Three

These are probably the finest video available of trans-Atlantic liner service in the late 1930s. Excellent color footage of the French Line’s famous SS NORMANDIE.

SS Normandie was an ocean liner built in Saint-Nazaire, France for the French Line Compagnie Générale Transatlantique. She entered service in 1935 as the largest and fastest passenger ship afloat; she is still the most powerful steam turbo-electric-propelled passenger ship ever built.

Her novel design and lavish interiors led many to consider her the greatest of ocean liners.Despite this, she was not a commercial success and relied partly on government subsidy to operate. During service as the flagship of the CGT, she made 139 transatlantic crossings westbound from her home port of Le Havre to New York and one fewer return.

Normandie held the Blue Riband for the fastest transatlantic crossing at several points during her service career, during which the RMS Queen Mary was her chief rival.

During World War II, Normandie was seized by the United States authorities at New York and renamed USS Lafayette. In 1942, the liner caught fire while being converted to a troopship, capsized and sank at the New York Passenger Ship Terminal. Although salvaged at great expense, restoration was deemed too costly and she was scrapped in October 1946.

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LOS ANGELES TO HAWAII – 1927


Menu from the LASSCO STEAMSHIP CALAWAII – Honolulu to Los Angeles crossing in 1927…

Cruise and Liner History: Hollywood to Honolulu -
The Los Angeles Steamship Company’s
Voyages to Hawaii in the Roaring ‘20s

History of the LOS ANGELES STEAMSHIP COMPANY. LASCCO. The Los Angeles Steamship Company or LASSCO was a passenger and freight shipping company based in Los Angeles, California. The company, formed in 1920, initially provided fast passenger service between Los Angeles and San Francisco. In 1921, LASSCO added service to Hawaii in competition with the San Francisco-based Matson Navigation Company using two former North German Lloyd ocean liners that had been in U.S. Navy service during World War I. Despite the sinking of one of the former German liners on her maiden voyage for the company, business in the booming 1920s thrived, and the company continued to add ships and services. The worsening economic conditions in the United States, and the burning of another ship in Hawaii, caused financial problems for the company. After beginning talks in 1930, the Los Angeles Steamship Company was taken over by Matson Navigation on January 1, 1931, but continued to operate as a subsidiary until it ceased operations in 1937.

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Carnival Corp’s COSTA CONCORDIA Ship Accident Stirs Thoughts of the ITIALIAN LINE’S ANDREA DORIA.


Excellent Video on the ANDREA DORIA.

Cruise and Liner History – Carnival Corp’s COSTA CONCORDIA Ship Accident Stirs Thoughts of the ITIALIAN LINE’S ANDREA DORIA.

The world was shocked and astounded to learn of the wreck of the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan coast. How could a modern, state-of-the-art passenger vessel have succumbed to such a gross navigational error in well-charted waters, in clear visibility and calm conditions?

Details of the events leading up to the grounding are only starting to be gathered by investigators but seem to point toward inappropriate ship handling on the part of Capt. Francesco Schettino. Far more disturbing, however, are the alleged actions of Schettino after his ship was stricken and determined to be sinking. He stands accused of abandoning ship before many of the 4,200 passengers and crew, leaving them without his leadership and guidance during a life-and-death evacuation process.  If the preliminary reports are even half true, these actions should land him squarely in prison.

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FRENCH LINE’S SS NORMANDIE – The tragedy of the world’s greatest passenger ship.

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.

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SHIPS IN PORT during the 1960s… Le Harve, Halifax, New York and Cobh…

Cruise and Liner History: A wonderful selection of liner photos during the 1960s of the FRANCE, SANTA ROSA and NIEUW AMSTERDAM.

French Line SS FRANCE at Le Harve, France.

Grace Line SS SANTA ROSA arriving in New York Harbor.

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CUNARD CHRISTMAS 1928


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.

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Review: OCEAN LINER POSTERS… A FIVE STAR BOOK.


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.
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The ROTTERDAM IV – Holland America Line History

Excellent video on the ROTTERDAM

Cruise and Liner History – The ROTTERDAM IV – Holland America Line History

Harland and Wolff, Belfast built Holland America Line’s ROTTERDAM IV in 1908. She held 530 First, 555 Second and 2,124 Third Class passengers. She was a liner with two funnels, Holland America’s first, 650 feet in length and 77 feet wide. Her registered tonnage was 24,170 and displacement of 37,190 tons. She traveled at an average of 16.5 knots. She was sold in January of 1940 to Dutch breakers.

Pool – Ziegfeld Chorus Girls…

The ROTTERDAM was one the finest, largest and most popular ships crossing the Atlantic and cost about $5,000,000 to build. She became famous because of her exceptionally attractive features, so that many discriminating travelers choose her in preference to many other Atlantic steamer. In luxurious appointments, in extraordinary size of rooms, averaging much larger than on any of our ships on previous Cruises, as well as in her extreme steadiness, almost eliminating seasickness, she was unsurpassed. She had 56 suites and rooms with brass bedsteads and private baths, and over 100 single rooms, together with a beautiful Palm Court, Verandah Cafe, Elevator, Social Hall, Library, 3 Smoke Rooms, a glass enclosed Promenade Deck, electrically forced ventilation of hot and cold air, etc. Most of the outside staterooms had two, and in some cases three, windows or portholes, some being fitted with a device that admits fresh air freely, even when the porthole was closed. One of her most attractive features was an immense Dining Saloon, seating nearly 500 people at small tables, where all of her passengers took their meals, and where an orchestra of artists of high merit played during lunch and dinner, as well as in the Social Hall in the evening.

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Sir Richard Branson invites Kate Winslet to see the RMS Titanic for real

Liner History – Sir Richard Branson invites Kate Winslet to see the RMS Titanic for real…

Kate Winslet is set to see the doomed ship ‘Titanic’ for real – courtesy of billionaire Sir Richard Branson.

The Virgin boss had recently divulged his plan to join other tourists paying 38,000 pounds each for a submarine 12,500ft dive to the wreck of ‘Titanic’ in the North Atlantic, the Daily Mail reported.

“It is something I am very keen to do. I’m deadly serious about this and I would love to invite Kate to come with me,” Branson said.

“Wouldn’t it be something if the star of Titanic really got to go down to the real ship? I’m going to talk to her but I’m sure it’s an opportunity she will jump at.”

It is one of the most iconic images in film history. When Kate Winslet stood on the prow of the Titanic in the blockbuster 1997 film, it turned her into an overnight superstar.

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