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Found this in this mornings Boston globe .
An interesting read over breakfast.
Enjoy
H.D.S. GREENWAY
Echoes of the age of ocean liners
By H.D.S. Greenway, 1/9/2004
THE LARGEST and most expensive passenger ship ever built, the Cunard Line's Queen Mary 2, is scheduled soon to depart England on her maiden voyage to the new world 164 years after the first Cunarder crossed. But the economics of ocean travel have changed since the airplane stole the trans-Atlantic trade.
Her predecessor, the first Queen Mary, launched in 1934, was an express liner built to carry passengers between New York and Europe. The new QM2 is primarily a cruise ship. Along with the older Queen Elizabeth 2, she will make just a few trans-Atlantic crossings. Nothing could be more symbolic of that than her first destination: Fort Lauderdale, Fla., instead of New York City, where fireboats and flotillas traditionally greet new liners.
When I crossed eastbound on the old Queen Mary in 1960, one had a choice of British, French, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Canadian, German, or American ships that would speed you to Europe. There is nothing in travel today that can top the glamour and romance of those deep and enormous steam-whistle notes echoing across Manhattan when a liner was about to leave, the sound carrying "the whole history of departure, longing, and loss," as E.B. White once said. While a traveler is restricted to two suitcase on a plane today, social arbiter Lucius Beebe used to say that "20 pieces of luggage were an absolute basic minimum for social survival" on an Atlantic crossing.
The day I sailed, the New York Herald Tribune ran a front-page photograph of eight passenger ships in a row on the West Side and reported that "trans-Atlantic liners disembarked 6,267 passengers at Hudson River piers, yesterday," with another 1,358 across the river in Hoboken. It was a record for the month of June, but by then the airplane was already eating away at sea travel. In time, all the great liners in that photograph were swept away and many of their piers left to decay. The port of choice for the ever burgeoning cruise ship trade, when the ships come north, is becoming Bayonne, N.J.
The golden age of ocean liners began before World War I when the maritime powers competed in size and luxury for the trans-Atlantic business and the ships themselves were symbols of national pride. As elegant and expensive as their first-class accommodations were, more than half their profits came from the "huddled masses" who poured into America steerage class in the early years of the century.
The world best remembers the White Star liner Titanic, then the biggest ship in the world. Less than a month after her sinking, however, Germany launched a bigger ship, the Imperator, that had four times as many life boats as well. The Germans and the British competed in ocean liners the way the Soviets and the Americans would later compete in space. Today no great ships are built in Britain. The Scotland-built Queen Elizabeth 2 had to turn to Hamburg when she was refitted some years ago.
The new Queen Mary 2 was French built, in St. Nazaire, scene of a tragic accident. A gangway collapse in November killed 15 people, but a far worse disaster befell her predecessor. In 1942 the Queen Mary, then a troop ship, rammed the British warship Curacao off Scotland, cutting her in two with a loss of 300 souls.
Ships competed not only in luxury but in speed; the coveted "Blue Riband" being awarded for a record crossing. In the early years German and British ships dominated. But between wars the Italian liner Rex captured the Blue Riband, then the French Liner Normandie, which lost it again to the Queen Mary. The last Blue Riband winner was the American liner United States in 1952, cutting the Queen Mary's record by 10 hours.
The Normandie was considered to be the most beautiful of all the ocean liners, but the only time I ever saw her was when she was burning at her 46th Street Pier in New York in the winter of 1942. She caught fire as she was being converted to a troop ship. Thirty years later I would see the Queen Elizabeth, in her time the biggest ship in the world, burning in Hong Kong harbor as she was being converted into a seagoing college.
The Rex was sunk by British planes in 1944. The Andrea Doria was lost off Nantucket after a collision with the Swedish liner Stockholm in 1956. The United States was mothballed at Newport News in 1969. The sleek France, one of the last of the true liners, was sold to Norwegians and converted into a cruise ship in 1979, and the Queen Mary is now a hotel in Long Beach, Calif. So they all went, one by one, the rest to the breakers' yards.
Today the money is in transporting people in shorts and sunburns to warm climates rather than carrying immigrants and swells with 20 pieces of luggage through the icy North Atlantic. But now that air travel has become so unspeakably dreadful, hats off to the Cunard Line for keeping at least an echo of the North Atlantic trade alive, a last reminder of a time when these vast vessels were the only way to go.
An interesting read over breakfast.
Enjoy
H.D.S. GREENWAY
Echoes of the age of ocean liners
By H.D.S. Greenway, 1/9/2004
THE LARGEST and most expensive passenger ship ever built, the Cunard Line's Queen Mary 2, is scheduled soon to depart England on her maiden voyage to the new world 164 years after the first Cunarder crossed. But the economics of ocean travel have changed since the airplane stole the trans-Atlantic trade.
Her predecessor, the first Queen Mary, launched in 1934, was an express liner built to carry passengers between New York and Europe. The new QM2 is primarily a cruise ship. Along with the older Queen Elizabeth 2, she will make just a few trans-Atlantic crossings. Nothing could be more symbolic of that than her first destination: Fort Lauderdale, Fla., instead of New York City, where fireboats and flotillas traditionally greet new liners.
When I crossed eastbound on the old Queen Mary in 1960, one had a choice of British, French, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Canadian, German, or American ships that would speed you to Europe. There is nothing in travel today that can top the glamour and romance of those deep and enormous steam-whistle notes echoing across Manhattan when a liner was about to leave, the sound carrying "the whole history of departure, longing, and loss," as E.B. White once said. While a traveler is restricted to two suitcase on a plane today, social arbiter Lucius Beebe used to say that "20 pieces of luggage were an absolute basic minimum for social survival" on an Atlantic crossing.
The day I sailed, the New York Herald Tribune ran a front-page photograph of eight passenger ships in a row on the West Side and reported that "trans-Atlantic liners disembarked 6,267 passengers at Hudson River piers, yesterday," with another 1,358 across the river in Hoboken. It was a record for the month of June, but by then the airplane was already eating away at sea travel. In time, all the great liners in that photograph were swept away and many of their piers left to decay. The port of choice for the ever burgeoning cruise ship trade, when the ships come north, is becoming Bayonne, N.J.
The golden age of ocean liners began before World War I when the maritime powers competed in size and luxury for the trans-Atlantic business and the ships themselves were symbols of national pride. As elegant and expensive as their first-class accommodations were, more than half their profits came from the "huddled masses" who poured into America steerage class in the early years of the century.
The world best remembers the White Star liner Titanic, then the biggest ship in the world. Less than a month after her sinking, however, Germany launched a bigger ship, the Imperator, that had four times as many life boats as well. The Germans and the British competed in ocean liners the way the Soviets and the Americans would later compete in space. Today no great ships are built in Britain. The Scotland-built Queen Elizabeth 2 had to turn to Hamburg when she was refitted some years ago.
The new Queen Mary 2 was French built, in St. Nazaire, scene of a tragic accident. A gangway collapse in November killed 15 people, but a far worse disaster befell her predecessor. In 1942 the Queen Mary, then a troop ship, rammed the British warship Curacao off Scotland, cutting her in two with a loss of 300 souls.
Ships competed not only in luxury but in speed; the coveted "Blue Riband" being awarded for a record crossing. In the early years German and British ships dominated. But between wars the Italian liner Rex captured the Blue Riband, then the French Liner Normandie, which lost it again to the Queen Mary. The last Blue Riband winner was the American liner United States in 1952, cutting the Queen Mary's record by 10 hours.
The Normandie was considered to be the most beautiful of all the ocean liners, but the only time I ever saw her was when she was burning at her 46th Street Pier in New York in the winter of 1942. She caught fire as she was being converted to a troop ship. Thirty years later I would see the Queen Elizabeth, in her time the biggest ship in the world, burning in Hong Kong harbor as she was being converted into a seagoing college.
The Rex was sunk by British planes in 1944. The Andrea Doria was lost off Nantucket after a collision with the Swedish liner Stockholm in 1956. The United States was mothballed at Newport News in 1969. The sleek France, one of the last of the true liners, was sold to Norwegians and converted into a cruise ship in 1979, and the Queen Mary is now a hotel in Long Beach, Calif. So they all went, one by one, the rest to the breakers' yards.
Today the money is in transporting people in shorts and sunburns to warm climates rather than carrying immigrants and swells with 20 pieces of luggage through the icy North Atlantic. But now that air travel has become so unspeakably dreadful, hats off to the Cunard Line for keeping at least an echo of the North Atlantic trade alive, a last reminder of a time when these vast vessels were the only way to go.
