The Great Liners Story E-Book

William H. Miller

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

This illustrated and colourful history charts the hey-day of the great liners, those grand and lavish vessels that cruised around the world carrying their glamorous passengers from port to port. Decorated to the highest of finishes, fitted out in the most luxurious of styles, these floating palaces epitomised their opulent age. Their iconic names, from Titanic to Mauretania, from Queen Elizabeth to QE2, conjure up visions of power, grace, elegance and nostalgia for this golden age of travel. Written by maritime and cruise liner expert William Miller, and accompanied by stunning photographs, artworks, Did You Know facts and quotations, The Great Liners Story is a must-have addition to any maritime library.

Leseprobe

The Great Liners Story

William H. Miller

First published in 2012

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2014

All rights reserved

© William H. Miller, 2012, 2014

William H. Miller has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 8570 6

MOBI ISBN 978 0 7524 8569 0

Original typesetting by The History Press

DEDICATION

For Charles Howland – Dear friend, keen historian and enthusiast and award-winning professional.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1 The First Super Liners: German Greyhounds

2 Bigger and Faster Still: Cunard Flagships

3 High Luxury: White Star’s Great Trio

4 Chateau of the Atlantic: A New French Flagship

5 Colossal Proportions: The German Behemoths

6 The Third Big Cunarder: The Beautiful Aquitania

7 Decorative Divide: The Innovative Ile de France

8 Cathedrals of Steel: Two German Giants

9 Dual Purpose: An Empress of the Seas

10 On the Sunny Southern Route: Italy’s Rivieras Afloat

11 Ocean-Going Perfection: The Extraordinary Normandie

12 Pride and Profit: Those Glorious Cunard Queens

13 Engineering Genius: America’s Speed Champion

14 End of the Line: The Last French Supership

15 A Long Life: The Ever-Successful QE2

16 Biggest Atlantic Liner of All: The Queen Mary 2

17 Floating Resorts: The Current Cruise Generation

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

‘The first experience can never be I repeated,’ wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. ‘That first love, that first sunrise, that first South Sea island, are memories apart, and touched by a virginity of sense.’ And so, in ways, it would be the same for my very first voyage on the largest passenger ship ever created.

Most fortunately, I have sailed aboard over 400 ships and to ports throughout the world. But on January 2011, I had a great treat: to sail aboard the largest ocean liner afloat, the mammoth Allure of the Seas. We departed from the world’s busiest cruise port, Fort Lauderdale in Florida, for a week in the sun-drenched Caribbean.

Change cruise ships and let’s dance! After disembarking from the 92,000-ton, 2,000-bed Queen Elizabeth (on a crossing from Southampton to New York and then Florida), we boarded the 225,000-ton, 6,400-passenger Allure of the Seas. She’s even a tad bigger (just 2 inches actually) than her otherwise twin sister, the Oasis of the Seas. So, she makes my record book – she is my very first super mega-liner! The mind boggles, my eyes wide, my imagination deeply tweaked. The 1,187ft-long Allure (that’s some 50ft longer than the 151,000-ton Queen Mary 2), a towering 213ft high, is every inch the ‘floating vacation resort’. Yes, a ship that is more – no, much more – than just another ‘floating hotel’. Completely, I’m dazzled! But for sure, she could have been named Colossus of the Seas.

I’m not alone in being over-impressed. A friend from Florida, who just happens to be aboard, smilingly commented, ‘This ship is just magical! It is like another world, a world that is creative and beautiful, but also fantasy-like, even child-like. It is a ship where dreams come true. It is the most remarkable creation ever to sail the seas. And you never, ever feel that there are 6,000 other passengers on board.’

Today, nine liners are ‘parked’ together in Port Everglades. The ‘gang’ includes the likes of the Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria, Celebrity Solstice, MSC Poesia and two Holland America ships among them. It is estimated that well over 20,000 passengers are arriving and, of course, then over 20,000 departing and all before the south Florida sun sets. A new mega-cruise terminal befits the Allure and the boarding process takes – with smiles everywhere and quite extraordinarily – just a few minutes. We are whisked through security, checked in at break-neck speed and then cross a glasstubed gangway and board this behemoth of the seas!

Like some Manhattan skyscraper, we are quickly off to our cabin up on Deck 12 (out of the ship’s soaring seventeen decks and said to be equal to a twenty-storey building on shore). Beginning with our Indonesian cabin steward, it is all friendly smiles and chatter and those much needed, helpful directions from step one. Immediately, one senses, the Allure of the Seas is not only the biggest liner afloat, but the friendliest! Pure, absolute charm from Royal Caribbean International, the Miami-based owners of the ship and themselves owned by super-rich Norwegian shipowners (the Wilhelmsen Lines) and Chicago-based hoteliers (the Pritzker family and their Hyatt Regency chain)! In total, there’s a staggering 2,384 crew on board from no fewer than eighty nations.

Our stateroom has a balcony, but one which overlooks the ship’s inner core, the vast, open-air courtyard of sorts, that is done decks below as a recreated Central Park. Tree and foliage-lined bliss! Which way to West 72nd Street? After a quick lunch in the massive Windjammer Food Court (with countless serving counters including one just for Thai-Asian) we then stroll along the huge decks (yes, some ‘real’ exercise, especially in the form of walking, seems to be built in). From the very upper decks, we seem to look down on the 90,000-ton Queen Victoria, with her redorange funnel and aft pool deck, which is docked in the nearest berth.

The public areas on the exceptional Allure are meant to be exciting and often very exciting – and they are just that. They are colourfully imaginative feasts to the eye! Great applause is due to the designers and interior decorators. It is Disneyland coupled with Disney World coupled with Sea World and all glossed over by the genius of, say, a dozen Las Vegas hotels. One lady from Minnesota said, ‘I don’t know which way to look next. Everything is so beautiful, so interesting, just so stunning!’ A cruise-only travel agent from Florida added, ‘I’ve never seen people more excited about a ship!’

The main ingredients of our evening schedules are prepared, organised and thoughtfully printed out. It becomes our guide. Tonight, it is ‘My Time Dining’ (with unassigned tables in the huge, three-deck-high main restaurant, but candied by more of that exceptionally friendly Royal Caribbean service) at 5.45p.m.–7.45p.m. and then, walking a ‘mile or two or three’ to the forward-placed Amber Theatre (yes, more sheer enormity with 2,200 seats) for a ninety-minute production of Chicago.

Decorative originality, even splendour! In between, we stroll the Royal Promenade, a long, horizontal promenade area with shops, bars, clubs, yet more eateries and added touches like the gourmet Cupcake Cupboard (yes, there’s even cupcake-themed jewellery and handbags) and then to the Boardwalk (pure amusement park with Johnny Rockets, ice cream and hot dog bars, a full merry-go-round and another massive amenity: the 750-seat, open-air Aqua Theatre, located at the very stern of this most unique ‘floating resort’). There are jazz and comedy clubs, a huge disco, art gallery, photo studio, make-your-own-stuffed-animal shop, conference room, library, jogging track, internet centre, pizzeria, complete English pub (with dark, rich, wooded interiors), champagne bar, Solera cosmetics emporium, donut and candy shops, Mexican cantina, ice-cream parlour and the very first Starbucks to hit the high seas. You can be certified in scuba, take ice-skating classes, play basketball or miniature golf, join scrapbook-making seminars or enter the Lady Gaga Dress-Up contest.

The ship, which cost $1.5 billion to create, was built in Finland, at the huge STX Europe Shipyard at Turku (which has had to temporarily shut down because of no further orders for new tonnage). The Allure is a whopping 208ft wide (almost like one of those monster US Navy aircraft carriers), draws 30ft of water, can speed along at a very respectable 22 knots and has those seventeen passenger decks. Then there are twenty-one restaurants and ten hot tubs, and it takes fifteen to twenty minutes to walk completely around the largest top deck. With great ease and steady comfort, there are twenty-four passenger elevators to cater to a maximum of 6,318 passengers, comfortably housed in no fewer than 2,706 suites and staterooms. The suites include, by the way, duplex lofts, something of a novelty at sea, and sell (at least in a brochure rate) for $14,000 per week for two. However, the average daily, per person rate aboard the Allure is a much more affordable $218.

Curtain up! The on-board production of Chicago is pure Broadway, with high, high talent and professionalism, and has to be one of the very finest productions I’ve seen on any ship, anywhere. ‘It was magnificent – just perfection,’ according to my cabin-mate. The actors, the dancing, the band and of course that magical score! What a perfect ending to a very exciting first day aboard the Allure of the Seas!

The Allure is one of the Great Liners. She is in fact the great-great-granddaughter of sorts of the likes of the Mauretania, Imperator, Rex, Normandie and the original Queen Mary. She is the continuation, the great link, the evolution of passenger ship design as well as ocean travel. In the past century or so, ocean liners have not only continued and grown, but they are more popular than ever. In 2010, more people travelled by ship than at any other time in the history of travel.

Bill Miller

Secaucus, New Jersey

Summer 2011

1 · THE FIRST SUPER LINERS: GERMAN GREYHOUNDS

The story of the Great Liners begins on the Atlantic route between the Old World and the New, between Europe and the United States. It was the most prestigious, most progressive and certainly most competitive ocean liner run of all time. It was on the North Atlantic that the largest, fastest and indeed grandest passenger ships were created. In this book, I am concentrating for the most part on these Atlantic super liners. It has been a race, sometimes fierce, that has continued for well over a century. Smaller passenger ships, even ones of 30,000 and 40,000 tons, are for the most part left to other books.

Our story begins even earlier, in 1889, when Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II visited his grandmother, Queen Victoria, and attended the British Naval Review at Spithead. The British were more than pleased to show off not only the mightiest naval vessels afloat, but the biggest passenger ships then afloat, namely the 10,000-ton Teutonic of the White Star Line. These ships caught the Kaiser’s royal eye. His enthusiasm, his determination and, assuredly, his jealousies were aroused. He returned to his homeland determined that Germany should have bigger and better ships. The world must know, he theorised, that Imperial Germany had reached new and higher technological heights. To the Kaiser and other envious Germans, quite simply, the British had had a monopoly on the biggest ships for long enough. British engineers and even shipyard crews were recruited, teaching German shipbuilders the key components of a new generation of larger ships. Shipyards at Bremen, Hamburg and Stettin were soon ready.

Did you know?

The Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse of 1897 was the first passenger ship to be called a ‘super liner’ and the first to have four funnels.

It would all take eight years, however, before the first big German liner would be completed. She would be large enough and fast enough to be dubbed the world’s first ‘super liner’. She would not only be the biggest vessel built in Germany, but the biggest afloat. The nation’s most prominent shipowners, the Hamburg America Line and the North German Lloyd, were both deeply interested. It was the Lloyd, however, which rose first to the occasion. Enthusiastically and optimistically, the first ship was the first of a successive quartet. The illustrious Vulkan Shipyard at Stettin was given the prized contract.