First as the trans-Pacific record holder liner, then serving during World War 2, followed by being renamed the Empress of Scotland on the trans-Atlantic run and then finally sailing under the German flag. It was ironic, the allied ship used during WW 2 to fight the Nazis, was sold to Hamburg America Line and rebuilt as the Hanseatic for cruise ... Read More »
The USA Olympic Team sailed aboard the SS America to England in 1948. The 1948 Summer Olympics, officially known as the Games of the XIV Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was held in London, England, United Kingdom. After a 12-year hiatus because of World War II, these were the first Summer Olympics since the 1936 Games in Berlin. ... Read More »
Social History: Los Angeles icon novelist John Rechy, a first-generation Mexican American who has chronicled gay life in America, received the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement at a gala ceremony at the University of Southern California last month. John Rechy, like Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal shares a star quality and charisma with the giants of American ... Read More »
She’s the largest luxury cruise liner ever built in the United States using all American products and by American workers: Meet “America’s Flagship,” the S.S. United States. Cruise industry executive and philanthropist Jim Pollin, owner of the Pollin Group and winner of the SS United States Conservancy’s National Flagship Champion Award, presented a check to Conservancy executive director Susan Gibbs ... Read More »
Monday, May 7th marks the 101st anniversary of the sinking of the R.M.S. Lusitania. The Liverpool-built passenger ship whose destruction sparked the United States’ decision to enter World War I in 1917. “Enlist” (mother and child drowning), by Fred Spear, June 1915. WWI recruitment poster published by the Boston Committee of Public Safety just a month after the Lusitania sinking. ... Read More »
The Southern Pacific Railroad was a major element in the development of Palm Springs. At one time the SP offered passenger service on over eight daily trains. The SP, Union Pacific, and Santa Fe Railroads brought thousands of visitors to Palm Springs. Palm Springs was a retreat for movie stars and the very rich. Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, and Frank ... Read More »
70 Years ago this week, Matson Line’s refurbished SS LURLINE had sailed from San Francisco and Los Angeles on her maiden post-WW 2 voyage to Hawaii. The flagship of Matson’s passenger fleet had just emerged from a stunning $18-million makeover, following six years as a troop carrier with her white ship sisters, MARIPOSA, MONTEREY and MATSONIA. The Lurline was the ... Read More »
On the morning of September 8th, 1934, en route from Havana to New York, the SS MORRO CASTLE caught fire and burned, killing 137 passengers and crew members. She was a luxury ocean liner of the 1930s that was built for the Ward Line for runs between New York City and Havana, Cuba. The Morro Castle was named for the Morro ... Read More »
“Elvis who?” Photographer Alfred Wertheimer recalls uttering that very question in early 1956. A publicist from RCA Victor Records had contacted him, asking if he was available to photograph a young singer named Elvis Presley. “I’d never heard of the man,” Wertheimer told TIME Magazine in an article 40 years later. “He didn’t have a gold record yet.” (By the ... Read More »
Great photos of passengers and officers aboard P&O and Orient Line ships sailing from England to Australia. The RMS Arcadia was one of P&O’s great liners. Sailing on P&O Orient Lines… Read More »
At the time of their construction, the SS Manhattan and her sister ship, SS Washington, also built by New York Shipbuilding Corporation, were the largest liners ever built in the United States, and Manhattan was the first large liner built in the US since 1905. The Manhattan and Washington were two of the few pure liners built by New York ... Read More »
Star of Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO, Janet Leigh is ready to board the famous SUPER CHIEF and Virginia Leith, star of A KISS BEFORE DYING shows us the all-Pullman train during the 1950s in a promotional film. Even the characters from TV’s MAD MEN may have been aboard the train all through the 1960s. A lot of executives would take the ... Read More »
Juan Fernando Bastos (Caracas, 1958) is a portrait artist whose transit through Venezuela, Bolivia, Washington, Baltimore and finally Los Angeles has nourished a one of a kind aesthetic in visual representation. His work has reached different latitudes and represents the success of transcultural phenomena. He’s considered one of the most in-demand portrait artists in the world. Juan considers some of his most ... Read More »
Until the late 1950s, Union Steamship Company served the small coastal towns of British Columbia, the Queen Charlotte Islands and offered cruises to Alaska. The company was founded in 1889 by John Darling, the director of a New Zealand shipping company who recognized a great need for a scheduled service that would transport supplies and work crews to various northern ... Read More »
Besides “crossing the Pond” on Cunard, Elizabeth Taylor sailed to Europe on the French Line’s SS Liberte, cruised to the Mediterranean aboard Cunard’s RMS Caronia and Mauritania. Liz sailed to the Caribbean and South America on the Grace Line’s SS Santa Rosa. She loved ships and the sea. Taylor had sailed a number of times on the RMS Queen Mary with her mother, ... Read More »
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CRUISING THE PAST Travel and Social History
