THE PAST AND NOW TRAVEL AND SOCIAL HISTORY

The new streamliner City of San Francisco was the fastest thing on wheels between San Francisco and Chicago. For three days, its 226 passengers and crew were cut off as rescuers struggled to dig them out. Help arrived just as hope began to dim. It was late Sunday morning, Jan. ... Read More »

Almost everyone knows about the tragic story about the sinking of the world’s largest “unsinkable” ship. The legend of the RMS Titanic has lived on in the movies, books, television, and of course, James Cameron’s 1997 blockbuster film. The facts and history of the Titanic also live on in photos ... Read More »

MS Oranje, later known as MS Angelina Lauro, was a passenger liner, a wartime hospital ship, and finally a cruise ship that was lost while being towed for scrap. She sank in a storm in the mid-Pacific, on 24 September 1979. The stricken cruise ship, MS Achille Lauro, smoldering in ... Read More »

Southern Pacific’s premier trains the Shasta Daylight, and the Cascade served the northwest from San Francisco to Portland and Seattle from the 1950s into the 1960s. They served dozens of California, Oregon and Washington cities. The Shasta was popular with tourists and the Cascade, a favorite with business people. THE ... Read More »

Southern Pacific’s deluxe streamliner Lark was the premiere overnight passenger between San Francisco and Los Angeles. A favorite of businessmen and movie stars. The Oakland Lark connected with the Lark at San Jose then via San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara to Southern California along the coast route. The Lark rivaled ... Read More »

Known as “white Flyers of the Pacific,” the sister ships each made four sailings a week. The Yale and Harvard carried 565 First Class passengers at an average speed of 23 knots between the two major California cities. The fast coastal ships provided an overnight cruise on the Pacific. They ... Read More »

On April 13, 1962, America’s last night boat service ended as the Old Bay Line’s steamers made there final voyages on the waters of the Chesapeake Bay ending service between Baltimore and Norfolk. Known officially as the Baltimore Steam Packet Company, which had come to be known as the Old ... Read More »

MV Wilhelm Gustloff was a German transport ship that was sunk on January 30, 1945, by Soviet submarine S-13 in the Baltic Sea. The former cruise liner was evacuating German civilian refugees from East Prussia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Estonia, and military personnel from Gotenhafen (Gdynia) as the Red Army advanced. By ... Read More »

The Southern Pacific’s Streamliner Coast Daylight was the West’s finest train in the 1940s, 50s and early 1960s, linking Los Angeles and San Francisco on a glorious daylight trip, streaking along the edge of the Pacific Ocean for more than a hundred breathless mile. The streamliner traveled along the coast ... Read More »