4th of July – Celebrating Independence Day At Sea

National holidays were celebrated onboard liners and cruise ships with special events and elaborate menus.

• From Russian Caviar to Filet Mignon to Ice Cup, Independence Gourmandizes. The menus are classics in cuisine prepared onboard and not the fresh frozen cruise meals aboard today’s cruise liners.
• Here are a number of Steamship Lines celebrating the 4th from the 1900s into the 1930s.

GRACE LINE

Onboard the Grace Line…

ANCHOR LINE

Anchor Line’s SS CITY OF ROME – July 4th Menu – 1900

• The Anchor Line trans-Atlantic passenger liner CITY OF ROME, built by the Barrow Ship Building Co was the second largest ship of her time. Built to compete for the Atlantic ‘Blue Riband’, but she was too heavy and underpowered.

UNITED STATES LINES

• SS LEVIATHAN, originally built as Vaterland, was an ocean liner which regularly crossed the North Atlantic from 1914 to 1934.
• The second of three sister ships built for Germany’s Hamburg America Line for their transatlantic passenger service, she sailed as Vaterland for less than a year before her early career was halted by the start of World War I.
• In 1917, she was seized by the U.S. government and renamed Leviathan. She would become known by this name for the majority of her career, as the flagship of the United States Lines.
• Menu from the collection of Dan Grossman.

United States Lines SS MANHATTAN – July 4th Menu -1937

• The SS MANHATTAN was a trans-Atlantic liner of the United States Lines, offering passenger service from New York to Europe.

ALASKA STEAMSHIP COMPANY

• Alaska Steamship Company’s SS ALEUTIAN – July 4th Menu – 1938

SS Aleutian