1930s

The French Line’s flagship had been out of service for nearly four years. Then on February 9, 1942, crowds gathered at New York City’s pier 88 to witness a spectacle. The largest ocean liner in the world was on fire. Fire fighting efforts successfully contained the fire after five and a half hours of effort, but the effort was in ... Read More »

J. Pierpont Morgan Jr. could never imagine his yacht Corsair IV would be turned into a deluxe cruise ship just after World War 2  whose short career with voyages from California would end in tragedy, but it happened. J.P. Morgan Jr. and his legendary business tycoon father, J. Pierpont Morgan, owned four yachts christened Corsair and built three of them. ... Read More »

The RMS Aquitania was the longest serving Cunard liner built in the 20th century and to survive service in both World Wars. The contract to build the ship went to John Brown & Co, and great publicity was given to the fact that it would be the largest liner in the world. The Aquitania was launched on 21 April by ... Read More »

Chasen’s was a glamorous world – “Celebrity chefs” will never replace stylish hosts and personalities such as Dave Chasen or Vincent Sardi or Mike Romanoff. The “chefs” were in the kitchen. Not greeting you at the front door! Now the once famous eatery is a supermarket catering to the newly rich and what Dave Chasen would call the déclassé. No ... Read More »

The floating palace for the rich and famous: Vintage photos reveal glamor on board the Queen Mary during her early voyages sailing from New York to Europe – Across the Pond! The Art Deco liner was the largest and fastest passenger ship in the world when it launched. The Queen Mary hosted the wealthy and elite, including Winston Churchill, John F ... Read More »

Judy Garland is on the passenger list and its the Captain’s Dinner Night on the SS United States… And it is the one night that Judy Garland left her stateroom. Pictured: Sid Luff and his wife Judy Garland with a friend John Carlyle at right. 1956 1st Class Dining Room – the SS UNITED STATES…  Cunard Line Passenger Lists Cruise History: ... Read More »

Eastern Steamship Lines operated coastwise overnight passenger services along the Long Island Sound between New York and Boston and to other Northeast Coast ports including Portland, Maine, along with services to Canada and cruises. VIDEO OF EASTERN STEAMSHIP LINE CRUISE 1937 CRUISE – NEW YORK TO NOVA SCOTIA ABOARD EASTERN STEAMSHIP COMPANY The vessel at the beginning of the movie ... Read More »

The Queen’s Christmas broadcast is a traditional feature of the festive season where the head of state can express her thoughts about the past year. Here is the first speech and today’s speech. 1957 Christmas Broadcast The Queen wrote her first speech with the assistance of advisors. The monarch made her first Christmas broadcast live on the radio in 1952 ... Read More »

The Cunard Line celebrates Christmas with a long and fascinating history. The company was created in 1839 when Samuel Cunard won the Admiralty’s tender to provide a transatlantic mail service to be carried by steamships between Great Britain and North America. The service was inaugurated in 1840 when the steamship Britannia made the first crossing to Halifax and then Boston. Video ... Read More »

The SS Yale and SS Harvard became known as “white Flyers of the Pacific”! The sister ships each made four sailings a week, carrying 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 were a very popular way for traveling between ... Read More »

Matson Lines SS Lurline was half way from Honolulu to San Francisco on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The SS Lurline missed the Pearl Harbor attack and made her destination safely, cruising at maximum speed, and soon returned to Hawaii with her Matson sisters SS Mariposa and SS Monterey in a convoy laden with troops and ... Read More »

Benjamin Gaines, 93, worked as a Pullman porter from 1945 to 1954. “The porters, believe it or not, we had a celebrity status,” he said in an interview with the Chicago Tribune. (Cover Photo: CW: Janet Leigh, star of Hitchcock’s PSYCHO boarding the Super Chief in fashion layout; Porter during the 1960s looking out at the Kansas prairie: Pullman Porter’s ... Read More »

When the Fox Theater was built in 1929, it seemed as if there weren’t enough adjectives to describe the movie theater’s magnificence. The San Francisco Chronicle called the opening “a spectacle of such beauty and magnitude that it seemed rather a fancy of one’s mind rather than the inaugural night of another commercial enterprise.” OPENING NIGHT But the life of ... Read More »

While being tops in your field can be exciting, an ambitious or intellectually curious person always looks for new ways to grow. This was particularly true for stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. A national star for years for her creative striptease act, Lee hoped to spread her wings into more respectable and challenging fields. Born January 9, 1911, in Seattle to ... Read More »

Far away from the Trans-Atlantic services – “Down Under” – Union Steam Ship Company operated a fleet of excellent passenger ships between Australia and New Zealand until 1960. In her day the Awatea was regarded as one of the most luxurious and fastest liners of the period. Her history was brief and she was destroyed in World War2 like so ... Read More »