David Bowie (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016), who starred in the film The Man Who Fell to Earth, had a long-standing fear of flying. Bowie sailed aboard Cunard’s QE 2, the Italian Line’s Leonardo da Vinci, P&O-Orient Line’s Oronsay and Canberra along with many other ships. So while ... Read More »
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California’s famous all-Pullman SP streamliner LARK served San Francisco and Los Angeles
Southern Pacific’s deluxe streamliner Lark was the premiere overnight passenger between San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, and Los Angeles. A favorite of businessmen and movie stars. The Lark rivaled such famed overnight all-Pullman trains as the 20th Century Limited, Broadway Limited, Capital Limited and Panama Limited. Premiering on March 2, ... Read More »
2018 QUEEN ELIZABETH’S CHRISTMAS speech and the 1957 first televised speech.
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 ... Read More »
Christmas on the Cunard Line in the 1920s and 1930s.
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 ... Read More »
SS Princess Patricia – from Night Boat to the Love Boat.
S.S. Princess Patricia on her first Princess Cruise – docked in Vancouver – heading south to Los Angeles. Exploring the origin of Princess Cruises and naming the “Princess” ships. Where did the name of each of their “Love Boat” cruise ships originate? Princess Cruises and the SS Princess Patricia was the ... Read More »
California here we come on the cruise-liner RMS Orcades from mid-century to 1972.
During her 24 years of service, the Orcades (1948 to 1972) sailed more than 2 million miles on cruises and liner voyages from the UK to Australia/New Zealand along with cruises in the South Pacific and from the West Coast of the USA and Canada (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vancouver) ... Read More »
The Yale and the Harvard – California’s Night Boats between Los Angeles and San Francisco
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 ... Read More »
December 7th – Having missed Pearl Harbor, the SS Lurline races to California.
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 ... Read More »
Remembering the Pullman Porters
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 ... Read More »