Our cruise history website begins its second year as a growing encyclopedic source of cruise, steamship and liner information. Cruising The Past also deals with the history of famous trains and hotels. This popular cruise history chronicle of travel has grown during the past twelve months. Cruising The Past now continues to have a growing number of regular visitors.
Since February 2008, our website has presented a wide selection of maritime material concerned with steamship travel and cruising from the 1930s through the 1960s. The appeal is international in scope. Nearly every country in the world has had internet users visiting the site.
Michael L. Grace, one of the creators of the musical Snoopy based on Charles M. Shultz “Peanuts” and a seasoned historian of cruise ship travel, is the editor of the website: cruisingthepast.com.
Grace wrote for the hit TV series “Love Boat” during the 1980s – mainly for the two hour specials featuring the ship visiting many part of the world.
The highly successful TV show was responsible for today’s burgeoning cruise industry.
It influenced many TV viewers who made their first cruise because of the TV series.
Grace has traveled on over 50 cruise ships and has circled the globe three times.
Grace feels: “The Cruising The Past website examines the glamor of steamship travel prior to the introduction of 747s and the mass cruise market created by the hit TV series Love Boat. They are taking a close look at a “retro” period when there were no security checks, 24-hour buffets or baseball caps worn by passengers. The website studies an age when “getting there was half the fun” in an era when travel was an event and not a nightmare.”
Our site includes a good number of videos on cruises prior to the 1950s. Cruising The Past has a large library of early cruise line material along with a major collection of film footage from the first half of the last century dealing with cruise ships.
Grace is currently finishing a book focused on how the TV Series “Love Boat” effected the cruise industry and the popularity of contemporary cruising.
Grace added: “We realize many aspects of modern day cruising are much more comfortable than these earlier ships. Cabins are larger and there is a much wider choice of accommodations and activities. But certain aspects of social interaction are absent. There is no longer a feeling of gentility on most cruise ships. Most of the times you think you’re stuck in some strip hotel in Vegas that’s been dropped down in the sea.”