They called them the “White Flyers of the Pacific.” Overnight by sea between Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco… USC rooters heading north from Los Angels to San Francisco on the SS Yale for the Stanford/USC football game. The sister ships Yale and Harvard were the fastest steamships on ... Read More »
The Klondike gold rush galvanized the Union Steamship Company to begin operations in Alaska. The company was founded in 1889 by John Darling, the director of a New Zealand shipping company who recognized a great need for a scheduled service that would transport supplies and work crews to various northern ... Read More »
From United Airlines to Rock Island Streamliners to Cruise-Ships… Incredible film produced by the Chicago Board Of Education gives an aerial and ground tour of Chicago during the 1940s where it shows the city’s former industrial areas, its educational institutions and art deco skyline. Chicago – A Film from the Chicago ... Read More »
They made beds and cleaned toilets. They shined shoes, dusted jackets, cooked meals and washed dishes. Yet the Pullman porters created history in the face of adversity and racial prejudice. They helped form the foundation for the black middle class, and became instrumental in the civil rights movement. Follow two ... Read More »
On May 31, 1931 the passenger steamship SS Harvard went aground off Point Arguello, California. The Harvard was running its regular schedule between San Francisco and Los Angeles with 500 passengers when it went hard aground during the night in heavy fog. The sea was calm and there was no ... Read More »
Best-selling author and illustrator David Macaulay made a case last Thursday for saving the SS United States, a once-majestic ocean liner that has been deteriorating for years at a pier along the Delaware River. It’s “a unique object, a symbol of time in American history that we’ve sort of long ... Read More »
The former headquarters of the White Star Line – the shipping company which built and operated the ill-fated RMS Titanic liner – have been transformed into a luxury hotel thanks to a £5.5million renovation, pictured above. The hotel now boasts 65 lavish apartments which will house up to 310 guests ... Read More »
Cruises as we know them today are really only about 50 years old, but the tradition goes back more then a hundred years when passengers started booking travel on mail ships crossing the Atlantic… These cargo vessels evolved into the grand ocean liners whose names we still remember: Lusitania, Titanic, ... Read More »
Stewardesses play a role in the MAD MEN TV series. They are a central part of the social travel history of the JFK to Johnson decade. Here’s a look at the women flight attendants who flew PAN AM, TWA and PSA – vanished American institutions and airlines. This is the ... Read More »
A lot of things can happen at sea — pirates, mutiny, murder and bad weather not to mention (if you’re so inclined) alien abductions, clashes with sea monsters and the mysterious workings of the Bermuda Triangle. George Raft plays a ship’s captain who sets out to get the guys who murdered ... Read More »
This is one of the last journeys aboard the steamboat Gordon C. Greene in 1949. The steamboat Delta Queen replaced the older steamboat in the same year. The Greene Line was a line of river steamships along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. The name was later changed to Delta Queen Steamboat Company. 1849: The Steamboat Gordon C. ... Read More »
Dozens of the stars attending the opening predicted an Oscar sweep for Judy Garland, James Mason, Jack Carson, and A Star is Born. One of the last great Hollywood premieres. A video history of the 1954 world premiere of at Hollywood’s Pantages Theatre… When movies were movies and stars were ... Read More »
When “Getting There Was Half The Fun!” The Cunard Liner RMS MAURETANIA of 1939 was built on the Mersey by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead. She was only the third Cunard passenger liner to be built on the Mersey, the other two being the CEPHALONIA (1882), and the SAMARIA (1921) Wonderful ... Read More »
Star of stage and screen Katharine Hepburn, becomingly clad in slacks, unbent and gave an interview to the boys of the press as she sailed from New York, June 5th, on the S.S. Nieuw Amsterdam. The Nieuw Amsterdam was a Dutch ocean liner built in Rotterdam for the Holland America ... Read More »
The first vessel built exclusively for luxury cruising, was the Prinzessin Victoria Luise of Germany, designed by Albert Ballin, general manager of Hamburg-America Line. The ship was completed in 1900. HISTORY The earliest ocean-going vessels were not primarily concerned with passengers, but rather with the cargo that they could carry. ... Read More »
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