Cruising The Past Cruise News 
Peter Knego’s new video is a top to bottom tour of P&O’s S.S. FAIRSTAR, the most popular cruise ship to sail in Australian waters.
Besides the ship video tour, a history of the vessel, from her origins as the British trooper OXFORDSHIRE. Peter’s excellent video covers her conversion to an emigrant liner for Sitmar, and then her halcyon days of cruising from 1974 until her final sailing in 1997.
About Peter Knego’s Mid-20th Century website.
Midship Century was founded in 2005 by ocean liner historian and journalist Peter Knego as a logical outlet for the container loads of materials he salvaged from a long procession of celebrated vessels scrapped on the beach of Alang, India in recent years. Many, such as Sun Line’s STELLA SOLARIS, were fitted out with important designer furniture and valuable artwork, while others, such as the former Cunard Liner IVERNIA, were unchanged relics filled with mid-1950s and early 1960s fixtures and furnishings.
Their replacements, today’s mega cruise ships, offer a myriad of amenities to make the passenger forget he or she is even at sea. But unlike ocean liners, these boxy monoliths are fitted out like modern hotels with store-bought furnishings and fire resistant materials. The era of the individual ship representing the best of its nation’s artisans and craftsmen ended in the mid 1960s (although there were a handful of exceptions like the STELLA SOLARIS in the early 1970s).
Seizing the one-time-only opportunity to save these items from obscurity or destruction, Knego not only bought items for his collection, but to share with those with a similar love for ocean liners or a penchant for the sleek stylings of the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. Rich, rare, tropical hardwood veneers, heavy nickel plated fixtures, a serving of “high style Italian chic” from Gio Ponti’s collaborators, and much more! Now that no less than four containers’ full have been sorted and documented, it is time to make these treasures available to the world.
