Cruising The Past Cruise News 
In the age before cheap jet fares and mega?ships, there was another way to cross the Pacific from California to the Far East—quiet, deliberate, and limited to just twelve souls on board. American President Lines’ luxury cargoliners of the 1950s and 1960s turned the workaday business of hauling freight between San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Asia into an unexpectedly elegant passage for a very small circle of passengers.
These were not the big white “President” liners like the President Cleveland, gliding out of San Francisco Bay with hundreds of tourists and military families on board. They were Mariner?type cargo ships—Presidents Jackson, Hayes, Adams, and Coolidge—purpose?built to move serious tonnage across the Pacific while tucking a handful of civilians into a self?contained world of mid?century comfort. Passenger lists were deliberately capped at twelve, a regulatory line that kept the ships free of full liner rules and, in the process, gave them a slightly conspiratorial allure. If you were on one of these voyages, you could count the entire passenger manifest on your fingers.
Inside, the ships were designed as “compact luxury liners,” the phrase APL liked to use in its advertising. The cabins did not feel like spartan seamen’s quarters. Travelers stepped into air?conditioned staterooms with wall?to?wall carpets, teak or walnut cabinetry, real beds instead of bunks, and private baths with tubs and showers. Picture windows took the place of portholes, framing the Pacific in a wide rectangle of light. On some ships, a passenger who wanted more privacy could book an adjoining sitting room and treat the freighter as a floating apartment for forty days.
Beyond the staterooms, the public rooms were just as carefully thought out. A main lounge gathered together a handful of seating groups, a piano or record player, and eventuallycolor television. There was a small library stocked with a mix of travel guides, novels, and outdated but well?thumbed magazines—perfect for the long days between ports. A card room doubled as a writing room, where passengers could spread out letters and aerogrammes on proper desks. A self?service bar and pantry let you fix a drink or raid the refrigerator at odd hours, complete with that slightly illicit feeling that you were helping yourself in someone else’s very nice kitchen.
Meals were taken in an intimate dining salon, not a cavernous banquet hall. With only a dozen passengers on board, everyone could sit within earshot of the captain and officers. Conversation tended to revolve around cargo and ports, storms and currents, and the small dramas of shipping life that never made it into glossy brochures. For Americans bound to or from postings in Japan, Hong Kong, or the Philippines, that dining room became a rolling seminar in Pacific trade, Cold War logistics, and the subtle hierarchies of life at sea.
The routes themselves stitched California to the Far East in a series of long, unhurried arcs. Departures from San Francisco often included a coastal call at Los Angeles before striking out for Hawaii, where a day or two in Honolulu broke the first long stretch of open water. From there the cargoliner might run on to Japan—Yokohama, Kobe, or another busy port—before swinging south to Hong Kong and the Philippines. Manila was not a glamorous cruise stop yet; it was a working harbor, and the ship was there to load and discharge cargo. But for the twelve passengers leaning on the rail at sunset, watching the harbor lights come up, it was still a gateway to the Orient.
APL marketed some of these voyages as full “40?day Orient cruises,” with fares starting around a thousand dollars per person, and longer 100?day round?the?world circuits that stitched twenty?plus ports into a single itinerary. For travelers willing to trade floor shows and crowded pools for long books, long conversations, and long horizons, the value proposition was clear. You paid slightly more than a straight one?way liner fare, and in return you got a month or more of slow travel, a private?yacht?sized social circle, and a front?row seat on the working life of the Pacific.
Today, when most passengers sail with a few thousand close friends, the idea of sharing ship with just eleven other travelers feels almost imaginary. Yet for a brief window in the 1950s and 1960s, American President Lines gave West Coast passengers exactly that option: twelve tickets, four cargo liners, and a quiet path from San Francisco and Los Angeles to Hawaii, Japan, Hong Kong, and the Philippines—where the real cargo was time.
