[ 09-14-2010: Message edited by: Indarra ]

I've said this before, but as a young teen in the late '60s and early '70s, trying to feed my growing interest in ships, it was heart-breaking to see so many classics being scrapped. Literally there would be several each month taken out of service and broken up; in those days, no one had heard of Alang, but most ships went to Kaohsiung in Taiwan.

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Originally posted by WhiteStar:
I just purchased Arnold Kludas series of books "Great Passenger Ships Of The World". I love history and ships but don't know much about the technical stuff...been on 23 cruises so far. In reading volume 5, ships from 1951 to 1976Thanks - Reed

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Congrats with your purchase! Every ocean liner fan ought to have the original 5-piece set of books. All the ships after 1976 are covered in a new book, of which an updates i released every few years. If you are interested, the latest update (only in German unfortunately) has just been released earlier this year. It should be in my mailbox any day now :-))

[URL=http://www.koehler-mittler.de/shop/shop/article/viewArticleDetail.php?partnerId=&qryOpt=catId&qryText=1&orderBy=name&offset=0&limit=20&tpl=koehler&parentCIdLogStream=1&artId=4 0]web page[/URL]

[ 09-15-2010: Message edited by: rd77 ]

That is quite a staggering statistic which shows you just how very successful the jet aircrafts was and how quickly. The Queen Mary was said to be carrying more crew than passengers at this time.

[ 09-15-2010: Message edited by: Malcolm @ cruisepage ]

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Originally posted by Malcolm @ cruisepage:
I can't find/recall the actual statistics, but as I recall the De Havilland Comet (the World's first jet airliner) had 90% (or similar) of transatlantic passengers within the first year.
[...]

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Sorry, but this is not true - it's not even close (are you really serious about that?). It took quite a bit longer than one year for jets to get 90 % of transatlantic passengers. Neither the capacity of the Comet nor the number of planes were even remotely (!) sufficient to achieve that and as far as I know there were also no Atlantic crossings with passengers during the first year of operation.

[ 09-15-2010: Message edited by: Ernst ]

It was a more sudden change on other routes around the world; the advent of jumbo jets suddenly made the prospect of travelling to Cape Town, or Sydney, or Hong Kong much more possible than spending several weeks on a ship.

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In reading volume 5, ships from 1951 to 1976 I was amazed at how many ships built in the late 50's or early 60's were sent to the breakers in the early 70's. I have a car that's over 20 years old but some of these classic liners went to the grave after only 12 to 16 years...............I've said this before, but as a young teen in the late '60s and early '70s, trying to feed my growing interest in ships, it was heart-breaking to see so many classics being scrapped. Literally there would be several each month taken out of service and broken up; in those days, no one had heard of Alang, but most ships went to Kaohsiung in Taiwan.

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Many of the late Pacific-Indian Ocean liners did not make it to cruise conversion. Although they had ample outdoor deckspace, promenades, and swimming pools, but, had too many immigrant class facilities compared to the late Atlantic liners which were more for middle and upper class people crossing. The Pacific liners burned more fuel and the conversions to full time cruising were much more expensive than a postwar Atlantic ship.

Textbook examples would be the Rotterdam V, QE2, Oceanic, and Canberra which were designed as dual purpose crossing and cruising from the start and had long profitable uninterrupted careers.

Michelangelo, Rafaello, Orcades, Oransay, Strathmore, Strathedan, designed to the old standard of immigrant trade, and luxury travel with a small cabin class arrangement were doomed. None of those ships could have made it as cruisers without major reconstuction. Mike and Ralph had twin screws and an engine room for each making it hard to shut one down for fuel economy.

Marconi, Galilleo, Queen Anna Maria, Olympia, Britanis, Connie, and Indy were lucky ships.

SSNorway was the outlier here. Although big, her horizontal class arrangement, and almost all cabins with private bath made the cruiseship conversion possible. It was easy to shut down her front engine room which operated the no longer needed outboard propellors. BigU with a traditional 3 class arrangement would have needed a compeletely new GA.

[ 09-15-2010: Message edited by: desirod7 ]

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Originally posted by desirod7:
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Marconi, Galilleo, Queen Anna Maria, Olympia, Britanis, Connie, and Indy were lucky ships.

SSNorway was the outlier here. Although big, her horizontal class arrangement, and almost all cabins with private bath made the cruiseship conversion possible. It was easy to shut down her front engine room which operated the no longer needed outboard propellors. BigU with a traditional 3 class arrangement would have needed a compeletely new GA.

[ 09-15-2010: Message edited by: desirod7 ]

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Actually I would have to disagree on several fronts.

Indy and Connie were extremely well designed and all though they did not realize it at the time the 1950 design was very well suited to cruising. (Look at how little the GA changed from 1960 to 2000.) They were a good size too for their era in cruising. The only luck that comes into their story is that they were able to survive long periods of being idle and become as successful in their old age as they were in their youth. They would never have made it though without a design well suited to cruising.

Britannis is another one that actually proved her design strengths borne out by how little changes she had in her GA. Like her sister the Homeric ex Mariposa they became idle cruise ships. Ellinis ex Lurline did some cruising as well although Chandris used her more for liner service largely based on when they bought her versus the last Lurline later Britanis.

If Hadley had truly know what he was doing and had the finances there is no reason the United States did not mimic the France/Norway. The main lounge deck was as well suited to cruising as the France and the majority of the cabins were more than suitable in 1980 cruising to have been very popular. The First and Cabin areas were ready for cruising and the Tourist Class could easily have been rebuilt. The biggest issues even in 1980 were mechanical concerns in restarting the United States but if Hadley followed the model of what American Hawaii did with paint and paper the United States should have had a good 10 or 20 years cruising. She might have even gotten a mid-career redo like the Norway and have survived as long as the Norway.

Problem was not her GA but Hadley's first silly idea to do timeshare and then he dithered while the cruise industry quickly shut the window on reviving the United States as an economically viable cruise ship.

I agree though that the ships that did not have a good GA did not make the jump. Leonardo da Vinci is another example of a great ship but her cabins were horridly small and she was a gas guzzler. A friend at Costa said the LdV burnt as much fuel sitting at the dock in Nassau as any of their other ships did sailing full tilt at sea in the late 1970s.

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Originally posted by SSTRAVELER:

Actually I would have to disagree on several fronts.

Indy and Connie were extremely well designed and all though they did not realize it at the time the 1950 design was very well suited to cruising. (Look at how little the GA changed from 1960 to 2000.) They were a good size too for their era in cruising. The only luck that comes into their story is that they were able to survive long periods of being idle and become as successful in their old age as they were in their youth. They would never have made it though without a design well suited to cruising.

Britannis is another one that actually proved her design strengths borne out by how little changes she had in her GA. Like her sister the Homeric ex Mariposa they became idle cruise ships. Ellinis ex Lurline did some cruising as well although Chandris used her more for liner service largely based on when they bought her versus the last Lurline later Britanis.

If Hadley had truly know what he was doing and had the finances there is no reason the United States did not mimic the France/Norway. The main lounge deck was as well suited to cruising as the France and the majority of the cabins were more than suitable in 1980 cruising to have been very popular. The First and Cabin areas were ready for cruising and the Tourist Class could easily have been rebuilt. The biggest issues even in 1980 were mechanical concerns in restarting the United States but if Hadley followed the model of what American Hawaii did with paint and paper the United States should have had a good 10 or 20 years cruising. She might have even gotten a mid-career redo like the Norway and have survived as long as the Norway.

Problem was not her GA but Hadley's first silly idea to do timeshare and then he dithered while the cruise industry quickly shut the window on reviving the United States as an economically viable cruise ship.

I agree though that the ships that did not have a good GA did not make the jump. Leonardo da Vinci is another example of a great ship but her cabins were horridly small and she was a gas guzzler. A friend at Costa said the LdV burnt as much fuel sitting at the dock in Nassau as any of their other ships did sailing full tilt at sea in the late 1970s.

Michelangelo and Raffaello were equally ill suited for cruising despite the fact that Italia ran them on a lot of cruises. They had way too many small cabins and inside cabins. They were ships that would have needed to be gutted to become true cruise ships. Remember NCL looked at both of them in depth before deciding to go with the France to Norway for the first big cruise ship. Although they looked wonderfully modern in 1965 and had great decor once you studied their design they were 1950s or earlier liners doomed from the day they first set sail.

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