Compare the silhouette of this ship, the French Liner, SS Normandie, with any floating condominium today.
I’ll even give you the Queen Mary II to compare images. Look Here.
That cliche comes to mind, “They don’t make ’em like they use to.”
This slide taken by my father on his honeymoon is a puzzle to me. He is obviously on a smaller launch of some sort. Is he boarding it from a launch in Southhampton and not a pier? Or has he disembarked via launch. The final destination was Le Havre, France, so my guess is this is in Southampton, England.
What I do know is that this ship was considered the most beautiful and at the time, the fastest (which was like being the “tallest” building in the world contest today) Ocean Liner at the time it began service in 1935. It made 139 crossings from Le Havre, France to New York City but did not make the final return voyage to France.
In 1942, at a pier in NYC, it was being fitted for wartime as a troop carrier when a spark from a welder’s torch ignited a fire that could not ultimately be contained. The NYC fire boats sprayed so much harbor water into the ship, battling the fire, that the ship literally rolled over at the pier. Here is the photo of it at the pier. It pains me to even look at this image. It was eventually raised from this position but deemed too expensive to renovate and was scrapped in 1946.
I noticed on the Queen Mary II site that they have a photo of the bow on the ship that is a direct copy of a famous Art Deco poster of the SS Normandie.
©Pat Coakley 2010
PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION
**Select images from this blog and my wider archive are available for sale on www.patcoakley.com
