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E NEWS SUPPLEMENT...by Bill Miller

 

May 30, 2011

Greetings!


    This week's Enews was delayed shortly due to the holiday weekend. I hope all of our members had a happy, healthy and safe Memorial Day Weekend! I also took you took a moment to reflect on all the great men and women who have served this country throughout history.
 
     All too often in the country we get caught up in the spirit of celebrating our holidays without reflecting on the true meaning of the day. The freedoms we enjoy in this country, even our freedom to express a negative opinion about our government, wars or foreign conflicts are freedoms granted to us because of the tremendous sacrifices that have been made by the men and woman who have served our country.
 
     For that I am, and we should be, eternally grateful!
 

 

Sincerely!
  
Tom Cassidy 

Canadian FlagCanada - New arrivals!

 

Replacing the older Joseph and Clara Smallwood and the Caribou, Marine Atlantic Highways has added the Blue Puttees and the Highlander.   They are former Scandinavian freight ferries, the Stena Trader & Stena Traveller, but have been rebuilt for passenger service and, in the process, were actually shortened by approx 50 ft for Canadian harbor requirements.  

Cruceros Australis - Niche cruising!  Cruceros Logo 

 

This Chilean cruise line has added a new ship:   the 200-passenger Stella Australis.   Built locally at a shipyard at Valdivia, the 300-ft long ship will make 3 & 4 night cruises out of Punta Arenas to the Magellan Strait & Cape Horn.  

Cunard Logo

Fewer fumes!

  
Beginning next year, the Queen Mary 2 will no longer be belching diesel fumes at her Brooklyn-Red Hook berth in New York harbor.   Instead, the 2,600-bed liner will shut down its engines and plug into a giant electrical outlet built especially for the port.   The Brooklyn terminal will become the first on the US East Coast to adopt this cleaner, more efficient technology.  Ports along the West Coast, including Alaska, have been using this system for close to ten years.
Ferries - Baltic bound!
 
Once, one of the world's biggest passenger ferries, the 37,000-ton Pride of Bilbao of P&O Ferries has changed hands again.  After becoming the Bilbao for the Irish Continental Lines, she has now gone on to another life --- changing names to Princess Anastasia.   Her Cypriot-flag owners, the St Peter Line are operating her in a very busy trade:   between St Petersburg, Tallinn and Stockholm. ...  Meanwhile, the Viking Line, which operates the 59,000-ton Silja Europa on the Stockholm to Turku service in the Baltic, have ordered two 60,000-ton super-ferries. 

Reassignment! Holland America

 

It Beginning in late 2012, the flagship Rotterdam will be based fulltime in the European cruise market, sailing from Rotterdam on mostly long, luxurious, diverse itineraries.

 

Normandie - A.M. CassandreOcean Liner Collectibles -Deco on the seas!

 

The Normandie was the most lavish of all Atlantic liners and a tour de force of Art Deco décor and decoration.  She is highly collectible to this day.   Last spring, during a sale at Christie's in New York, one pair of dining room chairs were auctioned for $17,000.  A second pair sold for $22,000.

Ocean Liner history - Hopes for revival!

 

Some forty years ago, in the summer of 1970, the New York-based Moore-McCormack Lines revealed that they were "deeply interested" in reactivating the 553-passenger sisters Argentina & Brasil.   Built in 1958 for the run to the East Coast of South America as well as cruising, the twin ships were laid-up, in the face of soaring US maritime labor costs coupled with increased, foreign-flag cruise line competition, in 1969 and were moored together at a Baltimore shipyard.   The idea to revive the 617-ft long ships never came to pass and instead, in 1972, the pair was sold to Holland America Line, being rebuilt as the Veendam & Volendam. 

 

 

Refused on delivery! PearlSeas
 

It seems that Pearl has still refused to take delivery of the already long-delayed Pearl Mist from the Irving shipyard at Halifax.   With a second sister long cancelled, Pearl has a large lawsuit against the shipyard.   The new vessel reportedly included many defects.   
TitanicTitanic!
 
With the 100th anniversary of her tragic sinking coming up next year, here are some frequently asked questions about the famed White Star liner.   The information comes from a dear friend, Charles Haas, an internationally recognized expert & author on the Titanic and her sinking. 

 How did the sinking of the Titanic change lifeboat codes on ships?

 Prior to the disaster, lifeboat capacities were determined by ships' tonnage. Because they had confidence in watertight bulkheads and the growing prevalence of shipboard radio installations (by which help could be summoned) he British Board of Trade did not feel a strong need to update the regulations to reflect ships' rapidly growing sizes (and growing passenger capacities.) The regulations had last been revised in 1894, and the rules for lifeboats ended with "Ships of 10,000 tons and over" needing 16 lifeboats plus several collapsibles. Titanic measured 46,000 tons, nearly five times the upper end of the chart but still had 16 boats plus collapsibles. Titanic actually provided 1,178 seats in the boats, about 200 more than the law required. The saddest number of that night was that about 450 seats were left empty in those boats due to lack of communication, confusion and, to some extent, the use of the "women and children first" rule, which caused entire families to be lost rather than separate from their  menfolk. It's also important to realize that even if Titanic had sufficient boats for all on board, there would not have been time to launch them; the last two boats floated off as the ship went down.
After the disaster, the rule was a simple one: Lifeboats for everyone on board, to the ship's full capacity. In addition, rules called for training of crews to handle boats properly, crew lifeboat drills, marking boats more prominently with their capacities, and lifeboat drills for passengers (even today, held within 24 hours of departure). As better lifeboat davits became available, and lifeboat construction changed from wood to steel to fiberglass, the size of lifeboats increased so that fewer boats still could evacuate everyone, even on a ship like Oasis of the Seas with a capacity of 8000 passengers and crew.
And the path to the lifeboats had to be clearly marked, something not done on the Titanic, and equal access by everyone to the boats was a must. (It's amazing to think that in 1909, after his ship had been struck by another in the fog off Nantucket, Captain Sealby of the White Star liner Republic actually was heard to say through a megaphone, "Remember, it's women and children first, then the first class, then the others!") Today no distinction may be made in having access to the boats.
Ocean & Cruise News

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About Bill Miller  Bill Miller "Mr. Ocean Liner"  

Bill Miller is an international authority on the subject of ocean liners & cruise ships. This includes those great ships of the past, those "floating palaces," as well as the current generation of cruise ships, the "floating resorts".  Called "Mr. Ocean Liner," he has written over 75 books on the subject:  from early steamers, immigrant ships and liners at war to other titles on their fabulous interiors, in post card form and about the highly collectible artifacts from them.   He has done specific histories of such celebrated passenger ships as the United States, Queen Mary, Rotterdam, France, Queen Elizabeth 2, Costa Victoria, Super Star Leo and Crystal Serenity.

 

In all, he has also written over 1,000 articles for newspapers, magazines and nautical journals & newsletters.   He even had his very own ocean liner quarterly, the Millergram.  He has made nearly 350 voyages to date:   Atlantic crossings, tropical cruises, coastal runs and even trips on container cargo ships and exotic banana boats.  He has appeared in some three dozen video & television series, both in the USA, Britain, Europe and Australia, including Castles of the Sea, The Floating Palaces, The Superliners, Inside the World of a Cruise Ship, Disasters at Sea, Deco: Age of Glamour, and Lady in Waiting: The Story of the SS United States.   He has also appeared on The Today Show, CBS Evening News, CBS Sunday Morning, Good Morning America, NBC Evening News and many other news broadcasts. He has been guest lecturer aboard over 50 different liners, sailing with the likes of Crystal Cruises, Cunard, Carnival, Holland Americ

a, Princess, Radisson-Seven Seas, Saga Cruises and others.  Miller was a public school teacher, in middle school and for social studies, for 32 years.  He was named "Teacher of the Year" in 2002.  

 

A native of Hoboken, New Jersey, the once busy port just across the Hudson River from New York City, Miller was named Outstanding American Maritime Scholar in 1994, received the United States Maritime Preservation Award  and also  the Ocean Liner Council's  Silver Riband Award, both  in 2004.   Also, he has been chairman of the Port of New York Branch of the World Ship Society, serves on the selection committee for the American Maritime Hall of Fame, created the passenger ship database for the Ellis Island Museum and currently serves as Curator of 20th Century Maritime History at Manhattan's South Street Seaport Museum.  He has also organized a 14-week college course on liners, and helped to create & then served as historian at  the US Merchant Marine Museum. His private collection includes 4,000 books on ships, over 15,000 photos and some 1,000 miniature ship models, most of them being passenger ships. 

 

By 2010, Miller had 10 new books in the works, was curator to Decodence (an exhibit at the South St Seaport on the design & décor of the grand French liner Normandie) and himself was the subject of a one-hour film documentary aptly titled Mr Ocean Liner.   (Updated 8/10).

 

 

Follow Bill's look back at ship's of yesteryear..

Heard Along the Boat Deck

 

And his current and past cruise experiences...

Scribblings  

William Miller Books!

 

On the horizon!   Brian Hawley is penning a new book, filled with lots of photos, about the Olympic, the White Star liner completed in 1911 and sister to the infamous Titanic

 

 

 

Ocean liners in words & pictures!  An updated list of my published ocean liner books ... and available thru bmce48@yahoo.com.

 

 

The Last Atlantic Liners

 

 

 

Last Atlantic Liners:  Getting There is Half the Fun  (Amberley Publishing, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, 2011

 

  

 

 

 

Rms Caronia Book

 

 

RMS Caronia:   Cunard's Green Goddess 

(co-authored with Brian Hawley)  The History Press Ltd, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, 2011

  

 

 

 

 

Floating Palaces

 

 

Floating Palaces:   The Great Atlantic Liners(Amberley Publishing, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, 2011

  

 

 

 

 

 

Great British Passenger Ships

 

 

 

 

Great  British Passenger Ships  (The History Press Ltd, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, 2010)

  

 

 

 

 

ss Nieuw Amsterdam

 

 

 

 

 

SS Nieuw Amsterdam:   The Darling of the Dutch  (Amberley Publishing, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, 2010)

  

 

 

Cunard's Three Queens

 

 

 

Cunard's Three Queens:   A Celebration  (Amberley Publishing, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, 2009)

  

 

 

 

 

Under The Red Ensign

 

 

 

Under the Red Ensign:   British Passenger Liners of the '50s & '60s  (The History Press, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, 2009)

 

 

 

 

 

ss United States Speed Queen

 

 

 

SS United States:   Speed Queen of the Seas  (Amberley  Publishing, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, 2009)

 

 

 

 

And yet to come.....

 

Great Passenger Ships 1910-20  (The History Press Ltd, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, due Sep 2011)

 

I Was Born in Hoboken:  Memories of the 1950s & '60s  (Hoboken Historical Museum, Hoboken, NJ, due fall 2011)

 

Along the Hudson:   Great Passenger Ships at New York in Photos  (Amberley Publishing, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, due 2012)

 

The Last Great Dynasty:  The Royal House of Windsor  (Amberley Publishing, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, due 2012)

 

Great Atlantic Liners of the 20th Century in Color (co-authored with Anton Logvinenko;  Amberley Publishing, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, due 2012)

 

Great American Passenger Ships  (The History Press Ltd, Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK, due 2012)

 

The Cunard Yanks (co-authored with Ian Wright;   pending but due 2012)

 

 

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