Giants of the Seas: The Ships that Transformed Modern Cruising

By Aaron Saunders

The cruise ship market is a 30 billion-dollar industry, and in 2013 it is estimated that it will carry more than 20 million passengers; nor is there any sign of a slow down in the seven percent annual growth. What keeps the passengers coming in such huge numbers isn't the food, the ports or the entertainment. They come for the magnificent floating palaces themselves, the giants of the sea.In this new book, the author showcases the most influential cruise ships of the last three decades beginning with Royal Caribbean's ground-breaking Sovereign of the Seas. When she was launched in 1988 she was the largest passenger ship constructed since Cunard's Queen Mary entered service some 48 years earlier, and her entry into service sparked a fiercely competitive building boom that continues to this day. The reader is taken aboard thirty of the most spectacular ships to reveal how their innovative designs changed the landscape of modern cruising. By employing original and archival photographs, deck plans, cruise programmes, as well as the author's intimate knowledge of many of these vessels, a unique picture is built up of these great ships and it becomes clear that the true Golden Age of Cruising is not in some distant past but exists right now, and that its origins can be traced back to one ship, launched in 1988.A truly sumptuous and fascinating book for all those drawn to the world of the modern cruise ship.As seen in Ships Monthly Magazine

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781473852860

Book preview

Copyright © Aaron Saunders 2013

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by

Seaforth Publishing,

Pen & Sword Books Ltd,

47 Church Street,

Barnsley S70 2AS

www.seaforthpublishing.com

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 84832 172 4

eISBN 9781473852860

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing of both the copyright owner and the above publisher.

The right of Aaron Saunders to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Typeset and designed by Roger Daniels Printed and bound in China through Printworks International Ltd.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1988 Sovereign of the Seas

1988 Seabourn Pride

1990 Carnival Fantasy

1990 Crown Princess

1992 Dreamward/Norwegian Dream

1993 Statendam

1994 Silver Cloud

1995 Sun Princess

1995 Celebrity Century

1996 Grandeur of the Seas

1996 Carnival Destiny

1997 Paul Gauguin

1998 Carnival Paradise

1998 Disney Magic

1998 Grand Princess

1998 R One

1999 Norwegian Sky

1999 Voyager of the Seas

2001 Seven Seas Mariner

2002 Zuiderdam

2003 Crystal Serenity

2004 Queen Mary 2

2004 Caribbean Princess

2005 Pride of America

2006 Freedom of the Seas

2007 Fram

2007 AIDAdiva

2007 MSC Orchestra

2007 Queen Victoria

2008 Celebrity Solstice

2008 MSC Fantasia

2009 Oasis of the Seas

2009 Carnival Dream

2009 Seabourn Odyssey

2009 Silver Spirit

2010 Le Boreal

2010 Norwegian Epic

2011 Disney Dream

2011 Marina

2012 Viking Longship

References

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the kind assistance of people who are as dedicated to cruising and cruise ships as I am. I owe them an enormous debt of gratitude for providing me with photographs, interviews, ideas, and even the odd coffee or two. Some of them I’ve only spoken to over countless emails and phone calls, while others have welcomed me into their homes and lives with open arms.

They gave me the world when I asked for a favour, and for that I am eternally grateful. They are: Brad Ball, Yvette Batalla, Mindy Bianca, Vanessa Bloy, Bart de Boer, Jackie Chase, Laurel Davis, Janet Diaz, Frans Dingemans, Erik Elvejord, Gina Finocchiaro, Elliot Gillies, Bruce Good, Ralph Grizzle, Vance Gulliksen, Torstein Hagen, Nina Helland, Ian Jeffries, Jennifer Kaake, Peter Knego, Vanessa Lane, Aileen Laurel, Jason Leppert, Ann Marie Matthews, Gail Nicolaus, Rebeka Pevec, Kimberly Plumridge, Adrian Raeside, and Maureen and Peter Saunders.

For those who share the same insane love of cruise ships, there are plenty of online resources available from talented people who really have devoted themselves, both professionally and personally, to documenting these beautiful vessels.

Avid Cruiser: www.avidcruiser.com

MaritimeMatters: www.maritimematters.com

Popular Cruising: www.popularcruising.com

ShipParade: www.shipparade.com

Introduction

‘One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.’

HENRY MILLER

IFIRST became interested in cruising and cruise ships in 1992, when my parents took my sister and I on a vacation in the interior mountains of British Columbia, Canada. Along the way, we stayed at a small motel in an even smaller town, known as Three Valley Gap, which most people just zip past on their way between Revelstoke and Salmon Arm. And while the motel was nothing to write home about, it did have one defining feature: a swimming pool designed to look like that found on a transatlantic passenger liner of a bygone era, complete with a mural of RMS Titanic painted on its wall.

Now, I have no idea why a land-locked motel would paint a mural of the world’s most famous shipwreck on the wall of their swimming pool, but it did the trick: I spent the rest of the trip going into bookshops and seeking out any materials I could find on ocean liners and cruise ships. Couple that with a grandmother who spent much of her retired days sailing to Alaska aboard the ships of Holland America Line, and you’ve got the recipe for a cruise addict.

Like most addictions, reading about cruises led to taking numerous cruises and even planning entire trips around cruise ships. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was only a matter of time before I began writing about them, too.

It’s a miracle my friends and family still speak to me.

But I came to realise that while there were many books dedicated to the legendary transatlantic greyhounds, few were devoted to the stunning cruise ships that were sailing out of the shipyards in Europe and Asia, revolutionising not only shipbuilding technology but also the cruise industry itself. In fact, the stunning growth that has occurred in the past two and a half decades is similar to the same building race that gripped the shipping world over a century ago.

During the latter half of the 1800s and the beginning of the twentieth century, a race for supremacy was playing out on the oceans of the world, and its epicentre was the lucrative Atlantic crossings that routinely took wealthy guests from England to America, along with thousands of immigrant passengers who made up ‘third class’, which was also known as ‘steerage’. It was these immigrants that would make up the bread and butter for famous shipping lines such as Cunard, Hamburg America and White Star.

A young boy plays out on deck on P&O’s Orcades during a 1950s voyage. The onset of the ‘jet age’ would severely limit the number of ocean liners plying the waters of the world.

(ADRIAN RAESIDE)

The on-board daily programme provided to guests on Cunard Line’s Franconia on 10 May 1965.

(AUTHOR’S COLLECTION)

Although the immigrant trade was largely fuelling the need for bigger and larger ocean liners, it was the wealthy first class passenger the lines were actively courting as each tried desperately to outdo one another. Some, such as Cunard, went for speed, designing its 1906 Mauretania and the 1907 Lusitania to routinely achieve speeds that went to – and past – 24 knots. White Star Line took the opposite approach with its 1911 Olympic and her 1912 sister, the ill-fated Titanic, which placed emphasis on opulence and creature comforts over speed itself (both vessels achieved 21 knots).

But the real driver behind the race to build the largest, fastest and most impressive ocean liners ever seen at the turn of the last century were the tensions that existed between Britain, Germany and the United States in the years leading up to the first and second world wars. In 1897, Germany’s North German Lloyd launched the spectacular Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, the first four-funnelled liner, which snatched the coveted Blue Riband away from Britain’s Cunard Line and sparked a building competition that would continue well into the future.

Interrupted by two world wars, the era of transatlantic travel that emerged in the early 1950s was a very different landscape. Air travel, which had never been a real threat to the ocean liners before the Second World War, became a viable alternative for those looking to cross the Atlantic quickly. Compounding the problem was the onset of the first commercial jet-powered airliner, the De Havilland Comet. Introduced into service with the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) – a predecessor of today’s British Airways – the Comet would operate the world’s first transatlantic jet service in 1958. Ocean travel wasn’t merely slower; it was beginning to look archaic.

Eleven years later, when Boeing’s iconic 747 ‘Jumbo Jet’ embarked on its maiden flight on 9 February 1969 – less than three months before Cunard’s new Queen Elizabeth 2 was due to set sail for the first time – it drove the nail in the coffin for routinely scheduled transatlantic crossings. From that point forward, flying from North America to Europe and back wasn’t just easier; it was fashionable, not to mention more reliable. The ‘jet-set’ age was born, and transoceanic passenger traffic began to dwindle. The concept of spending a week or more at sea just wasn’t cool anymore.

But it was during this same period that many modern-day cruise lines were formed, including Princess Cruises in 1965, Norwegian Cruise Line in 1966, Royal Caribbean in 1968, and Carnival Cruise Lines in 1972. These were joined by more traditional shipping companies such as Chandris, Costa, Holland America Line, P&O and many others, which began to repurpose ocean liners for pleasure cruising.

The origins of cruising, however, began well before that.

Near the dawn of the last century, shipping companies around the world faced an inescapable problem: the weather on the North Atlantic during the winter months was so abysmal that it became difficult to find passengers willing to make the crossing. Despite technological advances such as steam powered turbine engines and ships constructed of steel, the ‘greyhounds of the Atlantic’ were leaving port less than full during the winter months. In order to fill their ships, and return a profit, many lines would lay up a portion of their fleets until the weather improved.

As summer 1890 drew to a close, Hamburg America Line director Albert Ballin was under a great deal of pressure. As director of the line’s passage department, it was his job to ensure the German line’s ships generated as much revenue as possible. Yet he was all too well aware that the pride of the fleet, the steamer Augusta Victoria, faced her second winter of idle layup.

Launched the year before, Augusta Victoria and her sister ship Columbia were the latest word in shipbuilding, designed to literally represent a luxury hotel at sea. They were larger and more elegant than anything that had come before them, not to mention faster and more reliable: with twin screws pushing both ships through the water, Augusta Victoria made her maiden crossing from Hamburg to New York in just seven days.

But the sisters weren’t the home-run Ballin had anticipated. They burned coal at a prodigious rate and required far more of it than slower vessels. The space needed for the extra coal cut into the lucrative steerage and cargo areas, and that cut into Hamburg America Line’s bottom line. Instead of being ultra-reliable, the line came to the conclusion that operating the vessels during winter from Hamburg, when the Elbe was choked with thick ice and passengers were sparse, was not an option.

Augusta Victoria was marketed as the first true pleasure cruise ship to avoid another winter of idle layup. But she was designed for the rugged Atlantic, not cruising.

(LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, DETROIT PUBLISHING COMPANY COLLECTION, LC-D4-22337)

Born on 15 August 1857 to a family of modest means, Albert Ballin was accustomed to being resourceful. His father died when he was just eighteen, thrusting Ballin into his role as sole breadwinner for the family. But he had left his son a legacy: a role in a small emigration agency that was suddenly flooded with people looking to travel west to make a new life in America.

Ballin realised the future lay not in arranging passage for these people, but in actually transporting them. Together with an associate, he started a small, no-frills shipping line that was merely designed to get emigrants from point A to point B. Their undercut fares drew the attention of the Hamburg America Line, which snapped up Ballin in 1886.

Now, Albert Ballin began to wonder if there was another way to convince people to travel aboard his employer’s ships during the winter months. He began drawing up plans to market the line’s idle ships to travel agencies on both sides of the Atlantic, starting with Augusta Victoria. But it was Ballin’s proposed destination that started turning heads: there was no destination. The voyage would simply be an ‘excursion’, as it was marketed at the time; a voyage where the journey – not the destination – was the reward.

Initially, the plan was a hard sell. Competing lines privately scoffed at the idea, although this may have had more to do with the fact Ballin was Jewish and facing the by-product of rising anti-Semitism in Europe than with his revolutionary new concept. Regardless, he pushed on with his plans, personally organising and arranging nearly every aspect of the voyage.

The first purpose-built cruise stateroom, seen here on board Prinzessin Victoria Luise.

(LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, DETROIT PUBLISHING COMPANY COLLECTION, LC-D4-4277)

When Augusta Victoria left Hamburg on 22 January 1891 for a six-week jaunt to the warmth of the Mediterranean, Ballin was on board, along with 240 other passengers. As the first voyage to be planned and marketed specifically as a pleasure sailing, this Augusta Victoria sailing would become the first true cruise.

Ballin’s on-board presence gave him the opportunity to mingle with his passengers, who provided him with some much-needed constructive criticism. While passengers were thoroughly enjoying this new ‘excursion’ method of travel, it was apparent that Augusta Victoria wasn’t quite up to the challenge. Designed for the rigours and harsh conditions of the North Atlantic, deck space tended to be cluttered with bulkheads and shelter decks, and was further sectioned off into class-restricted divisions that impeded passenger movement on this single-class voyage.

Upon his return, Ballin began drawing up plans for what would become the world’s first purpose-built cruise ship: the 1900-built Prinzessin Victoria Luise.

Constructed at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in Hamburg, Prinzessin Victoria Luise was named after Kaiser Wilhelm II’s daughter. She measured 407 feet long and had a breadth of 52 feet. Because she was purpose-built for cruising, none of the issues that plagued Augusta Victoria were an issue. Her open deck space was remarkably uncluttered during a time when ventilation ducts, cargo cranes and rigging lines commonly restricted both views and access.

Prinzessin Victoria Luise sported a sleek, yacht-like profile and a hull painted white to minimise the Mediterranean heat.

(LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, DETROIT PUBLISHING COMPANY COLLECTION, LC-D4-21813.)

She also included several amenities dedicated to more leisurely pursuits, such as a full gymnasium that was prominently located on her upper decks and featured porthole views and an overhead skylight. A dining room rising two decks in height featured a viewing gallery above, and a skylight extended all the way to the ship’s social hall one deck above, where passengers could mingle when not ashore. Gentlemen retired each evening to the smoking room, a clubby affair featuring large-bladed ceiling fans, dark wood panelling and dual glass skylights. So revolutionary was this new ship that Scientific American featured a full-page photographic spread of her in the 9 February 1901 edition.

With an exterior design that resembled the sleek lines of a yacht, Prinzessin Victoria Luise also bucked another trend: she sported a brilliant coat of white paint on her hull, designed to help keep her steel cool in the searing heat of the Mediterranean sun.

It is a colour that remains synonymous with cruising to this day. But it would take Albert Ballin’s innovation nearly sixty years to fully catch on.

By the 1960s, numerous cruise lines were in operation, relying mainly on fleets of older, second-hand tonnage to provide pleasure cruises throughout the Caribbean and Mediterranean. In many cases, these ships were ill-suited to their new careers, having been designed for transatlantic ocean travel through harsh (and often much colder) environments. Of all the former ocean liners pressed into cruising service, the P&O liners Oriana (completed 1960, withdrawn 1986) and Canberra (completed 1961, withdrawn 1997) arguably fared the best. Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth 2 continued until 2008, when she was sold to interests in Dubai.

Other famous ocean liners that we now fondly look back on didn’t fare as well. United States, which still retains the Blue Riband for the fastest transatlantic crossing by a passenger ship, in just over three days, only saw active service for seventeen years. France, in her original incarnation, lasted a mere fourteen years, although her subsequent purchase and rebranding by Norwegian Cruise Line as its beautiful, blue-hulled Norway would give her a second lease of life until a deadly boiler explosion in Miami on 25 May 2003 sealed her fate.

The 1977 television series The Love Boat starring Gavin MacLeod as Captain Stubing was instrumental in raising the profile of the cruise industry, and indeed the very concept of a cruise as a viable type of vacation. That the show also highlighted real cruise ships of the time, such as Princess Cruises’ 1971-built Pacific Princess certainly didn’t hurt, either. To this day, Gavin MacLeod still routinely appears at important events for Princess Cruises.

Although the first half of the 1980s saw a handful of new cruise ships enter service for the first time, it was the launch of Sovereign of the Seas in 1988 that truly set the stage for the first real growth the cruise industry had seen in decades. She captured the imagination of the cruising public in a way that few ships that came before her managed to. With her soaring atrium flanked by dual glass lifts, modern amenities and a full deck of balcony staterooms, Sovereign of the Seas also gained fame as the largest passenger ship to be constructed since the launch of the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique liner, France, in 1960.

Throughout the 1990s, cruising underwent its most dramatic evolution. Spurred on by the introduction of Sovereign of the Seas, Carnival introduced the revolutionary Fantasy in March 1990. Royal Caribbean responded with a slightly-modified sister ship to Sovereign of the Seas, the 73,941 tons gross Monarch of the Seas in 1991. The battle for cruise ship supremacy had begun.

Throughout the last decade of the twentieth century, every major cruise line joined in the newbuilding race, eager to rejuvenate their fleets and replace hand-me-down ocean liners and early cruise vessels. The rapid expansion and competitive atmosphere that prevailed had a two-fold effect: not only did it allow cruise lines to better cater to the needs and wants of their passengers, but also the act of designing purpose-built ships allowed them to push the boundaries of what was possible in terms of maritime design and on-board amenities.

By the start of the new millennium, cruise ships would boast ice skating rinks, rock-climbing walls, waterslides, and even lounges perched nearly 200 feet in the air. The sky, it seemed, was truly the limit, and that same spirit of innovation continues to this day.

While there were some obvious choices for inclusion in this book, such as Royal Caribbean’s mammoth Oasis of the Seas and Cunard’s sleek and powerful Queen Mary 2, there are a few ships present here that are likely to surprise. But in each and every case, these unique vessels would provide the building blocks necessary to take their respective cruise lines – and indeed, the industry itself – to the next level.

One such example is Norwegian Cruise Line’s Dreamward of 1992. A modestly-sized, comfortable, if unremarkable ship, Dreamward would make waves in early 1998 for the massive refit she and her sister Windward underwent at Lloyd Werft in Bremerhaven, Germany. There, the two vessels were cut in half – while they were still in the water – so a new prefabricated midsection could be inserted. It was the largest operation of its kind at the time, and essentially gave Norwegian Cruise Line two new ships along with some serious bragging rights, not to mention changing the way the industry at the time viewed refits. But changing consumer tastes and a string of unfortunate accidents led Dreamward – by now renamed Norwegian Dream – down the sad road of obscurity, culminating in layup that would last over four years.

Cruising along on Prinzessin Victoria Luise; a sight not all that different from the cruise ships of today.

(LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, PRINTS & PHOTOGRAPHS DIVISION, DETROIT PUBLISHING COMPANY COLLECTION, LC-D4-30567.)

Similarly, Carnival Cruise Lines rocked the industry when it announced that Paradise, the last ship to be built in the line’s highly successful Fantasy class, would be a completely non-smoking vessel when she debuted in December 1998. Other lines, most notably Renaissance Cruises, had dabbled with no-smoking policies, but nothing could compare to the extent that Carnival went to ensure that Paradise remained smoke-free, requiring passengers to sign waivers that stated any smoking on board would be met with a fine and disembarkation at the next port. Carnival even went so far as to partner up with the American Lung Association of Connecticut to offer a series of ‘Quit Smoking Caribbean Cruises’ in 2002.

Paradise remained that way until September 2004, when the company determined that a completely nonsmoking ship was no longer viable. But she still earned her place in history as the world’s first truly non-smoking cruise ship; a remarkable feat given that nearly fifteen years after her launch, the industry is slowly moving towards a non-smoking future.

Other ships, such as Silversea’s Silver Cloud, are noteworthy because of what they represent. In the case of Silver Cloud, not only was she the launch vessel for a new ultra-luxury cruise line, she was a resounding success. Sporting balconies on nearly every stateroom, she was thus equipped with what was to become cruising’s most necessary feature by the end of the century. Aside from several dry-dock stays to spruce up her mechanical spaces and public areas over the years, Silver Cloud didn’t even need a major refit until autumn 2012, just shy of twenty years after her launch.

Interestingly, the last ship featured in this book isn’t a typical cruise ship at all. But Viking River Cruises’ new Viking Longships are poised to do for river cruising what Sovereign of the Seas did for ocean cruising back in 1988. When they were first announced in 2011, there were only to be four of these bright, highly innovative vessels built. But by the end of 2012, an astonishing six Viking Longships were plying the rivers of Europe.

Holland America Line’s Westerdam (left) and her trendsetting sister Zuiderdam (right), docked in Juneau, Alaska.

(AUTHOR PHOTO)

The Golden Age of Cruising isn’t in the past; it exists all around us.

(AUTHOR PHOTO)

Measuring 443 feet in length and capable of carrying 190 guests, these would just be the first of twenty-four Longships to be in service by the end of 2014. Sporting on-board herb gardens, solar panels, hybrid-drive engines, and an uncommon amount of space and glass, the Longships are among the most revolutionary river cruise ships. Gone are the days when little thought was given to interior design and accommodation aboard river cruise ships; both Viking and the Norwegian design team of Petter Yran and Bjorn Storbraaten even managed to shift the main passenger corridor off the centreline of the ship to make way for river cruising’s first ‘true’ suites on the waterways of Europe.

It is a feature in which the line is so confident that it has taken steps to cover its bases against competitors wishing to follow in their footsteps: they’ve heavily patented their unique general arrangement design with the off-set corridor.

It is no stretch to say that we will look back on the past few decades – and those ahead of us – with the same reverie afforded to the first half of the last century, when liners bearing names such as Mauretania, Imperator, Normandie and even Titanic plied the oceans of the world.

In 2000, I sailed aboard a cruise ship that no longer exists, operated by a line that has been bankrupt for nearly a decade. She was Royal Olympic Cruises’ World Renaissance, completed in 1966 at Chantiers de l’Atlantique for Paquet. At only 12,000 tons gross and 492 feet long, she was a far cry from the modern cruise ships to which I am accustomed. But there was a quiet beauty about her, with her sleek, knife-like bow and rounded cruiser stern. With her hull painted a brilliant navy blue with a white superstructure separated by a yellow accent stripe, she looked decidedly proud, even as she stared down her 34th year of service, and counting.

But there was also a sadness about this little ship, born into an age that guaranteed she’d be overlooked for the better part of her career. Indeed, when she was sold for scrap and beached at Alang, India in summer 2010, she barely warranted a footnote, forgotten in a sea of jet planes and massive cruise ships, her story unknown to millions of cruisers who will never know that even as a diminutive little ship well past the scope of her intended service, World Renaissance (ex Awani Dream, ex Homeric Renaissance, ex Renaissance) was a joy to sail on.

To me, it is important to tell the stories of the cruise ships contained in these pages. Some are famous, while others are more obscure. Like people, some have gone on to achieve great success, while a few have already overcome great struggles. Some of the ships contained within