Statki pasażerskie: książki - historia i firmy żeglugowe (3/3)

Post-War on the Liners

From the end of the Second World War through three decades, to the 1970s, traditional port-to-port, class-divided passenger ship business carried on. This meant all kinds of ships - from big liners to small, often rebuilt, ex-coastal steamers.
Accommodations varied from luxurious suites with bedrooms, sitting rooms and marble baths in upper-deck accommodations to Spartan dormitories with as many as 50 berths and communal facilities. But the purpose was all but the same: to go from A to B.

This book examines, through anecdotes & collected experiences, the many passenger ship services of now a bygone era. It is about the diversity and the contrast. There are of course the Atlantic crossings, but also three & four class ships to South America, combination passenger-cargo types carrying only 100 or so travellers, fast mail ships to South Africa, colonial passenger vessels to Mombasa, crowded migrant sailings to Sydney and Auckland, and trans-suez and trans-Pacific passages.
All sorts of ships appear: big Cunarders like the Queen Mary, Italy's Augustus and Britain's Kenya & Uganda, the Oronsay & Southern Cross and even more remote ships such as the Cap Salinas, Tjinegara, Changsha & Hikawa Maru.
It concludes with the closing down, in 1977, of the Union Castle Line's run between Southampton and the South African Cape, the last regular big liner service in the world.

Last of the Blue Water Liners : Passenger Ships Sailing the Seven Seas

This is the story of the last class-divided passenger ships that carried travellers from point to point. In the final years of activity, spanning from the 1940s to the 1960s, they carried Hollywood stars and even royalty on the Atlantic, businessmen to South America and Africa, migrants to Australia and New Zealand, and visitors returning to European homelands.

"Last of the Blue Water Liners" nods to the Atlantic liners but also revels in the many other passenger ships that plied trades around the world: vessels like the Antilles, Oslofjord, Kampala and Changsha.
Complete with rare images and the insight of the prolific maritime historian William H. Miller, this book is a nostalgic parade of a bygone age, a generation of ships all but swept away in the 1960s and 1970s as jet travel changed the world.

The Captain's Table - Life and Dining on the Great Ocean Liners

To sail first Class on the great ocean liners was to experience the last word in luxury and service. The Captain's Table recalls not only the glamour and excitement of life on board, but also the rich creativity of the excellent cuisine. The author has expertly recreated an inspiring selection of classic recipes from the First, Second and Tourist Class dining rooms for the modern cook, adding to the recipes with fascinating research concerning their origins, which includes period memorabilia in the form of dining cards and menus.

Beautifully illustrated with a wealth of nostalgic imagery, this book exudes glamour and elegance, bringing the heyday of the liner to life and recapturing some of the original magic of those remarkable ships. Part social history, part cookbook Captain's Table is an attractive book that evokes the grandeur of the liners. Includes an excellent selection of period illustrations, with menu cards and other memorabilia from the National Maritime Museum archives.

A Postcard History of the Passenger Liner

From around 1880 for almost 100 years shipowners commissioned a wealth of paintings that depicted, as well as their magnificent liners, the routes they travelled, their exotic destinations, and life on board.
These paintings, rich in imagination and atmosphere, appeared on posters and postcards to advertise the companies and their ships; and so was born a whole genre that produced tens of thousands of images that form a wonderful record of the great era of the passenger liner.

Here, bought vividly to life in more than 500 colourful postcards, are the ships in which so many of our predecessors sailed, as emigrants, soldiers or administrators in distant lands, or simply as tourists. These cards - now highly collectible - show how the ships developed over the years, and are also a fine tribute to the artists who painted them. A glossary of some 170 illustrators forms an important reference section in the book; the author also gives useful advice on collecting.

This paperback edition will be sought after by postcard collectors as well as liner enthusiasts, and by all those with an interest in the vanished world of elegant travel on the finest ships of their day.

100 Years of Cruise Ships in Colour

This latest book from William H. Miller presents 150 photographs, all in rich colour, across a span of almost 100 years: from the 1920s to the start of the current cruising boom.
It includes many early, often seasonal, liners; then the more purposeful generation of 'floating hotels' that began in the 1960s.

There are favourites, such as the pre-Second World War Franconia, Reliance, Nieuw Amsterdam and Normandie; then, in greater numbers, a 'fleet' starting from the 1950s and '60s - ships such as the Caronia, Andes, Queen of Bermuda, Nassau, Italia, Bahama Star, Reina Del Mar, Oceanic, Skyward, Song of Norway, Hamburg, Royal Viking Star and Queen Elizabeth 2.
Finally, steaming into the twenty-first century, we see the likes of the Royal Princess, Statendam, Crystal Symphony, Oriana, Queen Mary 2, Allure of the Seas and Viking Star.