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SS France (1961)
SS ''France'' was a Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT, or French Line) ocean liner, constructed by the Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyard at Saint-Nazaire, France, and put into service in February 1962. At the time of her construction in 1960, the vessel was the longest passenger ship ever built, a record that remained unchallenged until the construction of the in 2004. ''France'' was later purchased by Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) in 1979, renamed SS ''Norway'' and underwent significant modifications to refit her for Cruising (maritime), cruising duties. She was renamed SS ''Blue Lady'' and sold to be scrapped in 2005, and scrapping was completed in late 2008. Characteristics ''France'' was the French Line flagship from 1961 to 1974, combining regular five days/nights transatlantic crossings with occasional winter cruises, as well as two world circumnavigations. During her last years, to save fuel costs, crossings took six days/nights. Some, like ship historian J ...
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France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea; overseas territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean. Due to its several coastal territories, France has the largest exclusive economic zone in the world. France borders Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Monaco, Italy, Andorra, and Spain in continental Europe, as well as the Netherlands, Suriname, and Brazil in the Americas via its overseas territories in French Guiana and Saint Martin. Its eighteen integral regions (five of which are overseas) span a combined area of and contain clos ...
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Lloyd Werft
Lloyd Werft Bremerhaven GmbH is a dockyard in Bremerhaven Bremerhaven (, , Low German: ''Bremerhoben'') is a city at the seaport of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, a state of the Federal Republic of Germany. It forms a semi-enclave in the state of Lower Saxony and is located at the mouth of the Riv .... It was founded in 1863 by the shipping company Norddeutscher Lloyd, first mainly used as a repair workshop for the company’s own merchant fleet. This new yard was established in exchange and addition to the former small Lloyd-workshop in Bremen which was already founded in 1857. In the 1970s, the shipyard became member of the Vulkan Group. As of 2016, the Lloyd facility is the last remaining major dockyard in Bremerhaven. It employs 500 workers and occupies 260,000 m². Ships with a draught as deep as 11.5 m can be accommodated. The dockyard is solely focused on ship repair, maintenance and reconstruction. In 2015, Genting Hong Kong, a Hong-Kong b ...
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Cunard Line
Cunard () is a British shipping and cruise line based at Carnival House at Southampton, England, operated by Carnival Corporation & plc#Carnival United Kingdom, Carnival UK and owned by Carnival Corporation & plc. Since 2011, Cunard and its three ships have been registered in Hamilton, Bermuda. In 1839, Samuel Cunard was awarded the first British transatlantic steamship mail contract, and the next year formed the British and North American Royal Mail Steam-Packet Company in Glasgow with shipowner Sir George Burns together with Robert Napier (engineer), Robert Napier, the famous Scottish steamship engine designer and builder, to operate the line's four pioneer paddle steamers on the Liverpool–Halifax–Boston route. For most of the next 30 years, Cunard held the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic voyage. However, in the 1870s Cunard fell behind its rivals, the White Star Line and the Inman Line. To meet this competition, in 1879 the firm was reorganised as the Cunard Stea ...
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SS Europa (1930)
SS ''Europa'', later SS ''Liberté'', IMO 5607332, was a German ocean liner built for the Norddeutsche Lloyd line (NDL) to work the transatlantic sea route. She and her sister ship, , were the two most advanced, high-speed steam turbine ocean vessels in their day, with both earning the Blue Riband. After World War II French line ''Compagnie Générale Transatlantique'' was awarded the ''Europa'' as a war prize to replace the destroyed ', which had caught fire and capsized at her moorings while interned by the United States in New York City. ''Europa'' was refitted at Le Havre and rechristened the ''Liberté'', serving until the arrival of the in 1961 as the premier liner in the ''Compagnie's'' fleet. She was laid up in 1962 and scrapped at La Spezia, Italy, in 1963. History Construction ''Europa'' was built in 1928 with her sister ship to be the second 50,000–gross ton North German Lloyd liner. They both were powered with advanced high-speed steam turbine engines and w ...
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John Maxtone-Graham
John Kurtz Maxtone-Graham (August 2, 1929 – July 6, 2015) was a Scottish-American speaker and writer on ocean liners and maritime history. Biography Maxtone-Graham was born in Orange, New Jersey, to a Scottish father and an American mother. He graduated from Brown University in 1951. He served in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War and then worked as a Broadway stage manager. In 1972 he wrote a social history and appreciation of the Atlantic express liners, ''The Only Way to Cross'', which was a success as a mass-market publication. This was followed by other books on express liner history. ''France/Norway'' was published in 2010; in March 2012 he wrote and published ''Titanic Tragedy''; and in October 2014 he published his final book, ''SS United States: Red, White, & Blue Riband, Forever''. He was married twice and had four children. He is the father of writer Ian Maxtone-Graham Ian Howes Maxtone-Graham is an American television writer and producer. ...
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Transatlantic Crossing
Transatlantic crossings are passages of passengers and cargo across the Atlantic Ocean between Europe or Africa and the Americas. The majority of passenger traffic is across the North Atlantic between Western Europe and North America. Centuries after the dwindling of sporadic Viking trade with Markland, a regular and lasting transatlantic trade route was established in 1566 with the Spanish West Indies fleets, following the voyages of Christopher Columbus. By sea Prior to the 19th century, transatlantic crossings were undertaken in sailing ships, and the journeys were time-consuming and often perilous. The first trade route across the Atlantic was inaugurated by Spain a few decades after the European Discovery of the Americas, with the establishment of the West Indies fleets in 1566, a convoy system that regularly linked its territories in the Americas with Spain for over two centuries. Portugal created a similar maritime route between its ports in Brazil and the Portuguese ...
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Flagship
A flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of naval ships, characteristically a flag officer entitled by custom to fly a distinguishing flag. Used more loosely, it is the lead ship in a fleet of vessels, typically the first, largest, fastest, most heavily armed, or best known. Over the years, the term "flagship" has become a metaphor used in industries such as broadcasting, automobiles, education, technology, airlines, and retail to refer to their highest profile or most expensive products and locations. Naval use In common naval use, the term ''flagship'' is fundamentally a temporary designation; the flagship is wherever the admiral's flag is being flown. However, admirals have always needed additional facilities, including a meeting room large enough to hold all the captains of the fleet and a place for the admiral's staff to make plans and draw up orders. Historically, only larger ships could accommodate such requirements. The term was also used ...
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Cruising (maritime)
Cruising by boat is an activity that involves living for extended time on a vessel while traveling from place to place for pleasure. Cruising generally refers to trips of a few days or more, and can extend to round-the-world voyages. History Boats were almost exclusively used for working purposes prior to the nineteenth century. In 1857, the philosopher Henry David Thoreau, with his book ''Canoeing in Wilderness'' chronicling his canoe voyaging in the wilderness of Maine, is considered the first to convey the enjoyment of spiritual and lifestyle aspects of cruising. The modern conception of cruising for pleasure was first popularised by the Scottish explorer and sportsman John MacGregor. He was introduced to the canoes and kayaks of the Native Americans on a camping trip in 1858, and on his return to the United Kingdom constructed his own 'double-ended' canoe in Lambeth. The boat, nicknamed 'Rob Roy' after a famous relative of his, was built of lapstrake oak planking, deck ...
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Passenger Ship
A passenger ship is a merchant ship whose primary function is to carry passengers on the sea. The category does not include cargo vessels which have accommodations for limited numbers of passengers, such as the ubiquitous twelve-passenger freighters once common on the seas in which the transport of passengers is secondary to the carriage of freight. The type does however include many classes of ships designed to transport substantial numbers of passengers as well as freight. Indeed, until recently virtually all ocean liners were able to transport mail, package freight and express, and other cargo in addition to passenger luggage, and were equipped with cargo holds and derricks, kingposts, or other cargo-handling gear for that purpose. Only in more recent ocean liners and in virtually all cruise ships has this cargo capacity been eliminated. While typically passenger ships are part of the merchant marine, passenger ships have also been used as troopships and often are commissi ...
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Saint-Nazaire
Saint-Nazaire (; ; Gallo: ''Saint-Nazère/Saint-Nazaer'') is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique department in western France, in traditional Brittany. The town has a major harbour on the right bank of the Loire estuary, near the Atlantic Ocean. The town is at the south of the second-largest swamp in France, called "la Brière". Given its location, Saint-Nazaire has a long tradition of fishing and shipbuilding. The Chantiers de l'Atlantique, one of the largest shipyards in the world, constructed notable ocean liners such as , , and the cruise ship , the largest passenger ship in the world until 2022. Saint-Nazaire was a small village until the Industrial Revolution but became a large town in the second half of the 19th century, thanks to the construction of railways and the growth of the seaport. Saint-Nazaire progressively replaced upstream Nantes as the main haven on the Loire estuary. As a major submarine base for the Kriegsmarine, Saint-Nazaire was subject to a successf ...
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Ocean Liner
An ocean liner is a passenger ship primarily used as a form of transportation across seas or oceans. Ocean liners may also carry cargo or mail, and may sometimes be used for other purposes (such as for pleasure cruises or as hospital ships). Cargo vessels running to a schedule are sometimes called ''liners''. The category does not include ferries or other vessels engaged in short-sea trading, nor dedicated cruise ships where the voyage itself, and not transportation, is the primary purpose of the trip. Nor does it include tramp steamers, even those equipped to handle limited numbers of passengers. Some shipping companies refer to themselves as "lines" and their container ships, which often operate over set routes according to established schedules, as "liners". Ocean liners are usually strongly built with a high freeboard to withstand rough seas and adverse conditions encountered in the open ocean. Additionally, they are often designed with thicker hull plating than is found on ...
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Maritime Call Sign
Maritime call signs are call signs assigned as unique identifiers to ships and boats. All radio transmissions must be individually identified by the call sign. Merchant and naval vessels are assigned call signs by their national licensing authorities. History One of the earliest applications of radiotelegraph operation, long predating broadcast radio, were marine radio stations installed aboard ships at sea. In the absence of international standards, early transmitters constructed after Guglielmo Marconi's first trans-Atlantic message in 1901 were issued arbitrary two-letter calls by radio companies, alone or later preceded by a one-letter company identifier. These mimicked an earlier railroad telegraph convention where short, two-letter identifiers served as Morse code abbreviations to denote the various individual stations on the line (for instance, AX could represent Halifax). "N" and two letters would identify U.S. Navy; "M" and two letters would be a Marconi station. On A ...
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