RMS ''Saxonia'' was a British
passenger liner
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 freig ...
built by
John Brown & Company
John Brown and Company of Clydebank was a Scottish marine engineering and shipbuilding firm. It built many notable and world-famous ships including , , , , , and the ''Queen Elizabeth 2''.
At its height, from 1900 to the 1950s, it was one of ...
at Clydebank, Scotland for the
Cunard Steamship Company
Cunard () is a British shipping and cruise line based at Carnival House at Southampton, England, operated by Carnival UK and owned by Carnival Corporation & plc. Since 2011, Cunard and its three ships have been registered in Hamilton, Berm ...
for their Liverpool-Montreal service. She was the first of four almost identical sister ships built by Browns between 1954 and 1957 for UK-Montreal service. The first two of these ships, ''Saxonia'' and ''Ivernia'' were extensively rebuilt in 1962/3 as dual purpose liner/cruise ships. They were renamed ''Carmania'' and ''Franconia'' respectively and painted in the same green cruising livery as the ''Caronia''. ''Carmania'' continued transatlantic crossings and cruises until September 1967 when she closed out Cunard's Montreal service. She and her sister had been painted white at the end of 1966 and from 1968 ''Carmania'' sailed as a full time cruise ship until withdrawal after arriving at Southampton on 31 October 1971. In August 1973 she was bought by the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
-based
Black Sea Shipping Company
Black Sea Shipping Company (russian: Черноморское морское пароходство, uk, Чорноморське морське пароплавство) is a Ukrainian shipping company based in Kyiv.
The company was establishe ...
and renamed SS ''Leonid Sobinov''. The ship was scrapped in 1999.
History
Prior to World War II, Cunard's Canadian services had been maintained by a group of six similar 14,000 GRT liners of the ''Andania'' class built between 1922 and 1925. One of these was a war loss and another four were purchased by the Admiralty during the war and converted to naval repair ships. None of these ever returned to commercial service. This left Cunard with one ship, ''
Ascania'' from its pre war Canadian fleet. She was joined in the post war service by three of the surviving units of the 20,000 GRT ''
Scythia
Scythia ( Scythian: ; Old Persian: ; Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ) or Scythica (Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ), also known as Pontic Scythia, was a kingdom created by the Scythians during the 6th to 3rd centuries BC in the Pontic–Caspian steppe.
...
'' class which had been built for the Liverpool-New York service. Of the four, only ''Ascania'' was able to reach Montreal, draught causing the others to turn around at Quebec. With this unsatisfactory situation and the age of the ships, it was inevitable that the decision to build would be taken and at the end of 1951 Cunard announced its intention to order two new ships for the Canadian service (the other two came later).
''Saxonia'' was launched on 17 February 1954 by Lady Churchill, wife of the then Prime Minister, and revived a name previously used for the Cunard liner
RMS ''Saxonia'', which had been launched in 1899 and scrapped in 1925. Completed early in August 1954, ''Saxonia'' arrived in Liverpool on the 23rd of that month and was prepared for her maiden voyage from Liverpool to Montreal which began on 2 September 1954.
She was joined by her sisters, ''
Ivernia'' in July 1955, ''
Carinthia
Carinthia (german: Kärnten ; sl, Koroška ) is the southernmost Austrian state, in the Eastern Alps, and is noted for its mountains and lakes. The main language is German. Its regional dialects belong to the Southern Bavarian group. Carin ...
'' in June 1956 and ''
Sylvania'' in June 1957. The ship was refitted in 1962 and given another Cunard name from earlier in the century, ''Carmania''. As ''Carmania'', the vessel continued service on the
Rotterdam
Rotterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Rotte (river), Rotte'') is the second largest List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands. It is in the Prov ...
-
Le Havre
Le Havre (, ; nrf, Lé Hâvre ) is a port city in the Seine-Maritime department in the Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the right bank of the estuary of the river Seine on the Channel southwest of the Pays de Caux, very ...
- Southampton - Canada route for several years, and cruised in the
Caribbean
The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean ...
and
Mediterranean
The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on the e ...
in the winters.
During 1968, a major breakdown in the mouth of the river Saint Lawrence - when she appeared to ‘throw’ a propeller shaft - and then difficulties with US fire regulations resulted in the cancellation of a winter cruise from
Port Everglades
Port Everglades is a seaport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, located in Broward County. Port Everglades is one of South Florida's foremost economic engines, as it is the gateway for both international trade and cruise vacations. In 2019, Port Eve ...
. Cunard made some minor modifications to the ship before the next sailing in January 1969. On a later cruise the vessel ran aground on a sandbank off
San Salvador Island
San Salvador Island (known as Watling's Island from the 1680s until 1925) is an island and district of The Bahamas. It is widely believed that during Christopher Columbus's first expedition to the New World, this island was the first land he s ...
in the
Bahamas
The Bahamas (), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It takes up 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and is home to ...
. Three months after returning to service the ship collided with the 3,900-ton Soviet tanker ''Frunze'', but damage to both vessels was apparently minor.
She was laid up at
Southampton
Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...
in 1971. In August 1973 she was bought by the Soviet Union-based Black Sea Shipping Company and renamed after
Leonid Sobinov
Leonid Vitalyevich Sobinov (russian: Леони́д Вита́льевич Со́бинов, 7 June S 26 May1872 – 14 October 1934) was an Imperial Russian operatic tenor. His fame continued unabated into the Soviet era, and he was made a Peop ...
. In January 1979, as the ship lay in
Sydney Harbour
Port Jackson, consisting of the waters of Sydney Harbour, Middle Harbour, North Harbour and the Lane Cove and Parramatta Rivers, is the ria or natural harbour of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The harbour is an inlet of the Tasman Sea (p ...
, an 18-year-old crew member,
Liliana Gasinskaya, slipped out of a porthole wearing only a red bikini, and swam across the harbour to claim political asylum. She rapidly achieved fame as the ''Red Bikini Girl'', and, amongst other things, was the first nude
centerfold
The centerfold or centrefold of a magazine is the inner pages of the middle sheet, usually containing a portrait, such as a pin-up or a nude. The term can also refer to the model featured in the portrait. In saddle-stitched magazines (as opp ...
in Australia's edition of ''
Penthouse Magazine
''Penthouse'' is a men's magazine founded by Bob Guccione. It combines urban lifestyle articles and softcore pornographic pictures of women that, in the 1990s, evolved into hardcore pornographic pictures of women.
Although Guccione was Americ ...
''.
By 1995, the liner was laid up, and in 1999, she was brought to
Alang, India and scrapped after a long and varied career.
References
External links
Saxonia on Chris' Cunard Page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saxonia (1954)
Ships of the Cunard Line
Cruise ships
Passenger ships of the United Kingdom
1954 ships
Maritime incidents in 1969
Passenger ships of the Soviet Union
Ships of Black Sea Shipping Company