SS ''Statendam'' was an ocean liner of the

Holland America Line Holland America Line is an American-owned cruise line, a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation & plc headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. Holland America Line was founded in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and from 1873 to 1989, it operated ...

built in 1957. She was bought by the Paquet group in 1982 and renamed ''Rhapsody'' and sold again to the Lelakis group in 1986. Later she became part of the Regency Cruises fleet and was named ''Regent Star'' in the Regency fleet. She was laid up after the Regency Cruises bankruptcy and remained in poor condition for many years. She was scrapped in

Alang, India Alang is a census town in Bhavnagar district in the Indian state of Gujarat. Because it is home to the Alang Ship Breaking Yard, Alang beaches are considered the world's largest ship graveyard. Demographics As of the 2001 Indian census, Alan ...

in 2004.

Apollo 17 cruise

The ship was the venue for a conference on space exploration held to coincide with the December, 1972 launch of

Apollo 17 Apollo 17 (December 7–19, 1972) was the final mission of NASA's Apollo program, the most recent time humans have set foot on the Moon or traveled beyond low Earth orbit. Commander Gene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt walked on ...

. Panelists included

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

authors,

scientist A scientist is a person who conducts Scientific method, scientific research to advance knowledge in an Branches of science, area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, ...

s, and others ranging from

Isaac Asimov yi, יצחק אזימאװ , birth_date = , birth_place = Petrovichi, Russian SFSR , spouse = , relatives = , children = 2 , death_date = , death_place = Manhattan, New York City, U.S. , nationality = Russian (1920–1922)Soviet (192 ...

Norman Mailer Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, activist, filmmaker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Mailer ...

Katherine Anne Porter Katherine Anne Porter (May 15, 1890 – September 18, 1980) was an American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. Her 1962 novel ''Ship of Fools'' was the best-selling novel in America that year, but her sho ...

. The cruise had only 100 paying fares, only 40 of whom paid the additional conference fee, and Holland-America Line lost an estimated $250,000 on the venture. G. Harry Stine characterizes it as the "Ship of Fools" expedition (presumably influenced by the Porter novel). A key organizer of the expedition was

Richard C. Hoagland Richard Charles Hoagland (born April 25, 1945), is an American author and a proponent of various conspiracy theories about NASA, lost alien civilizations on the Moon and on Mars and other related topics. Hoagland has been documented to misappropr ...

, while the symposium moderator was

Hugh Downs Hugh Malcolm Downs (February 14, 1921July 1, 2020) was an American radio and television broadcaster, announcer and programmer; television host; news anchor; TV producer; author; game show host; talk show sidekick; and music composer. A regular t ...

; both would later play roles in the "pro-space movement", which space historian Michael Michaud believes found a nascent constituency at the conference.

References

Ships of the Holland America Line Ships built by Wilton-Fijenoord 1956 ships {{cruise-ship-stub