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

Holland America Line Holland America Line N.V. (HAL) is an American cruise line operating as a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation & plc. Founded in 1873 in Rotterdam, Netherlands as the Netherlands-America Steamship Company (NASM), the company operated regular trans ...

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 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 eleventh and final mission of NASA's Apollo program, the sixth and most recent time humans have set foot on the Moon. Commander Gene Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt walked on the Moon, ...

. Panelists included

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

authors,

scientist A scientist is a person who Scientific method, researches 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, philosophers engag ...

s, and others ranging from

Isaac Asimov Isaac Asimov ( ; – April 6, 1992) was an Russian-born American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. H ...

Norman Mailer Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American writer, journalist and filmmaker. In a career spanning more than six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least ...

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

. 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, while the symposium moderator was

Hugh Downs Hugh Malcolm Downs (February 14, 1921July 1, 2020) was an American television presenter, radio personality, author, and music composer. A regular television presence from the mid 1940s until the late 1990s, he had several successful roles on mor ...

; 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