The Great Liners

The Seafarers

by Melvin Maddocks, Time-Life Books (Editor)

A history of the world's famous luxury liners provides portraits of the ships as well as examining such great disasters as the sinking of the Titanic

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Maritime, Nautical, Transport

176 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Veeral]

I am going to give this one a quick review as I haven't reviewed a book on Goodreads for a while now due to time constrains.

This is one of those books that I wish should never go out of print. One can actually lock me in a cell and throw away the keys and I won't utter a word of complain if I were supplied daily with books on and about ships for the rest of my life (the incarceration should be inclusive of tasty meals, of course).

I detest modern cruise ships. They are nothing like those liners of the past which crossed the great seas with real purpose.

I would rather prefer to cross an ocean or two on a cargo or a container ship if I ever have the chance.

[GoldGato]

Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr sipping pink champagne cocktails in An Affair To Remember. They are crossing the Atlantic on a liner (the Constitution) and it all looks so lovely, especially compared to the frantic, sweaty, boxed-in air travel we now must endure. Sigh. I'd like a Great Liner, please. Preferably one like those old travel posters.



Before the advent of mass air travel (I should say "safer air travel"), there was just one way to get across the Pond and that was via ship. While the original passenger boats were terrifying (read Charles Dickens for his firsthand description), nautical design meant the evolution of standard and fairly fast ocean crossings in relative comfort. This book looks at the great Atlantic liners from the Royal William to the Queen Elizabeth. The only true ocean liner remaining is the Queen Mary 2, with cruise ships focusing on smaller voyages.



Obviously, there were several disasters, such as the Arctic, the Republic, the Titanic, the Lusitania, and the Andrea Doria. But as shipbuilding became more advanced and the middle class grew, competitive rates meant luxury even for third-class passengers who would have been steerage just decades earlier. When my relatives from Australia came to visit us after we moved to the States, they took an ocean liner and I've never forgotten the absolute awe I felt while standing on the pier awaiting their arrival.



As a Time-Life book, this volume has the usual leather binding with plenty of pictures and photographs and enough history to keep a reader's interest. I'll admit that the shipwrecks drew my attention if only because the book explained how the previous disasters allowed for better safety features in later ships. All in all, a nice read for a form of transportation I would now prefer over airlines.



Book Season = Summer (disappear into the light)

[Mark]

For the last 50 years we have had the Queen Mary docked in Long Beach about a half hour drive from my humble abode. Over the years I have walked her teak wood decks and poked around her various salons, restaurants, and bars. Various owners from Disney to the City of Long Beach have attempted to resurrect her former glory to no avail. Her carpets now have duct-tape over the holes worn through by a million footsteps. But I felt Melvin Maddocks' The Great Liners gave a good sense of what it must have been like to sail the Queen Mary in her glory days of the 1930's and 1940's. It was strange to see black and white photographs of swells in their finery playing shuffleboard on the very same decks I had stode upon. Or of G.I.s during WWII packed into the same restaurant converted into a mess hall that I ate a second rate dinner in late 1990's. But alas, it is a miracle that the Queen Mary is still with us, at least she did not meet the fate of her sister ship the Queen Elizabeth set on fire for the insurance money and left to sink in Hong Kong harbor.

[Mark White]

Not so much a history as a collection of admittedly fascinating vignettes and anecdotes, together with some great photos and art works on the liners. It's not a complete work by any means but this book gives you a good overall impression of the North Atlantic liners from the first crossings by steam ship through to their decline in the 70s. Oddly, despite the 1978 publishing date, it does not include the sad demise of the Queen Elizabeth. It also doesn't include the liners on other runs like the Oriana's regular route to Sydney. It's absolutely spot on when it describes the Normandie as the greatest of all the liners but, instead of the many beautiful photos available, gives us impressionist paintings of the interior. So overall it just squeaks in with four stars, more for the fascinating subject matter than its excellence of execution.

[Marshall Massengale]

This is an excellent starter resource for further research on the Great Liners, the history of their technological development, the ships themselves, the companies, their owners, buiiders, crews and passengers and how they came to help shape and change the world in which we live. This book contains sufficient valuable information to arouse and excite interest in knowing more about this fascinating subject matter that, once hooked, the reader will want to accquire greater, more in depth, information written about specific topics covered in this volume. Hence, you'll want to keep this compendium handy as you go on to collect more and more book titles, read addional articles and explore in depth details and accounts.

[Sketchbook]

I am fascinated by the short life and quick death of the SS Normandie, the most magnificent liner ever built (French Line). An orgy of Louis XIV opulence - but art deco. Maiden voyage 1935, it was mostly a First-Class only ship, with a dining room 60 feet longer than the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The Normandie stopped service in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and was docked for safekeeping in NY harbor. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, she began to be refitted as a troop ship. February, 1942, a fire broke out and raged for 11 minutes before the alarm reached the nearby FDNY. (Ehhh?) Swamped with water now, the liner toppled over in NY harbor while 30,000 watched.... This disaster, which makes no sense, has always been called an "accident." Whaaaat??! You can see it on YouTube. Now, historians suggest the waterfront Mafia made a deal w the Feds for "protection" ag espionage on the docks....and so on. Hmmm...

Here's "The Frantic Atlantic" supplement with excellent text and pix from LIFE archives. With details on the Cunard Queens (Mary, Elizabeth), the Andrea Doris collision, the Titanic, immigrants in steerage, and story of the seized German ship Vaterland in 1917 by the US, which gets a new look and name, the Leviathan, from Woodrow Wilson. Novelist Thomas Wolfe called ship travel, "The supreme ecstasy of the modern world."

[Selkie]

These type books are undoubtedly interesting, but I have always found the format used a bit distracting the way the boxed excerpts interfere with the chapter being read. One must finish reading the chapter before going back to read what is in the boxes, or read through those sections first & then go back to the beginning to read the chapter in full.

[Michael Heath-Caldwell]

Good book on old Ocean Liners.

[Kevin]

I enjoyed reading this book. It's packed with great photos, and has information on the greatest liners in history.

[Justin]

I read this when I was in middle school. While I liked the series, I am not a fan of luxury liners.

[Truly]

Buku dari timbunan yg plg memanjakan mata dengan banyak gambar ciamik. Apalagi poster Segede lembar koran ttg Ships of the golden age of piracy yg ditempel mempergunakan semacam lilin di antara hal 18-19.

Lumayanlah untuk.nambah referensi.