Italian Sisters by William H. Miller

The World Ocean & Cruise
Liner Society
Presents

ITALIAN SISTERS
By William H. Miller

"The MICHELANGELO and the RAF FAELLO often used to pass one another at sea, in the mid-Atlantic, and this always caused lots of excitement," recalled Giancarlo Roccataglia ta, a former maitre d' with the old Italian Line and more recently serving aboard the Far East-based cruiseship OCEAN PEARL."There would be horns blowing and balloons and flares and lots of waving. It was kind of a great show. The ships would be traveling in opposite directions at combined speeds of well over 50 knots!"

Last year, when the MICHELANGELO was scrapped in Pakistan and the RAFFAELLO remains sunk in the remote Iranian port of Bushire, these two sisterships are worthy for further recollections.

Completed in 1965, the 45,900-ton ships were built (the MICHELANGELO at Genoa, the RAFFAELLO near Trieste) for the Italian Line's express run between Naples, Genoa,Cannes, Algeciras and New York. "They were actually already too late for the transatlantic trade. Already, passengers were taking planes," noted Roccatagliata, "but the Government had to build them under pressure from several very powerful Italian unions. They gave work to the shipyards, to the dockers and especially to the seaman. At first, they were planned to be smaller ships, at 35,000 tons each and a little bit bigger than the LEONARDO DA VINCI, but work was stopped and the plans changed. They were great ships in many ways, but not successful financially. As cruiseships, for example, we could not use the 700 or so berths in tourist class because those cabins were too small and too austere. This too cut into their profits."

"Actually, the state-owned Italian Line never had a ship that was ideally suited for cruising," added Roccatagliata. "All of them were traditionally class-divided ships that were not easily made over for week-long runs to the Caribbean. We also experimented with longer cruises as well - to the Black Sea and the Holy Land, Carnival-in-Rio and even up to the North Cape form Genoa. I remember that on the three-week North Cape trip, we had 10 American passeng ers onboard amongst 600 or so Italians."

The 1,775-passenger MICHELANGELO and RAFFAELLO were big and beautiful, but ,Œincreasingly expensive. In the end, they were subsidized by the Ministry of Marine Transport at a rate of about $700 for every passenger carried. "Sometimes, in winter, we would have more crew than passengers," added Roccataglia ta. "And sometimes, more crew were sick than passengers. In rough weather, ropes were strung about and the portholes were covered. But sometimes, the portholes would break.The MICHELANGELO was hit by a massive wave in April 1966) that caused considerable damag es to her forward superstructure. Afterward, both ships needed to be reinforced, to have stronger upper-deck construction. Actually, at sea, the MICHELANGELO and the RAF FAELLO were not as flexible as our older, smaller ships. They were too rigid. Older ships like the SATURNIA and the VULCANIA had low bows and so entered the waves whereas these newer ships had great flare bows and so tended to collide with high waves."

But these and other Italian liners were plagued with another major problem: strikes."There were lots of strikes, for 24 and 48 hours, and then too many of them and for any silly reason," concluded Mr. Roccatagliata. "Once, there was a strike simply because one ship ran out of mineral water for the crew. In the end, in 1975-76, they pushed the Italian Line and the Government to close out all passenger service."

Laid-up for a short time, the $120 million pair of MICHELANGELO and RAFFAELLO were sold to the Iranian Government for use as floating barracks. This was the end of these two "Italian sisters."

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