THE NORMANDIE REMEMBERED - by William H Miller

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THE NORMANDIE REMEMBERED
By William H. Miller

"She was the most fantastic ship ever. Her interiors were superb, Hollywood-like, perhaps bigger-than-life! I remember details like the Lalique, the exquisite glass panels, the extensive greenery and the live birds in the Winter Garden. I also remember the incredible sense of spaciousness. I shall never forget the "NORMANDIE!" So recalled Mrs. Martha Higgins, who was a passenger aboard that great ship's eastbound maiden voyage in the spring of 1935. Surely, this 1,028 foot long pride of the French fleet is one of the very best remembered of all transatlantic superliners. Even her end, when she was destroyed by fire at her New York City berth, in February 1942, is often well remembered. In fact, it is now exactly fifty years since her ultimate demise, since that cold mid-winter afternoon when she spilled brown smoke over all of midtown Manhattan. It is a half-century ago that life for what many call the most magnificent ocean liner ever built ended.

While several, often quite lavish books have been written about her in recent years, she has also been the theme of an exhibition in Paris as well as one in New York sponsored by the Ocean Liner Museum Project. Obviously, she remains of high interest. A progressive development of such earlier French liners as the PARIS, the ILE DE FRANCE, and the CHAMPLAIN, the NORMANDIE was created at the famed St. Nazaire shipyards, (That same yard has recently completed two 74,000-ton mega-cruiseships, the MONARCH OF THE SEAS and the MAJESTY OF THE SEAS, for Royal Caribbean Cruise Line). Biggest of all French liners, the 82,800-ton NORMANDIE was laid down in January 1931, launched in October 1932 and then, with disruptions caused by the Depression, she was finally completed by spring 1935. She won instant praises ("A floating symbol of all that is France" was among the accolades) and took several prized distinctions: world's largest liner, world's fastest, unarguably world's best fed. Uniquely driven for that time by turbo-electric machinery (as opposed to the more customary steam turbines for such huge liners), she had a service speed of 28 1/2 knots, and therefore made the passage between New York, Southampton and Le Havre in 5 days flat. Reaching nearly 30 knots, she took the coveted Blue Ribbon from the Italian REX and then held it on-and-off again for three years before it went to Britain's QUEEN MARY, her nearest and keenest rival.

The NORMANDIE had a capacity for 1,972 passengers, divided as 848 in first class, 670 in tourist class and 454 in third class. Her first class interiors were expectedly a public relations agent's dream come true. The main dining room, for example, was done in hammered glass and bronze and with Lalique fixtures. It was slightly longer than the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, rose three decks in height and seated 1,000 guests. The theatre was the first ever installed in a liner, and the indoor pool was 80 feet of tiled, graduating levels. The main lounge was done in Dupas panels and Aubusson tapestries, and each first class stateroom and suite was done in a totally different decor.

Interned at New York's Pier 88, in September 1939, as Europe went to war, the great ship was destined never to sail again. Seized by Americans, in December 1941, she was stripped of her luxurious fittings and was about to be converted to a 15,000-troop capacity transport when tragedy struck. On that afternoon of February 9, 1942, sparks from a worker's acetylene torch ignited a fire that quickly spread throughout the ship. But while the actual fire was destructive, it was the firefighting that actually ruined the liner. So overloaded with water in the end, she capsized and rested her port side on the Hudson River mud. She had to be partially scrapped before being salvaged (then the biggest effort of its kind ever staged and which in itself cost a staggering $5 million). Her scarred, darkened remains were towed to Brooklyn to wait her final postwar fate.

Declared surplus at the end of 1946, she was rather solemnly towed over to Port Newark, New Jersey, and broken-up. In the end, this $60 million ship of genius ($450 million in current figures) fetched a mere $161,000 in scrap value.

The End

Reprinted from a past issue ofOcean & Cruise News.

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