Normandie A Photographic Portrait

Wow--the new material on the Normandie is impressive!

Perhaps "amazing" is a better term. I'm finding it hard to keep up with Gare Maritime! Are you planning on adding a new "chapter" like this every month? I'm in trouble if you are--I'm still trying to absorb the material on the Morro Castle!

Denise
 
Thank you, Denise!

We hope to come out with interesting new material as quickly as we can! Monthly would be nice, but one of the nicest features of working in this format is that we can be utterly flexible with regards to time~ for instance,if a lot good material is submitted in a short time then there is nothing to keep us from doing a second issue in the course of a month. Similarly, if there is an article that needs extra "polishing" or I have another manic upswing and send Phil 120+ pages of text and photos, which can't possibly be edited quickly, we aren't working under a "get this to the publisher at such and such a time OR ELSE" deadline. My next couple of articles are going to be about liner art and architecture~ I'm not 100% Dark Side~ and there are more films and video set to go.

If you have anything at all you'd like to write about, or photos, film or video you'd like to share, please feel free to contact us! Whether your article is one page or one hundred, we would certainly like to see it. ET's Brandon McKinney did the "Cover Art" for this feature, and did an excellent job! Several ET members, thanked in a Morro Castle thread I placed in Other Ships and Shipwrecks before I realised that-duh- Gare Maritime had its own thread, contributed time and effort to the Morro Castle piece, and we are hoping that, ultimately, G.M. will be an inclusive, cooperative, effort and a friendly place to submit one's articles.

>I'm still trying to absorb the material on the Morro Castle!

I hope that you liked it! Part 2 will come along in 2007.
 
I haven't even gone through the Morro Castle material properly yet, but I couldn't resist taking a look at some of these photos. This material is absolutely incredible, Jim and the cover art is stunning! I've only skimmed through it, but what I've seen so far is excellent.
 
Well it is another triumph for Jim and Phil.
An excellent job showing what it was like to travel on the Normandie. Usually, one sees nothing but the standard archive photos that permeate books on such a subject. Not on Garemaritime which features original material.
Good show!
 
Great piece. I would have loved to have travelled on the Normandie, even second class.

It seems that what the Normandie had for second class, outshines most first class of today.

Now if they were to rebuild her, I think she'd be popular! (paging Cunard, paging Cunard)
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Awesome
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Really cool, thanks for posting this.

I was wondering, why did it have such a bad roll? The ship was listing really badly in several of the Klein photos.

I remember seeing a special on TV on the building of the Queen Mary, and how a number of different positive qualities some famous ships had were incorporated into it. I seem to remember the Normandie being mentioned, but I don't remember the specifics. Anybody remember this?

Thanks,
Ryan Thompson
 
>>I was wondering, why did it have such a bad roll?<<

Probably a reletively high centre of gravity. All that glitz in the 1st class and some of the second class accomadation came by way of heavy carved woods, stones (The real thing, not some vacuformed plastic fake) such as granite and marble, wrought iron, and the like. While this made for (arguably) great eye candy, it also made for a lot of topweight and several liners had a particular notoriety for it. Germany's Imperator for one and the Paris for another.
 
Michael

I remember you mentioning on another thread about not being able to put a lot of wood in modern ships (as compared to the classic liners). Is this due to SOLAS regulations? Why not sprinklers? And I would think that wood, with sprinklers is a lot safer than the toxic chemicals that plastics give off.
 
The Normandie's roll was designed in. It was a sign of her stability, not her lack of the same. Yourkevitch, a former designer of warships, endowed the Normandie with the ability to roll and quickly recover which made her considerably more "seaworthy" in heavy weather than was, for instance, the Queen Mary with her tendency to hang on the roll. So, Normandie rolled, recovered and kept going, often without reducing speed, while other liners wallowed.
 
>>I remember you mentioning on another thread about not being able to put a lot of wood in modern ships (as compared to the classic liners). Is this due to SOLAS regulations? <<

Yes...that and the regulations of the nations where ships are registered to say nothing of any preconditions that insurance underwriters may have. Sprinkler systems have existed on cruise ships for a long time now but while they're nice, they don't always cover the ground. Witness the fiasco with the Carnival Ecstasy where a fire got stated in the laundry's ventilation and soon involved a nice sized chunk of the stern. Fortunately, the ship's firefighting teams were able to contain it.

Plastics of any kind carry thier own baggage in regards toxic fumes but most of what's used tends on the whole to be a lot more fire resistant then wood can ever be. This doesn't mean that the ship can always be saved (Achille Lauro anyone?) but at least this buys the passengers and crew more time to escape if the situation goes beyond recovery.
 
Normandie has long, long needed this kind of photographic coverage. Gone are the days of searching Google and many, many badly designed sites in vain for the most slightly unusual picture of Normandie! Rejoice! Celebrate! Normandie has finally been given its overdue photographic justice inside and out. Not only this, but these pages also present Normandie in a light that is rarely seen - from the viewpoint of the average passenger. This is provided by the extensive section from the Model's Album, one of the most interesting photographic series I've seen yet on the Normandie.

Lovely work, and I'm glad I was able to be a part of it - and the cover looks great as it is now up there!
 
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This is the message I get when I click on the painting.
 
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