Month: March 2025
A Woman and the Big Ship: Elaine Kaplan and the SS United States
A complex engineering marvel, the SS United States remains the fastest ocean liner ever built. She smashed the Queen Mary’s coveted transatlantic speed record on her 1952 maiden voyage and achieved an astonishing average speed of 36 knots (41 mph; 67 km/h). It was the culmination of a dream long held by the ship’s designer,…
Book Review: Maiden Voyages by Siân Evans
About the Book Great transatlantic liners like Mauretania, Lusitania, Aquitania, Olympic, Île de France, Imperator, Rex, Normandie, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth dominated the first half of the 20th century. In the days before commercial jet travel, anyone wanting to travel across the Atlantic to Europe or America had to do so aboard an ocean…
No Room for Complacency: Cruise Ships & Modern Piracy
Setting sail on a world cruise is an exciting adventure. Especially when it’s aboard a brand-new ship like the Queen Anne. The Cunard Line has a long history of world cruises, with legendary ships like RMS Carinthia, RMS Caronia, RMS Queen Elizabeth 2, and others having previously sailed the globe. As Cunard noted in a…
Book Review: Making Waves by Lisa Lutoff-Perlo
About the Book Lisa Lutoff-Perlo is a “badass CEO” who changed Celebrity Cruises and — as a result — the entire cruise industry. In her autobiography, Making Waves, Lutoff-Perlo writes: What is a badass CEO? I’m guessing it’s someone who performs well. Someone who is brave. Someone who takes risks. And someone who figures out…
Captain Kate McCue Joins Four Seasons Yachts
Captain Kate is going back to sea. Not that we ever thought her seafaring days were over! She even said as much. The famous cruise ship captain, who left Celebrity Cruises last month, announced on social media earlier today that she’d joined the new Four Seasons Yachts luxury brand. Captain Kate will command their first…
A Break with Tradition: Captain Inger Klein Thorhauge
Inger Klein Thorhauge (née Olsen) made history in December 2010 when the Cunard Line promoted her to captain of MV Queen Victoria. It was a historic appointment. She was the first woman to command a Cunard ship in the company’s long history. And at 43, she was also one of its youngest captains too. Peter…
The Unsinkable Suffragists of Titanic’s Lifeboat No. 6
The new White Star liner RMS Titanic departed from Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland, on April 11, 1912, with several suffragists aboard. United in a common cause, these women’s rights activists found themselves on the ship’s ill-fated maiden voyage for one reason or another. Titanic famously struck an iceberg at 11:40 pm on April 14 and…
A Day with the Chief Engineer
It’s Global Day of the Engineer! One of the highlights from when I worked aboard the Queen Mary was getting to spend a day with Chief Engineer Ronnie Keir of the Queen Victoria. It was January 2012, and Commodore Everette Hoard asked me to come along and take “lots of photos.” It was my day…
Can “America’s Flagship” Still Be Saved? One Group Thinks So
Ever since the SS United States left Philadelphia on February 19 for Mobile, Alabama, social media has been abuzz with images of the grand ship. The crew of Vinik No. 6 — the tugboat towing “America’s Flagship” — has posted some phenomenal pictures, as have spectators from land, sea, and air. One Facebook comment said…