Category: Social History
Book Review: Titanic: The Untold Tale of Gay Passengers and Crew by Jack Fritscher
Last year, when I was working on my “Ship of Secrets” blog post, I stumbled across a book called Titanic: The Untold Story of Gay Passengers and Crew by Jack Fritscher. One quote from the author kept popping up in my research: Of the 885 male crew on TITANIC, 693, or 78 percent, died. Altogether,…
Hidden in the Wake: The Lusitania’s LGBTQ+ History
Last year for Pride Month, I wrote a post about the LGBTQ+ history of RMS Titanic. This year I wanted to focus on RMS Lusitania and her stories. Lusitania was one of the most famous ships in the world when she was torpedoed and sunk by U-20 on May 7, 1915. The ship was a…
Two Tragedies of Modern Memory: Titanic and the American Civil War
Today marks the 160th anniversary of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. This ultimately led to the surrender of other Confederate forces throughout the country and ended the bloody American Civil War. After four years of terrible warfare, between 650,000 and 750,000 soldiers were dead. Practically…
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
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 liner. These ships…
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 New Vision: Marcus Garvey & the Black Star Line (Part 2)
Marcus Garvey was at the height of his power in the early 1920s. His Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) had between two and four million members worldwide. He spoke passionately and persuasively about Black pride, nationalism, and economic independence from the White world. To help promote his agenda, Garvey established the Black Star Line in…
A New Vision: Marcus Garvey & the Black Star Line (Part 1)
Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), had a dream of uniting all people of African descent. Proclaiming an agenda of Black pride, nationalism, and economic independence in the 1910s, the Jamaican-born activist struck a chord to some…and a nerve to others. Some called him the “Black Moses.” In 1965, Dr. Martin…
Day of Final Victory: Black Soldiers Aboard the Queen Mary
During World War II, the need to transport large numbers of Allied troops across the globe saw the world’s ocean liners being pressed into military service. Mighty ships like Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, Île de France, and Aquitania were pressed into service. So were smaller liners like Laconia, Empress of Japan (renamed Empress of Scotland in 1942), Borinquen, and…