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…
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
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 how to change…
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…
The Captain’s Table
Stories from the Golden Age of Ocean Liners to the Cruise Ships of Today
How it all started…
Over a decade ago, I started a blog called The Captain’s Table to tell the stories about the ships and people involved in the Golden Age of ocean liners. I was working as a tour guide aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA at the time and it was a way to help me both deepen my knowledge and explore a topic I’d been passionate about for a long time.
With this overhauled version of the blog, I’ll continue to explore the stories, ships, and people connected to the old ocean liners. But there’ll also be a new emphasis on cruise ships as well: they continue the traditions and history made famous by such ships as Queen Mary, United States, Mauretania, Caronia, and many others. I’ll be nerding out a lot, and I really hope that you enjoy this blog.
Zach Whitlow
Writer, Ship Geek, and Avid Cruiser