On 18th January 1994, the ocean liner SS American
Star ran aground at Playa De Garcey, a remote, rocky beach at Fuerteventura, in
the Canary Islands. The ship, and the tug boat towing it, were caught in a hurricane,
breaking the tow-lines, the crew on the ship later rescued by helicopter. It
was hoped that the ship could be re-floated until, a48 hours later, the strong
current broke the hull in half – six months later, the ship was declared a
total loss. Becoming a popular spectacle for both sightseers and looters, the
wreck of the American Star finally collapsed beneath the waves in 2013 – you can
still see parts of it at low tide, but not on Google Maps.
The golden age of transatlantic travel between Europe and
America spanned fifty years to the early 1960s – with planes reducing commuter
trips from days to hours, cruising became the market for the remaining ships,
and for the passengers that did not worry about time. Now, Cunard’s Queen Mary
2 is the only liner built to withstand Atlantic crossings, but is still a
cruiser for the majority of the year. Its cabins are much larger than the
box-rooms that even first-class passengers had on the original Queen Mary but,
when that liner was in service, it was not a destination in itself, at least in
the way cruise liners are today. When the city of Long Beach, California,
bought the Queen Mary in 1967, turning it into a tourist attraction and hotel
itself, and many other plans that have been and gone, it has become an ongoing
race to repair the ship - estimates produced by the city in 2017 put the cost
at $300 million.
Capitalising on the nostalgia for liners like the Queen
Mary, the American Star, launched in 1939 by Eleanor Roosevelt as SS America, was
being towed to Thailand where, as one of the few liners of its vintage left, it
was to have become a five-star floating hotel. As the flag-carrying official
liner for the United States, it wore the flag, its name and stated country of
origin across its sides once the Second World War began, warning prospective
bombers that it was not involved in the war – once Pearl Harbor was hit, it was
refitted as the troop carrier USS West Point, returning to civil life in 1947.
By 1964, SS America was out of time as a transatlantic
liner. Holding only a thousand passengers and, at 723 feet, a hundred feet
shorter than RMS Titanic, and three hundred less than the Queen Mary, its
bigger sister ship, SS United States, took over its routes. Bought by the Greek
shipping company Chandris Line, it was refitted as the Australis, a very
popular cruise ship able to take over two thousand emigrating “Ten Pound Poms,”
and occasionally other cruising tourists, on a two-week voyage between Southampton
and Australia, via Rotterdam and Cape Town, before stopping off in Panama and Miami
on the trip back to the UK. The two funnels of the Australis, in blue with the
Chandris X emblazoned across it, are still seen on the ships of Chandris’
spin-off successor company Celebrity Cruises, although the front funnel of
Australis, a dummy funnel used as both storage and to enchance the look of the
ship, was found by one trespassing passenger, so the story goes, to have been
storing potatoes.
Sold back to the United States in 1978 for an ill-fated
voyage under its old “America” name – the new owners had done such a bad job
refitting the ship, the US Public Health Service had given it a score of 6 out
of 100 after it was impounded – Chandris bought it back for half the cost they
sold it for, and ran it as the Italis for a few more cruises, cutting away the
front funnel ahead of a refit that never happened. It later was left in port in
Greece under new owners, renamed Noga, then Alferdoss, waiting to be rescued or
broken up – the listing caused by a burst bilge pipe in 1986 was solved by
cutting the left anchor, and dropping the right one. Finally, in 1994, the ship
set sail for its final destination, although its final use was slightly
different than intended.
If the American Star had arrived at Thailand, it is quite
possible that its owners could be in the same costly predicament as Long Beach
is with the Queen Mary. The Queen Elizabeth 2 arrived in Dubai in 2008, and has
remained laid up ever since, although its owners have no plans to scrap it.
There were calls for the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious to be bought and
preserved in Portsmouth Harbour, alongside the unique ships Mary Rose, HMS
Victory and HMS Warrior, but its sad trip to the scrapyard was quickly replaced
by celebration when its replacement, HMS Queen Elizabeth, arrived in port.
Nostalgia can be an expensive business, and if new uses can be found, while
being able to pay for itself, that is fine. Ironically, the most glamorous of
the American liners is now most famous as a wreck, making nostalgia for it far
more vibrant than it could have ever been as a floating hotel.
I think that there is a lot of nostalgia for these great ships including the American Star and there is also a sense of mystery that surrounds her.
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