British seamen cynically but in friendly fashion describe themselves not as the crew members or shipmates but as Board of Trade Compulsory Companions. That said, the bad eggs thrown together by circumstance were few and far between. From sailing day, a ship’s crew who were complete strangers to each other a day earlier became firm friends.
The sinking of the French ocean liner SS La Bourgogne on the morning of 4 July 1898 was one of the most disgraceful of disasters in maritime history due to the cowardly and criminal behavior of the crew. Instead of the heroic sacrifice that has often been the shining moment in such a terrible tragedy, the crew of the steamer “fought like demons for the few lifeboats and rafts”, drawing out their knives and threatening passengers with it. Out went for a toss “Women and children first!”, famously established by the soldiers of the sinking Birkenhead, half a century earlier, and by the crew of the Titanic fourteen years later. Only one woman passenger from La Bourgogne was saved, and all children perished.
She was Italy’s one and only Blue Ribband champion. The renowned Blue Riband was coveted by the great shipping companies of history being awarded for passenger-carrying liners making the fastest crossings of the Atlantic Ocean.
There was an ominous feeling in the air as the old German passenger liner Steuben slipped her moorings under dark clouds and set off across a slate-grey Baltic Sea. Crowded onto the ship were 5,200 German refugees and wounded soldiers. Everyone on board was attempting to escape the fast-approaching American-armed Red Army that threatened destruction, rape and death.
Originally posted on Michael Walsh Stories and Books:
75 years ago, on January 30, 1945, in the Danzig Gulf of the Baltic Sea, the Soviet submarine S-13 under the command of Captain 3rd Rank?Alexander Marinesko?sank the German transport Wilhelm Gustloff.? Together with the giant ship, according to various…
The less charitable might be forgiven for suggesting that the Reich cruise ship, MV Monte Rosa, might better have been renamed MV Karma. This beautiful 13,882 ton twin-funneled German passenger liner was one of pre-war Germany’s fleet of super liners. Built in 1930 by Hamburg shipbuilders Bohm and Voss, MV Monte Rosa was one of five sister-ships.
His real name was Frank Rocky Fiegel. He was born in 1868 in Poland. A retired sailor he was contracted by Wiebusch’s tavern in the city of Chester, Illinois, to clean the town’s lawlessness and maintain order. Rocky Fiegel was notorious for his belligerent attitude and firmly believed that everything could be sorted out with his fists.
The French Line’s Normandie is one of few contenders for the title Greatest Liner Ever. She was a ship of superlatives: the largest ship in the world for five years, the first liner to exceed 1,000 feet in length; to exceed 80,000 tons; the largest turbo-electric powered liner; and the first to make a 30 knot Atlantic crossing.
Care to step aboard the RMS Titanic? What seemed like an impossibility is slowly becoming a reality. Vintage Digital Revival and Four Funnels Entertainment have recreated the interior of the stricken vessel in immaculate detail. It’s part of their long-gestating ‘Titanic: Honor and Glory’ video game project.
For 36 years a contender for the most interesting oceangoing liner sailed the high seas. Bożena Aksamit writing her account of the Polish trans-Atlantic liner, says, ‘It was the pride of the Second Republic, a piece of living art, and the only floating representative of free Poland during World War II.’
Michael Walsh Stories and Books 
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