Travel: The Bounding Main

The fireboats were spraying, and the French ambassador was waiting. Into New York harbor steamed the world’s newest and longest ocean liner, France, her profile ennobled by huge ailerons protruding from two canted stacks.* On her maiden voyage, the France last week carried 1,600 French Line officials and paying customers, all of them grateful for a touch of dry land. The great ship had run into a storm that spoiled one day of the voyage as well as some dishes and dinners.

Calculated Gamble. The France is an elegant, $80 million defiance of jet-age statistics. As late as 1957, more Americans traveled to and from Europe by sea than by air—1,032,000 v. 1,023,000. But by 1961, steamship bookings dropped to 785,000, while the airlines carried 2,165,250. The France and several other brand-new ships for the ’60s (see color pages ) are a calculated gamble that luxury and leisure can compete with speed. The France, in addition to French food, has two swimming pools, eight bars, two cabarets, a teen-age center with jukeboxes, a shooting gallery, dance floor, soda fountain, children’s dining rooms and nurseries. Television sets in the smoking and reading rooms pick up closed circuit programs of films, shipboard news and French lessons. Special dog kennels provide hydrants for American dogs, milestones for the French. There is a sports center, a huge hospital (operating room, delivery room, five recuperating rooms), the world’s “biggest seagoing air-conditioning system, 1,300 telephones and a thalassotherapy room where passengers can get a saltwater massage in water containing special algae.

With a 2,000-passenger capacity, the France follows the trend of postwar times in eliminating cabin class. Fares range from $3,403 for a suite for two in first class to $250 for a single berth in a four-passenger cabin in tourist.

On a smaller but scarcely less luxurious scale are two new British ships, Union-Castle’s 33,500-ton Transvaal Castle, which will run between Southampton and South Africa, and P. & O. Orient’s 45,000-ton Canberra, which will ply a leisurely looping route from Vancouver to California to Australia, Singapore and Ceylon, on through the Suez Canal and Mediterranean to Britain, with many stops along the way. The Transvaal Castle is strictly one class, fixes its rates ($392 to $2,324) according to size and location of the cabins. The Canberra has first and tourist classes ($767 to $2,761) and an aluminum superstructure, which is so much lighter than the conventional steel that the designers have been able to add a whole extra deck for extra passenger facilities.

Cruise Types. Unlike the France, the two British liners are really cruise ships, cater to the type of passenger who has become the mainstay of the liners. The cruise traveler is going nowhere in particular, likes the sense of remoteness from the world’s harassments that only the sea can give, and is happy to stop anywhere that seems interesting. In 1956 the winter cruise business grossed $55 million; this year it will top $100 million. This season there will be more than 325 cruise sailings to the Caribbean. Mediterranean, South

Pacific and round the world. The American President Lines’ President Roosevelt, newly converted to an all-first-class cruise ship, made her maiden voyage (from San Francisco to Honolulu, Yokohama, Hong Kong, Manila and Kobe) last month. Canadian Pacific’s Empress of Canada, on the Caribbean and Mediterranean routes, is another recent and successful addition to the cruise fleet. The Home Lines is building an unnamed 34,000-ton “Ship of Tomorrow” that will be ready in 1963 for summer and fall transatlantic service from Montreal and for winter-spring operation from New York to the Caribbean. Grace Lines this week launched its sleek new 14,000-ton Santa Magdalena, which will carry cargo and 127 passengers between New York and west coast ports in South America. So profitable is the cruise business in fact that even big transatlantic liners like the Leonardo da Vinci and the United States are being diverted for special vacation cruises during the winter season, and the French Line is “considering” cruises for the France.

As much as the steamship companies would like to attract young, fun-loving customers, they must depend mostly on people who can afford to be away from home for an extended trip. A good proportion of cruise travelers are older, monied people, many of them divorcees and widows. To a few frustrated romantics, the cruise ships still hold something of the promise (seldom fulfilled) of the fabled Slow Boat to China. Women seem to like cruises because they can count on good food and plumbing aboard ship, are spared the hazards of finding their way alone through strange cities and into questionable hotels. They also get to see a big piece of the world. Holland-American Line’s Rotterdam, for example, is now steaming around the world on an 80-day trip that will include a tiger shikar at the jungle estates of the Maharajah of Cooch Behar in the foothills of the Himalayas, a tour of Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, side trips to Galle in Ceylon and Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. The fare: $2,700 to $9,000.

Culture & Refresher. To get repeat business from travelers who have seen the Caribbean or Greek islands several times, cruises are offering a new variety of on-ship activities. American Export Lines, for example, is running a Caribbean “Culture Cruise” that leaves New York this week. The culture seekers will be able to gaze at a gallery of paintings by artists from Winslow Homer and Frederic Remington to Ben Shahn and Milton Avery, will be lectured by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Critic John Mason Brown, Poet John Ciardi and Manhattan’s Whitney Museum Director Floyd Goodrich as the ship steams through the warm Caribbean islands. The line will also run a “Bridge Cruise,” captained by Expert Charles Goren and patronized by bridge fiends to whom a deck is something to be dealt, not strolled. Grace Lines’ entry this year will be a “Navigator’s Cruise” to the Caribbean for those “who want to refresh their navigation before they put their boats in the water in the spring.” But mostly, cruises are still for people who like to marvel at the jet age from the vantage point of a chair on the sun deck.

* The France, though longer than any other liner (1,035 ft.) is only the third biggest in tonnage. She weighs 66,000 gross tons, while the Queen Elizabeth (1,031 ft.) weighs 83,673 tons and the Queen Mary (1,019 ft.) 81,237 tons.