The Great French Liner Normandie

"Normandie" was the flagship of the French Line (Compagnie Generale Transatlantique) for four short years yet the name has lived on like no other ship , save of course Titanic.   Whereas Titanic plunged into the icy North Atlantic in two hours twenty minutes, Normandie's demise, though it took no lives, was dragged out over seven long years. After Hitler's unwise (misguided?, megalomaniacal? I'm convinced he was a nut job) invasion of France in 1939 Normandie was held at pier 88 in New York for safe keeping.  There she rested until those other other aggressive nut jobs of the day, les Japonais, bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. The next morning the US government seized Normandie with the intent of conversion to  troop ship. This was not to be, for a welder's torch accidentally set her afire. In trying to put out the fire so much water was pumped on board that she listed to port, snapped her lines and settled into the mud of the Hudson River.

That's where my dad, Morris saw her, half submerged and on her side, as he boarded the already converted troopship Queen Mary later that year. (Eighteen Captains assigned to one first class cabin). When he returned home from war three years later on the Queen Elizabeth she still lay there.  Finally in 1946 in what was the then most expensive salvage operation ever she was righted and towed to New Jersey and scrapped. A sad ending for what was the most beautiful, fastest, and largest liner of the day. The good news is that lots of her interior fittings had been removed before, (and after, I presume) the fire, and have over the years made their way into collections and installed in buildings here and there. 

Which brings us to the Seaport Museum, located in Lower Manhattan, where currently there is a wonderful exhibit (pictured above) of Normandie artifacts, curated and narrated by Bill Miller, who gave the great ocean liners lectures on board the Mary as we crossed the Atlantic, now two weeks ago. What's particularly interesting looking at the beautiful furniture and tableware assembled is how new and fresh it all looks. Had the ship served a normal 30 or 40 year life, of course, things would have worn out, been replaced, reupholstered etc. and Normandie's triumph of art deco design would most likely have been compromised, much in the same way that QE2 went from a pure expression of 60's modern to shall we say a more confused (though beloved) look in her forty years of service.