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Requests?

email gpr1nce at sbcglobal dot net

As my links page (or just about anyone else's) will attest, there are scores of excellent sites already active on the Web dealing with passenger ships. This page has gone through several incarnations as I accumulate experience and material to put before you.

Welcome!

My first one: ss STATENDAM, Rotterdam Harbor. July 17, 1966. The day before, our family had disembarked after a transatlantic crossing, and my fate as a ship lover was sealed.

I am no authority on ship design or construction; I don't hold any great repository of historical materials relating to passenger shipping; I haven't even been on that many ships. But like all amateurs, I am consumed by my chosen topic, and have resolved to make this a place where I can publish ideas, commemorate some of the ships I love, and get feedback from you, gentle reader.

By putting ideas into words we make them more real, and this is a reason for my enduring fascination with cruise ships and ocean liners: a ship is a complex creation of engineer and artist; both machine and work of art, it must ride out the severest punishing elements of storm and wave, all the while providing safety and comfort and even a measure of style to those on board.

A ship is a world unto itself, which visits other lands. In my earlier days, my affections stayed with the traditional passenger liners of old, and I scorned the big blocky boxy white newbuilds of the Caribbean and other "recreational seas." Partly through viewing ships like Explorer of the Seas, partly just because they're all that will be left us in a short while.

Honor the old ones, try to keep the new ones straight in my head, and point out the ways in which old traditions of the sea are present and transformed in the ships of this modern age -- that is my goal in creating this site.

Most of the links below lead to pages that are in the earliest and emptiest stage of design -- believe me when I say I am working to fill them!