Liner Links

It's not just natural humility that makes me state that the World Wide Web has hundreds of pages containing useful resources to the ship lover, pages more accomplished and scholarly than this one.

So here are links to some of them. I've divided this area into a few distinct categories:

New Sites I Have Enjoyed
Sometimes I see work in the virtual shipping trade that must get special notice. In the RMS Caronia Time-Line, Peter Stevens is assembling publicity materials, photographs, and anecdotes to commemorate the life story of Cunard's "Green Goddess": as a former First Class Steward himself he draws from both a fine collection of material and personal associations to map, year-by-year and port-by-port, the remarkable course through time of this beloved and historic ship.

Ship-specific sites
The large number of fine sites on the Web that cover multiple ships and companies are generally covered in the Surveys or Wider Focus section of links. The sites below are devoted to a particular ship or line, though I'm not strict about that rule, as you may see ...

America (see also Australis)
Larry Driscoll's s.s. AMERICA Homepage is an interesting review of the ship's early days as a WWII trooper and in transatlantic service. The author was once a passenger.
From the Cradle to the Grave by Darren Byrne is another good collection of memoribilia and personal recollections of sailing on this distinguished liner.

Andrea Doria
andreadoria.org - This rich site is a deep source of information on the Italian beauty which sank in 1956. A great clearinghouse for information on current dives and discoveries, and on the whereabouts of survivors.
Grand [sic] Dame of the Sea - A very attractive presentation from Bryan Guinn's Royal Regals site.
Radio News - has downloadable clip of news broadcast of July 25-26, 1956.

Angelina Lauro
A Personal Tribute is run by a former musician on the ship.

Australis (see also America)
Cabin 111 contains a great deal of history of this ship, from her troopship duty and US Lines heyday through to her grounding and breakup off the Canary Islands, on the way to the scrapyard.
The s.s. Australis Homepage is an affectionate look at a long-lived ship, a compilation of written and visual material by Ken Ironside, her former Gym Instructor.
Steve's ss Australis Travel Page is a compilation of images and memories from a three-time passenger on the ship during her period running from Australia to New Zealand and the UK.

Canberra
The Crow's Nest tracks the story of this groundbreaking cruise liner, from hopeful beginnings and military service in the Falklands War, to her sad end on a beach in India. The images of her last days are a wrenching portrayal of the dissolution of a great vessel to scrap metal and memories.

Empress of Ireland
Lost Liners has a good deal of information on the ship and dives to her wreck.
Seaview Imaging presents a history of the ship and her current state as a dangerous but alluring site for scuba divers.

France (1962 -- see also Norway)
France by Carsten Watsack is a nice German-language site with some interesting images.
ss France Tour Page is part of the wonderful Maritime Matters site. A number of great period interior scenes from the ship's early days.

Great Britain
ss Great Britain is the official site of the group dedicated to restoring this historic ship in Bristol, England.

Great Eastern
The British National Maritime Museum site has a good FAQ-style treatment.
Cable & Wireless has some interesting sidelights on the great iron ship's last career as a cable-layer.
Great Eastern (1860-1888) is a fine page by Daniel Othfors from the TGOL site.
Scripophily.net has a stock certificate for sale from the company which owned Great Eastern, and a good overview of the ship's design and career.
The Great Eastern Salvage Company is maintained by a devoted collector of all things Great Eastern.
The Niagara Glen features an enduring reminder of this ship, a local rock formation named "the Stern of the Great Eastern."

Normandie
The Carnegie Museum of Art has a nice page on The Chariot of Aurora, now in their collection, formerly in the First Class Lounge of the ship.
Joanne/Nana5 presents an interesting sidelight on the French champion with a remembrance of her father's career on board in one of the ship's jazz bands.
Normandie The Ship of Light is Harry Dontje's exceptional site on this great ship. Containing lots of information already, it has good primary source material from eyewitnesses to her tragic destruction by fire in 1942.
Normandie, Ship of Lights (sorry, Harry) is a nicely-done "student" site on the ship.
Ships of State, Kevin Tam's very fine site on liners in general, has a particularly elegant and rich section on this ship.

Norway (see also France)
ss-Norway.com was set up by Devon Scott for the s/s Norway Preservation Foundation. Devon was the official historian of the ss Norway, fine gentleman, and my candidate for the "most-coveted job" award. Devon and Foundation members made an effort to keep the ship in service by highlighting her history and mobilizing grassroots appeals to her owners, Norwegian Cruise Lines.

Oriana (1960)
The Great Ocean Liners site by Henrik Ljungström has a nice page on this vessel, a paragon of modern styling at sea.

Orion (1935)
RMS Orion Home Page is Steve Mulliss nicely-done tribute to this important ship.

Queen Elizabeth 2
onderneming & KUNST is a brief tour of art works on board, prepared by the company that supplies art to a number of passenger shipping companies.
The QE2 Home Page is built and designed by Samuel Warwick, son of the current Commodore of Cunard. History of the ship, current news, and itineraries since 1996 are a few of the interesting pages here.

Queen Mary
RMS Queen Mary is Brian R. Guinn's very attractive enthusiast's page with images and information on the classic Cunarder. A mere subset of his great survey site, Royal Regals.
The RMS Queen Mary site is maintained by RMS Foundation, the company which owns the lease and manages exhibit and hotel operations on this most famous of preserved ocean liners. Provides the ship's history and documents efforts to preserve and restore her distinctive accomodations, as well as selling catering and other opportunities for activities on board.
The Turbine Tribune is Diane Rush's look at the ship, and an interesting repository of her trials in representing the now-dissolved Queen Mary Foundation.

Queen Mary 2
The Cruise Addict website has a good sampling of construction photos.
Ted Scull's Maiden Voyage report on cruisemates.com is a fine record of this historic ocean liner's inaugural voyage.
Marine-Marchande covers the waterfront of St. Nazaire and has comprehensive coverage of the ship's construction stages. Great workaday scenes of the local maritime scene.
Ouest-France is a great repository of photographs and background stories (in French) as this amazing liner grows in the shipyard.
Pam Massey's site presents a broad selection of excellent images from QM2's maiden departure from Southampton in January 2004, with excellent stills and video clips capturing the excitement, as well as the ship's maiden Westbound voyage across the North Atlantic in April.
The Southampton Daily Echo is compiling all the articles that are being written in the days leading up to the construction and debut of this 21st century superliner.
Where is She Today? is just one part of a fine site devoted to QM2, with the goal of linking wherever possible to port webcams that might show the ship.
Yours truly George Prince, the humble-but-not-so-humble-that-he-won't-link-to-himself webmaster of thewaywewent.com, has a QM2 page of his own.

Rotterdam (1959 -- see also Holland-America Line)
The Steamship Rotterdam Foundation was formed after the demise of Premier Cruise Lines, which owned this ship in her guise as Rembrandt. The group is intent on preserving one of the best remaining examples of the fine art of liner construction, and has succeeded in bringing her back from the brink of destruction, for permanent docking in the Port of Rotterdam as a hotel and museum attraction.

Southern Cross/Ocean Breeze
ssMaritime.com presented a heartfelt, valiant attempt to rescue the Harland & Wolff-built classic Southern Cross in her final days, and has turned with regret to other ships which still hang on. For me, the late great Ocean Breeze will be in my top three list of "ones that got away," and this site is a lovely testament to her and many others which sailed to Africa and the Pacific Ocean. Like the oceans whose vessels it so well represents, this site is broad and deep.

Statendam (1957 -- see also Holland-America Line)
Statendam IV by Henrik Ljungström is a new highlight on an old favorite site, as his new page on this Holland-America ship brings her to life for me again. I sailed Statendam transatlantic with my family in 1966 and 1967, and someday will have a link to Statendam Ephemera on these pages.

Titanic
At least one ocean liner discussion list on the Internet has at some time banned or restricted discussion of this ship, to the point that members wishing to mention her even in passing use the reference "T*****C", so their messages won't be auto-filtered out by browser-savvy liner buffs who are tired of the topic. The Liners List, for example, has a number of members whose love of ships began with Titanic, but since love of the White Star ship and her lore draws so many specialists, the "hardcore rivet counters" tend to have their own forums. If you're interested in connecting with the online Titanic community via the longest-running discussion group focusing on Titanic, click here for more information.

RMS Titanic, Inc. is the company that owns salvage rights and has produced the most widely-traveled exhibition of Titanic artifacts.
Encyclopedia Titanica is a tremendous resource: probably the singlemost comprehensive compendium of things Titanic. If you need to know who was in Lifeboat 13, this is your site. It's also a lot of fun to browse around, and the scope of essay topics is constantly widening to include ships contemporary to the ill-fated White Star liner. This site is an example of just how good the World Wide Web can be for presenting information to all levels of expertise and interest.
The Titanic Inquiry Project contains the complete transcripts of the United States and British investigations into the disaster. A search capability makes it possible to penetrate through the hundreds of pages of testimony to a particular area of interest.
SS401 - "Titanic" Research Forum contains Parks Stephenson's research on specialized Titanic topics.
George Behe's Titanic Tidbits is a compilation of another Titanic scholar's research into little-known but fascinating sidelights to the ship and her story.

Uganda
merchantnavyofficers.com is a tremendous resource for many reasons, such as this piece by Captain J. D. Coxe who was Master for Uganda's demolition voyage, a fascinating account of a 44-day adventure and moving tribute to the last days of the beloved British India vessel.

United States
Save the United States, run by the ss United States Foundation, is both a repository of history and current status of the speed record holder
ss United States is another site dedicated to the history and hopeful preservation of the liner, which is currently laid up in Philadelphia. Excellent tour of the ship as she is today, though sad to see that nothing remains of her interior spaces.
ss United States Foundation West Coast Chapter has produced a beautifully designed and executed promotional and historical page to rally support for this endangered speed lovely.

BTRL/Maritime Timetable Images is a nicely-done specialist site, with examples of ship timetables providing both information on specific ships and companies, and a look at how even this mudane information could be presented with a variety of particular styles over the years.
The Great Ocean Liners is a thoroughly-researched and well-organized site by Daniel Othfors & Henrik Ljungström.
Das Ruderhaus (The Wheelhouse) is a treasure trove, a deep and rich archive of beautiful photographs of a number of new and exciting ships debuting in European and other markets.
FerryVoyager provides a comprehensive and breathtaking survey of influential ferry and cruise ship designs built from the 1960s onward. In both text and well-chosen image, Bruce Peter and Richard Seville document the roots of the modern cruise ship in the ferries of Northern Europe, and remind us that not all passenger vessels these days end their voyages in the port they began in.
Great Ships combines Jeff Newman's extensive collection of rare liner postcards and paper ephemera with Mark Baber's cogent histories of the ships. Baber's research is particularly strong on White Star Line.
Luxury Liners of the Past is notable for some good memorabilia pieces and intereseting postcard images.
MaritimeMatters is an exemplary clearing house for the latest passenger ship news, as well as a home for memories of older, "endangered" passenger liners. In addition to lively and timely content published by Martin Cox, Peter Knego's Ship Tours and Vintage Ship Roundup are outstanding.
The Museum of the City of New York has a small selection of distinctive liner photos taken by the Byron Company, a news photography service, part of the Museum's archive of over 4000 (!) images of ocean liner interiors and dock scenes.
The National Maritime Museum of Great Britain has a nice section on passenger travel, with a few tantalizing glimpses into their vast collections.
Ocean Liners of a Bygone Era is a good enthusiast's site.
The Ocean Liner Webring is a good way to browse through a large number of sites with varying degrees of specialization, all devoted to passenger ships.
Parnami's Cruise Page has a number of detailed tours and reviews of present-day vessels.
Passenger Ship Parade is a remarkable series of nicely-written, meticulously researched, and beautifully presented essays on particular ferries and cruise ships. Both of these European sites are a valuable record of new and veteran ships in the cruise trade of today.
Ships of State is a wonderful survey of the major Atlantic liners in their heyday. An enviable collection of images, particularly strong on interiors, presented with a nice touch of elegance.
The ShipsList is oriented towards passenger lists, with the aim of assisting genealogical researchers in finding the ships that carried their immigrant ancestors to the New World. Contains valuable fleet lists as well for a large number of shipping companies.
Simplon Postcards is a fabulously comprehensive survey of passenger ships and ferries as portrayed in postcards, with one section organized by ship company. In addition to some rare items, the site offers a number of excellent images at very reasonable prices. This is a great site to start if you're just wondering what a particular ship looked like.
The Southampton Daily Echo site has an outstanding section on shipping news from the newspaper's pages, plus a nostalgic look at some famous vessels associated with the city.
Steamship Historical Society of America Collection offers an overview on the Society's book, photograph, and ephemera holdings, housed at the University of Baltimore.
Transatlantic Legends presents the work of artist Jim Karvelas, who offers for sale nicely-drawn profile views of Atlantic Ocean greats in limited editions.

British India Steam Navigation Co.
Suitably for a site devoted to a historic Pacific shipping line, biship.com offers as deep a content base as I've found on a specific maritime carrier: lively bulletin boards and discussions amongst those who know the ships add to a repository of data and images of the company's freighters and passenger liners.

Chandris Lines
Simplon Postcards Chandris section features an extensive collection of company- and privately-produced postcard images of this company, one which rescued some notable passenger vessels from oblivion and is the corporate predecessor to today's Celebrity Cruises.
Amerikanis/Britanis is a page of memories from Carol Hewlett (now Mavroidaki), who worked on both ships and fondly remembers her Chandris days. Interesting candid shots of crew "backstage" and other aspects of life aboard.
see also Australis

Compagnie Generale Transatlantique (French Line)
French Lines combines fleet lists, photographs, timelines and other information with a remarkable overview of the official CGT archives and object collections. Site also commemorates Messageries Maritimes. A remarkable resource in its own right, the site is run by the French Lines Association, which negotiates trademark and image licensing for the companies' vessels in advertisements or public media.

Costa Cruises
Costacruises.com is the official site, featuring the coolest Webcam interace I've ever seen, offering map-based positioning of the entire fleet.

Cunard Line
Chris' Cunard Page features profiles and deck plans of QE2, Caronia and the newbuilding Queen Mary 2.
Cunard Line is the official website of the historic transatlantic shipping company. In addition to the usual sales presentations for QE2 and Caronia, a number of the notable ships from the past are profiled with brief histories and a photograph.
Cunard's Australian site has more ship histories, not illustrated, but with considerable detail, of even the humblest ships of this proud line. An interesting feature allows you to specify a date range and get the names and histories of all Cunarders in service in those years.
In The Cunard Queens Peter Hewitt has put together a superb collection of images from his affectionate associations with the great Cunarders since 1994. QE2, QM2, the first Queen Mary in Long Beach are all covered here, with fine coverage of QM2's inaugural year.
The Cunard Steamship Society is an enthusiasts' group based in Nova Scotia, birthplace of Samuel Cunard, founder of the company. This site is just a form for collecting information on potential members, and publicizing future Society activities.

Elder Dempster Lines
Aquila, a website focusing on Lincolnshire and the Isles of Scilly, contains some nice pages on this great old company.

Holland-America Line
The Unofficial Home Page is an outstanding collection of material from and about this great shipping company.
Holland America is the official website of the present-day cruise line, for information on current fleets and itineraries.

Italian Line
Archivioluce is a fantastic resource, well worth a quick Italian lesson to get registered and searching for ANY ship of note in Italy. Go to the home page, and look for Registrati, a button in the left-side menu bar, right under Log Out. From there, the Italian and English words are practically the same; you do have to give your email, create a nickname (login) and password. From there I just checked the No radio buttons to decline further information and to keep your personal information invisible).
High Tea on the Sunny Southern Route is a detailed yet entertaining presentation on the history of the company's china used in lounges and dining rooms.

Messageries Maritimes
Philippe Ramona's site has a great collection of photographs and history. Distinguished as the most famous French transatlantiques were, it is worth remembering the company that spanned even wider areas of the globe.

Moore-McCormack Lines
The pages at Moore-McCormack.com pay tribute to all the distinguished U.S. vessels that formed the "Good Neighbor" fleet, and cover the history of the latter-day Brasil and Argentina through the end of their careers. Of particular value are the on board photos of crew and passengers, with nicely detailed letters from passengers who truly appreciated these ships.

Norddeutscher Lloyd/HAPAG/Hapag-Lloyd
Hapag-Lloyd is the official site of the company formed with the merger of the two major German commercial powers on the Atlantic.
Norddeutscher Lloyd Line - features some of the most important vessels in this great German company.
Pier 3 is a site dedicated to the terrible fire which destroyed the companies' piers in New York harbor on June 30, 1900, resulting in the death of nearly 400 people. Exceptionally well-researched and -presented history on a memorable tragedy.

Norwegian-America Line
100 Years of Emigrant Ships from Norway has a good short history of the company, as well as some interesting early photographs of life on board.

P&O (Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company)
Around the World with P&O Orient Lines provides an interesting time capsule-style record of this company in 1966. I particularly appreciated the complete set of nicely-done profile portraits, helpful in distinguishing the fleet's smaller consorts to better-known Canberra and Oriana, ships which I have always found lovely but similar in appearance.
Barnett Research combines a short history of P&O with some interesting if specialized original source material (transcribed) from the company during the 19th century.
P&O is the official site of the company's ferry, cargo and maritime support operations.
Princess Cruises highlights the company's cruise fleet and itineraries.
The Red Duster has an excellent and extensive section on P&O as well as a number of other firms from the gloried history of the British Merchant Navy.
The Unofficial P&O Page profiles both the new ships of P&O and a few of the greats from the past.

Peter Deilmann Cruises
Peter Deilmann Cruises is the official website for the company which manages Deutschland, a wonder in nostalgic interiors, and one of the more interesting new ships in recent years.

Royal Caribbean International
Royalcaribbean.com is the official company site.

Swedish American Line
A Tribute is an exceptionally thorough remembrance of the historic Line, with individual ship histories, photographs and memoribilia as well as passenger and crew memories, office locations, and reunion information.

Union-Castle Line
The "All at Sea" Network has a brief history and some nice images of older ships and the last vessels of the company.
The ShipsList comes through again with a brief history and detailed fleet list.
Union-Castle Line is a site constructed by the company which chartered P&Os Victoria for a voyage commemorating the original U-C centenary (2000), thus (temporarily) restoring to the sea breezes one of the great house flags of maritime history.
The Union Castle Line and Emigration from Eastern Europe to South Africa is a formal academic paper loaded with data on the role which the company played in mass migrations out of Eastern Europe, chiefly by Jews hoping to escape persecution.

United States Line
The USL and American Export page is a nice summarization of noted US-flag passenger vessels through the years.

Chantiers de l'Atlantique - Still active, builder of all the great French Line classics (except Liberte), builder of some of the clunkiest of the modern cruise ship breed, and slated to build Queen Mary 2. Site is in French.
Harland & Wolff - The company's official site has changed greatly; it used to have a fair amount of historical material related to Titanic and the hundreds of classic ships built on the Belfast ways. This material appears to have been dropped, but it's worth checking back on this site sponsored by the company, which is no longer building passenger ships.
John Brown, Clydebank - While the shipyard is no longer producing ships, this tourism-related site has a decent summary of the historic past.
Kvaerner Masa - Finnish yard with some of the most important modern cruise ships in its completed order book, and a lot still in design and under construction.
Meyer Werft - This German yard has produced major vessels for Royal Caribbean, Holland-America, and P&O. Pages contain good interior details on selected ships.

DVO Design, not strictly a commercial firm, has a very detailed Virtual Cruise Ship Project, with impressive interior and exterior renderings, as well as a forum for amateur contributions.
Gibbs & Cox, best known for their design of United States, America and a number of the great ocean liners of U.S. registry.
Maritime Services Corporation has worked on ships for both Carnival and Holland-America Line.
onderneming & KUNST, a company that handles commissions for a variety of cruise ship lines, has an interesting look at works on board.
Partner Ship Design is the German firm which has designed a number of notable newbuilds and renovations, including Deutschland and Lili Marleen of Peter Deilmann Cruises.
Stephen Friis Design is a Danish firm working on a project for Renaissance Cruises and some interesting ferry designs.
Tillberg Design AB is the firm of Mr. Robert Tillberg, one of the busiest designers of cruise ship and ferry interiors. Active in the field since 1964, when he coordinated the interior design of Swedish-American Line's Kungsholm, Tillberg's work is influential to this day in both the building of new ships, and the renovation of existing ones.

Canadian Pacific Railway Archives has good photos and graphics material on railway and shipping operations over the massive network of this important transport company.
faktaomfartyg contains a phenomenal archive of images and statistics (mostly in Swedish) regarding contemporary ferries and coastal freighters in Northern Europe and the Mediterranean. Click on Till Rederier for listings by shipping company, Till Register for listings by ship.

CruisePage.com runs a weekly compilation of cruise-related news.
Seaview is a UK-based site that offers breaking news related to cruise ships and ferries, as well as a variety of practical and interesting pages for those interested in ships and/or cruising.
The Ship-Technology.com website contains a section on ships under construction, with nice detail on decoration, exterior styling, and propulsion. Not strictly maintained in a timely way, it has pages on some ships which have been completed AND withdrawn from service (Renaissance Cruises' R1 is an example), as well as those still in the yard at press time.