The Capsizing of SS Normandie
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 30 июл 2024
- Welcome to Shipwreck Sunday! We are Derek and Elinor, a couple who loves movies, games, TV shows, and ships! In this podcast, we discuss shipwrecks and how they affect our everyday life.
In today's video... our Mother's Day Special is the Capsizing of the beautiful French ocean liner, SS Normandie!
CHAPTERS:
Intro and Disclaimer: 00:00 - 00:58
The Capsizing of SS Normandie: 00:58 - 36:03
Outro: 36:03
Intro and Outro Song Samples: "On the Beautiful Blue Danube"
If you like movies, TV shows, video games, comic books, and every in between, subscribe to our sister channel, Speed Force Media!
The bow is the very front part of the ship, and the very back end of it is called the stern. The port side is the left and the starboard side is the right. Propellers are sometimes referred to as “screws.” The hull is the metal sides of the ship, the keel is the very bottom of it, and the superstructure is the top deck, usually made of wood. Smokestacks or funnels are large tunnels on top of the ship used to direct steam and smoke away from the deck. Masts are large wooden poles on the deck of the ship, usually used to hoist sails or hold a crow’s nest where crew members can see for miles around the vessel. Beam is a measurement that refers to the width of the ship. 
Развлечения
My father was a Coast Guard sailor, stationed in New York at the time of the fire. He was in command of a small patrol boat which had the unenvieable task of patrolling for those u-boats off our Atlantic Coast. A few depth charges, a 20 mm. machine gun and primitive sonar was all they had to keep tankers amd cargo ships from being sunk within sight of people on the shore.
During the fire, dad was on shore, assigned to crowd control for the thousands of people who came down to the piers to see what was going on.
The next day, his craft was in the harbor. He told me they actually went into the berth and were close enough to reach out and touch Normandie's hull!
Normandie was a wonderful, innovative ship! There is color footage somewhere of her beautiful public rooms, taken at sea. Queen Mary had about 50,000 more horsepower, and was just slightly faster!
As A troop ship, she would have been capable of carrying 10,000 soldiers at a time to Europe, just as Queens Mary and Elizabeth did.
Part of the reason for scrapping her was the extensive damage done to her hull by a huge rock in the river bed right where she capsized. No problem for a ship afloat, but hell for a ship sitting right on it.
Wow! Your dad must've had some wonderful stories to tell, and an incredible man for serving in the armed forces like he did. Thank you so much for sharing that with me! Normandie was incredible, and she would have been quite the troop ship. I'm going to pin your comment since you added so much information to this episode, thank you so much! Cheers!
This was enjoyable to watch. I have been fascinated by the Normandie for years. As fussy as I am, I need to correct the comment that the ship was triple screw until the refit. You got the propellor blade count mixed up with the number of screws. It was always 4. There is a great mystery novel, "The Normandie Triangle", based on the premise that the fire was arson. Look for it on line.
Trippy thing, when I was a child, I had a vivid dream about being in the pilot house. So large, round, and wonderful.
Thank you so very much for this history of the great ship Normandie. She was so beautiful and her loss was a serious blow to the Allied war effort. I hope you can do a presentation on the other great French liner Ile de France. She was a very popular ship and had a colorful career, including a dramatic rescue and major roles in two motion pictures. Thanks again for the calm, intelligent approach in a medium full of sensationalism and phony clickbait. Elinor you and Derek are both fine storytellers, and this former US Navy sonar technician really appreciates your work. Good luck and God bless!
Thanks so much, I really appreciate it! I can most definitely cover Île de France! She was gorgeous. We try to give the details of the story while respecting the victims so I appreciate you saying that! Cheers and thank you for your service in the Navy!
Excellent episode Elinor, I heard about the mob and Lucky Luciano also . 🖒🖒
Thanks, friend! Good to see you!
Well done. One of my favorites. Fast and innovative.🚢 Ahead of her time.
A sad loss.
Thank you so much! It's a tragedy what happened to her when she was placed in the wrong hands!
Beyond my two corrections WRT nomenclature, this is ABSOLUTELY THE BEST video on SS Normandie. And when a woman does a video like this, even better!
Very nice pronunciation, she started with 3 blade propellers and they switched them to 4 bladed. She always had 4 screws. The length of Normandie never changed, just her tonnage was increased by the extra additions.
Thanks so much for your corrections, friend! I really appreciate it!! And thank you - I tried my best, I suck at French! 😂 Cheers!!
@@shipwrecksunday your French was really pretty spot on. I don’t use the French pronunciation of my name because my French is so limited. 🤣🤣
Nice vid. Major correction. Normandie was a quadruple screw ship. Always four propellers on four shafts. Vid confused original 3 BLADED propellers changed to 4 BLADED in 1936 drydock to stop vibration. Blades not shafts.
The SS Normandie has always managed to intrigue and fascinate the public remaining the quintessential liner of the 1930s, a decade filled with many other famous names: Bremen, Rex, Queen Mary and Niew Amsterdam as well as these Edwardian names: Majestic, Mauritania, Olympic, and France among them. The SS Normandie (was owned by Compagnie Generale Transatlantique aka The French Line) that seemed to project a certain French national identity for all the world to see. She was full of innovations for instance her hull design was revolutionary the idea was suggested by Russian engineer Vladimir Yourkevitch who had settled in France after the revolution in 1917. Yourkevitch's approach dealt extensively with reducing the surface flank resistance created along the hull's sides at the waterline as the ship is propelled forward. He worked closely with CGT technical team to develop a fully integrated solution, covering the complete underwater hydro-statics of the hull and its appendages. At the waterline the hull was given a curvilinear shape that would in effect follow as closely as possible the natural surface flow lines of the bow wave as the ship moved forward at speed. The Normandie followed the example of SS L'Atlantique in featuring an usually large and dominant superstructure by the standards of the time. In Normandie's case this extended along 71.5 percent of the ship's overall length. These same clean lines of form were repeated astern, where the fully-glassed-in aft ends of the boat, promenade and upper decks formed a graceful series of long terraces descending down to the ship's spoon-shaped, yacht-style stern. But, her most striking feature of all was her interior design with large public spaces created by the decision to divide the uptakes from the engines to the funnels like they had done just three years earlier with the unlucky SS I'Atlantique.
The architecture and interior design was divided between two separate design groups, with Henri Pacon and Pierre Patout responsible for the main dining room, lower embarkation hall and chapel, together with the indoor swimming pool and bar on D deck. The team of Richard Bouwens and Roger-Henri Expert were commissioned to design the main suite of the promenade deck public rooms and the Cafe-Gill, aft on the boat deck. The main suite of public rooms with its 700 foot axial vista along the ship's centerline, contained the Grand Salon and Fumoir (Smoking) and their adjoining spaces which extended up through the deck above, with tall windows on either side. The grand staircase ascending from the Flumoir to the Grand-Grill offered a ceremonial focus. This feature was specially designed for the ritual dinner-hour grand descent to C deck
The main focus of First-Class public life was a truly magnificent suite of rooms on the promenade deck, arranged along a 30 foot wide thoroughfare extending some 400 feet along the center axis of the ship. These included a (movie) Theater, one of the first of its kind at sea, and the domed upper gallery of the Hall d'Embarquement forward, the Grand Salon and Flumoir amidships, and astern of this grand stairway to Cafe-Grill, bringing the sequence up to the boat deck. From the stage of the Theater there was a direct line of sight through the entire suite of rooms and out to the open deck beyond the Cafe-Grill's windows. The Grand Salon's walls were adorned with glass reliefs by Jean Dupas showing ancient mythological scenes from the Chariot of Poseidon and the Rape of Europe, the Chariot of Thetis and the Birth of Aphrodite, and the Flumoir's lacquered panels, in ancient Egyptian-style were the creations of Jean Dunand. The Grand Salon also featured an Aubusson carpet that remains the world's largest hand-woven rug on record. At the head of the Cafe-Grill stairway was a larger-than-life statue of a young woman in a long Greek robe by Leon Baudry called "La Normandie."
The First-Class Salle a Manger (Dining Room) on C deck was arguably the Normandie's greatest design triumph both structurally and architecturally. This open space was designed entirely without internal supporting columns which extended 305 feet through the ships center of A, B, and C decks at a width of 46 feet and a full height of 28 feet. With a deeply coffered plaster of Paris ceiling, with moulded glass-tile walls that shimmered eternally. The bas-relief panels depicted sport and competition, maritime heritage and the arts of the Normandy region. The room had no natural lighting, but the artificial lighting was the aspect of the interior design which made the room so remarkable and enhanced the cathedral-like dimensions. There were 12 free-standing Lumiere obelisks designed by Rene Lalique, and there were 38 tall linear glass sconces which measured 16 feet in height and two vast overhead chandeliers. This earned the SS Normandie the nickname "Ship of Light" (similar to Paris as the '"City of Light"). All 800 First-Class passengers were accommodated at a single sitting plus there were eight additional private dining rooms. All service facilities were arranged to suit the protocols of formal a-la-carte dinning in its highest and purest form making the presentation of each meal including breakfast, a special occasion. Publicity material boasted that the space was not only larger than the Hall Of Mirrors at Versailles, but also contained more mirrors. At the opposite end of the dinning room stood the female figure of La Paix in gilded plaster designed by Louis Dejean.
Passengers entered the Grande Salle a Manger from the Hall d'Embarquement foyer half way between decks B and C where, upon passing through the great gilded bronze doors of this room's high entrance portal, they descended a wide stairway inside the room itself to be seated. For ladies in particular, this was an opportunity to indulge in the grand gesture of making a theatrical entrance perhaps to show off a new gown, and to take in the scene and to be seen by others in the ritual of shipboard life.
Normandie's unique Hall d'Embarquement was a remarkable piece of vertical shipboard architecture it gave you a sense of orientation about the ship, both horizontally and vertically. This space was visually defined by four large elevator towers rising as veritable columns opposite one another, two either side of the foyer floor.
The SS Normandie's Tourist and Third-Class accommodations were less ostentatious but more than equal to First-Class on many lesser liners. The Tourist Salle a Manger was designed around an elegant double-height central domed space in dark lacquered woods with indirect lighting on a white ceiling. The Third Class counterpart was two levels below on E deck and it too was an inside space featuring a large double-height central space with diffused lighting and its walls, which were paneled in blonde veneers giving it a light and modern atmosphere.
The chapel was indeed a somber place, the walls were covered in black marble with reproductions of early Christian murals on the ceiling. The Stations of the Cross was carved in rosewood, and placed around the room in niches, which could be screened off for non-Christian services. By the early 1940s the SS Normandie had been left at her dock in Manhattan when she was taken over by the US Navy soon to be converted into a troopship named the SS Lafayette. As fate would have it most of the SS Normandie's art treasures had all been removed for the conversion to a troop ship. When on February 8, 1942 sparks from a workman's acetylene torch ignited a pile of kapok life jackets. The fire spread quickly on that bitter cold mid-winter afternoon. Overzealous fire-fighters poured tons of water onto the smouldering ship. In the early hours of the next day, unable to withstand the additional pressure she capsized at her berth and was lost forever.
The eight-foot-high, 1,000-pound bronze figurative sculpture "La Normandie," was found in a New Jersey, scrapyard in 1954 and was purchased for the then new Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. It was first displayed outside in the gardens near the formal pool and later indoors near the then Fontainebleau Hilton's spa. In 2001, the hotel sold the statue to Celebrity Cruises, which placed it on board their new ship the Celebrity Summit. A photo of the statue of "La Normandie" can be seen along with other interior SS Normandie photos at their website.The statue "La Paix", which stood in the First Class Dining Room, now stands at the Pinelawn Memorial Park, a cemetery located in Farmingdale, New York. The medallions from the enormous doors leading into the First Class Dining Room were removed and later installed on the smaller front doors of Our Lady of Lebanon Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn Heights, New York. So, even though the ship SS Normandie is gone parts of her live on.
Wow! This information is incredible! Thank you so much for adding to the conversation and for giving future listeners some more information to reference. Cheers, friend!
Great work, I really enjoyed this video! Your extensive research and hard deserves more views :). Normandie was one of the most aesthetically beautiful ocean liners to sail in my opinion, and it's a shame her career was so short.
Hey! Thanks so much! I really appreciate it. It is such a shame - she should have had a longer, more illustrious career! She truly was a gorgeous ship and it's a damn shame what the Americans did in neglecting her.
Once again your lovely voice and fascinating story have made my day.
Thank you.
Thanks so much! I really appreciate it!!
Thank you for another wonderful upload. Bravo as always!
Hey, sir, good to see you! Thanks so much!
Ah yes, finally! Been waiting for this one for a minute and it is finally here. Absolute great video this Sunday. As much as I love all these ocean liners and their designs I personally can’t put any of them above Normandie. Normandie’s design really stood out in my opinion. With that said you guys really read my mind because I thought of RMMV Oceanic before I clicked this video. Maybe a video on planned but scrapped ocean liners later down the line? That would be a dope episode
That would be an awesome episode, thank you so much for the idea! And I'm so glad you liked it! Cheers!!
Great content and beautifully presented thank you for you're time and effort you put into making these great videos
Thanks so much!! I really appreciate it!
I'm a retired Sailor. The forecastle is pronounced as "focs'l."
Good evening,
My thanks for a complete historical essay on a tragic, unforgivable death to a truly epic masterpiece. The French had a lot to answer fore, but not this type of miss use and cost in money of the French people. I knew of her as I enjoy history. I began to love the development of technology, as it rapidly changed the navy concerning the battleship’s declined to second class as the aircraft carrier became the king of all naval ships. Unfortunately Admiral King was an admirals nightmare in my way of thinking, as his hatred of anything English, was the cause of massive losses to maritime shipping along the east coast of the USA. Admiral King needed to start convoys to Halifax through American water’s to protect the Allied merchant fleet from being torpedoed by U-boats. Both Canadian and English naval officers were showing him the need to start escorting ships in convoys for protection, but he wouldn’t do it. After major losses, the Canadian navy placed the merchant man in convoys for protection of the ships. The amount of lives needlessly lost, not to mention loss in ships & cargo, was arrogantly caused by Admiral King himself. That is a story for you to discover, as the merchant ships sales alone, inside the 12 mile coastal limit, was in sight of the major coastal cities. The navy denied the citizens access to the beaches, to hide the damage done by the U-boats, as dead crews drifted onto beaches . The U-boat war change from the mid-Atlantic to the eastern American coast line. The U-boat captains called this area the second happy times. We started to win the battles against the U-boats in the mid-Atlantic. The Germans discovered that the US Navy didn’t protect the shipping along the coast and the ships were clearly seen at night as the lights along the coast back lit the ships. This was in 1942-43. Enough said. The Normandie was part of the tragic mistakes made by the navy during this time period. The time period is one of cloak and dagger you might say and although it was the reason for the liberty ship boat building program, it was tragic in blood shed by courageous fathers, sons, and friends who were the reason we out built the losses. The liberty ship is an important part of the Second World War. You’d do it proud. As the ways are politically I hope we will have a country left that remembers this time in history as it looks like the politicians have forgotten the cost we paid for the freedom they are throwing in the crapper.
Forever in His service
Man, you have added a ton of amazing information here and I thank you for it! I'll have to look into this time period more and really sink my teeth into it! I have a tendency to drift toward the Edwardian Period. Cheers, friend, and thank you so, so much for adding so much to the conversation!!
Good evening,
Thank you for your kind response. I gave you a mess of information hoping that you will correct my mistakes and that you’d be professional about it. The main topics i encourage you to study is the three that affects the area in question.
1) that the most important issue I hope I’d given you is “the incredible time” that was required to produce ships Running independently. “The merchant navy was hacked the point that it was not possible to maintain the ugly duckling “or “the Liberty Ship Building program”
2 ) the building & replacing merchant ships lost in the mid-Atlantic was an emergency requirement.
Thus the call was made, the plans were delivered, and the ship they built was “ The LIBERTY SHIP “
3) the challenges were required to actually be developed to replacements these merchant vehicles
The report given was a desire for boy’s to become men so-as-to the Kill- Kill- Kill … or to be the lost men. This-is the frantic, necessities required to keep them upfront and alive. We had to teach instinct .
ahhello again never knew the Normandie sunk thought they scrapped her such a sad end to s gorgeous ship
Hello, friend! Yes it is a really sad ending for her. They could have saved her had they been smarter! Cheers!
great video!!! i love normandie
Thanks! Cheers!! I love Normandie, too, she was a gorgeous ship.
The French bell! HA!🤣
ss normandie, the most beautiful ocean liner that ever was...with a very sad death in new york harbour
@@kajwicksell4455 so sad! It's horrible how she went.
Great episode!
Did you know one of the FDNY Fireboats that helped assisted the burning the SS Normandie, the John J Harvey, would later assist evacuation and putting out fires at ground zero on 9/11?
Really? That is incredible! Thank you so much for adding that!!
@@shipwrecksundayruclips.net/video/dwWXXsNLy5k/видео.htmlsi=UIhpri3xtNp9cmxB
I even helped narrated this video
Forecastle = Folksell!
Fo'c'sle, sounds like "fowk-sl". Ship jargon basics.
I second this is an excellent presentation. TD Atlanta
Thanks so much!
I have a few different suggestions for ships that you could discuss. Those being HMAS Sydney, The SS Pennsylvania of the American Line, The City of Rio, The City of Richmond, City Of Paris, The Steamboat Atlantic, The Morro Castle, The Cunard Liner Oregon, The Cruise Ship Lakonia, HMS Hood, HMS Birkenhead, The Admiral Nakhimov, The Doña Paz, The Vulturno and The Daniel J. Morrell.
Yes it’s a lot of Suggestions but there’s a lot of history behind most of these and some of them are Ships that need to have their stories told.
And 3 other suggestions I have are the SS Leopoldville, USS Arizona and SS Noronic. Let me know what you think of all of my suggestions for you to do if you want. P.S the General Slocum was part of this until I realized that you’d already covered it.
And why not one more for the sake of it. The Hamburg-American Line Vessel known as The Isis. Which sank in 1936.
Thanks so much for your suggestions! They are all wonderful and I'll have to look into their stories! The only one in your list I already have is SS Naronic, and her video is very early on in our Shipwreck Sunday Playlist if you'd like to hear her story. Cheers, friend!
@@shipwrecksunday I’m referring to a Passenger Ship that Caught fire in Toronto harbor
Her name Was Noronic
New comer to your channel and I have to say I love 'em SUBSCRIBED. Thank you for the wonderful content.
According to the Playboy magazines series, "The History of Organised Crime" from the 1970s, Luciano approached the authorities and said that if he was released then he could control the waterfront. The ship burned about 2 weeks later. The History is or was available in book form.
Amazing video
Thanks so much!
The mistake of making the wide open rooms would be her doom.
13:36 RMS Queen Elizabeth: challenge accepted.
Lmao pretty much 🤣
The only thing that jars with me with an otherwise magnificent ship are the funnels. A little too large for my taste but then I know nothing about ship design....
I agree that I like skinnier, taller funnels! Around that time period it seems to me that they were playing around with the way funnels were designed.
does anyone know the 4th ship on the left thats cut off from the pic at 21:43 cuz idk how to find that out and theres a similar pic with the ile de france on the left but its not the same one in case u mistake it
According to some quick research (and I may be wrong!), that fourth ship is the second Mauretania, and there are other photos that show all four of them together. Cheers!
@@shipwrecksunday i never knew there was a second one thats awesome thank you!
@@st-nv9lg no problem!! Cheers!!
Hummm, 🤔 if I had to guess what department was responsible for disconnecting the fire suppression system while welding and other changes were being made. Could it have been Military Intelligence?☹️
Maybe!
The needless loss of a maritime work of art due to carelessness and incompetence.💔
Democrats.
United States Navy@@stuartlee6622
I still have anger in my soul for the US Navy in regards to this ship.
Me, too! I don't think I'll ever get over it.
#RYC I make Minecraft ships, do you think they capture what those ships would have been like, do you have any improvements that I could make if you think it would capture what those ships were like? My account has the ships so you can see what they look like for you to judge.
I can definitely check those out, and I'll give you my full answer in our reading your comments video! I really do enjoy Minecraft - I'm a millennial, so I played it last about 10 years ago with my brother and we loved playing that game. The things people can do with it now are amazing. Honestly, sometimes while looking for my pictures for my videos, I see a Minecraft ship out of the corner of my eye and for a second it looks like the real deal. People put a lot of love into it and I think it's totally worth it! I'll make sure to check yours out, too. Cheers!
May i make a suggestion?
Of course!
Alright my suggestion is can you talk about SS Flandre of 1952? She was sold to Costa Cruises in 1968 renamed to Carla C and then sold again to Epirotiki Line renamed to Pallas Athena and then in 1994 she caught fire and was later scrapped
@@mrsaturngamingandstories I definitely can look into her story! Thank you for the suggestion! Cheers!
La Belle France does NOT mean The French Bell. Rather, it means Beautiful France.
Thank you!! ❤️
But great research - keep up the great work !
@@hughbraddock thank you so much! I appreciate your support and corrections!!
Saint Nazaire is pronouned as "San Nazaire."
Sent yall a message on FB!
I'll have to check it out! Thank you!
The very not intelligent NewYork Police Department kept the guy who designed this ship ,from reaching the scene to help them fight the fire Great brilliance NYPD
Right?? Not very smart of them!
NormandiE has a Feminine meaning in French, much like the controversy over ConcordE ,b,ut.why put a series of hatboxes on top of an otherwise streamlined and beautiful ship? NYFD the water needs to be on the OUTSIDE of the vessel! Shipwreck S unday, how many other ships were sunk by well meaning but overenthusiastic Firefighters? PS Warspite`s ship`s cat was called `Stripey`!
Seriously! Sultana, PS General Slocum, so many sank by fire, ironically. Cheers, friend!
Eleanor is my middle name.
That's awesome! Elinor was my great grandmother's name, and Eleanor was my other great grandmother's name. We seem to all be in a solid club together!
@Shipwreck Sunday it was my grandmother middle name, too. But my mom name is after the 1st lady. Eleanor Roosevelt. She was my mom's favorite first lady.
@@Kiki.shannan she was a remarkable woman, so I do not blame your mother for naming you after her! Cheers! Thanks so much for sharing that with me.
@Shipwreck Sunday Well, you don't hear a lot of people with the name Eleanor. That always makes me super excited to find someone with that name.. I sometimes go by my middle name when I start a new job. Cause I do think it's so pretty. And it's a shame that people don't get to hear your middle name.
@@Kiki.shannan totally agree! It's not a common name anymore, for sure. Seen as "too old fashioned." I, for one, enjoy it's antiquity!
3:30 the 'tòo radical ' bulbous bow was present on Noahs Arc?
Get rid of the commenter.
Hi there! If you are not a fan of my videos, feel free to find a different channel to watch! There are plenty of other ship channels. 😊
i agree let's get rid of you
Commentator, you mean (and still the incorrect word choice)? You are the commenter.
Democrats.