Topic starter
10/11/2008 12:59 am
Jazzou, if you think about the NOLA wharves' locations, your mother probably wouldn't have strayed from them much either. I suppose she traveled back when she would have had to take ragtime aboard on vinyls, which wouldn't have been very handy - but just think: she could have spread ragtime around the world like the steamboats took jazz upriver. How would you translate "Jazzou" into other languages? We had a retired couple in our church who traveled by freighter in the 1970/80s, and often they would be gone 3 months when the original plans were for only a month or so. They had to agree to be flexible and have plenty of time allotted to complete a trip, or else pay great airfares back. Do you have any idea how much your mother paid for those trips?
A bit of trivia about a couple of passenger ships of the 1950s: the BERMUDA STAR ran out of NOLA in the late 1980s as the first regularly scheduled weekly ship in decades. She was a steamship and was built in 1957 as the ARGENTINA, run by Moore McCormick Line to South America. In order to distinguish her and her twin sister BRAZIL from competitors, the funnel area served as a nude sunbathing area - the functional smokestacks are well aft. I do believe her successful presence in NOLA is what revitalized the cruise ship industry in NOLA, as far as using NOLA as an embarkation city. My only ocean travel was on this ship in 1987, and I immediately rode the MQ the following weekend to get back to the friendly confines of the river.
The BERMUDA STAR is pictured here in Cozumel Mexico, which at that time had only 2 docking spaces for cruise ships and was in its infancy as a port of call.
11/11/2008 2:46 am
Judy, we are going down to New Hampshire to see Mom over Thanksgiving and I'll ask her what she remembers about some of the landings in NOLA. I do recall one time a ship she had boarded in Jacksonville, FL proceeded to NOLA for its first stop before going to Houston and then some place like Hong Kong (now that was a long stretch away at sea). They were in NOLA for a couple of days and I remember Mom writing in her trip journal about how strange it was to be sitting aboard one of those many, many ships at anchor along the Mississippi that she was accustomed to looking at from the decks of a steamboat headed to or from NOLA. Anyway, while in New Orleans, she stayed aboard the ship the whole time, except when Nancy Gros, who used to work in the Entertainment Department at DQSC came and picked her up and took her out to lunch. Part of the deal was getting to show Nancy around the ship, which Nancy truly enjoyed.
The whole freighter thing started for my parents back in the mid '60's when my father was granted a sabbatical after teaching art for 25 years at Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts. They thought it would be cool to take a "tramp steamer" trip. Dad packed up his watercolors and they departed New York and were gone three months. They were given a general itinerary but told to be prepared for changes. Basically, they were given a departure date, an anticipated return date, with no promises as to what to expect in between. This greatly appealed to them, so off they went on a wonderful adventure that took them all through the Mediterranean as far as Syria and Egypt with stops at many major and minor ports. At one point they got off the ship in Livorno, rented a car and drove around in Italy for a few days before rejoining the ship in Naples. They had so much fun on that journey that they vowed that is what they would do after Dad retired. Alas, he would not live to retirement, so that was the only freighter trip he ever took. Undaunted, Mom went on ahead and took a lot more trips on her own. One entire wall of Mom's living room is covered with Dad's paintings from that trip.
As far as cost for freighter travel, I will find out about that, too. It did increase over the years, but it was always a great bargain compared to ocean liner cruising.
Great picture of the Bermuda Star. If I'm not mistaken, that is the ship that Bob Schad was Cruise Director on for a number of years between steamboat stints. Did it also cruise under the name Carib or Queen of Bermuda at any time? I remember Bob and I were walking from Robin Street Wharf into town one time and it was docked there at Julia Street Wharf.
Rereading your posting and the mention that the ship was formerly the Argentina, I remember now that is the ship that long time MQ Chief Purser Tom Murphy worked aboard for a big part of his career. I wish he was still around so I could quiz him about the nude sunbathing!
Next time I chat with Bob Schad I'll ask him if that was his ship, too. I know he mentioned some kind of connection.
Topic starter
11/11/2008 1:33 pm
Bermuda Star/Queen of Bermuda
Yes, after a few years in NOLA, they painted her all white and renamed her the QUEEN OF BERMUDA. That lasted a couple of years. Indeed, Chief Tom did work on the ARGENTINA... I'll bet he would have had some stories about those days!
11/11/2008 5:52 pm
Sharon and I cruised on this ship 3 years running out of NOLA to the western Caribbean. It was the ENCHANTED SEAS then. We had a great time every time we went, but I somehow missed the nude sunbathing!
Topic starter
11/11/2008 9:47 pm
Let me clarify that, Capt. Reynolds....
Perhaps I wasn't too clear in my original posting: the nude sunbathing area was there in the beginning, 1957, as an enticement for the South American routes... by the time we got around to riding it, that was long gone! Now you've got me thinking...Bermuda Star/Enchanted Seas/Queen of Bermuda... was it the same ship, or did the sister ship get in the mix too?
Topic starter
11/11/2008 10:26 pm
Correction, we're talking about both ships
After Bob posted about the ENCHANTED SEAS, I did a little research. It turns out we had both sister ships in New Orleans. The ES was the sister to the BS, the one I rode in 1987. Here is the name chronology:
ARGENTINA .... BRASIL
VEENDAM .. .. VOLENDAM
BRASIL ..... .. MONARCH SUN
MONARCH STAR ... VOLENDAM
BERMUDA STAR 1984 ... ISLAND SUN
ENCHANTED ISLE '90 .. LIBERTE
scrapped in India '93 .. CANADA STAR
..................................... QUEEN OF BERMUDA
..................................... ENCHANTED SEAS
..................................... UNIVERSE EXPLORER
Now that my memory has been jogged, we had the BERMUDA STAR/ENCHANTED ISLE, and the CANADA STAR/QUEEN OF BERMUDA/ENCHANTED SEAS doing cruises out of New Orleans. Its even coming back that perhaps one ship did 3 and 4 day cruises, while the other, the BS/EI, did weeklong trips. But at any rate, these were the ships responsible for the emergence of the cruising industry in the port of New Orleans. And the BS was not repainted, the white ship was her sister ship.
Topic starter
13/11/2008 2:36 am
the CARIB
Just reread Jazzou's posting and he mentioned the CARIB. That was a smaller ship owned by Bermuda Star which went to Cozumel, but didn't run out of NOLA. Don't know anything about it, but I remember it was the other ship in port when we were in Cozumel.