Remembering The Grand French Liner ss Normandie

By Bill Miller

The 83,000-ton, 1,028-foot long Normandie was not only the largest and most powerful in a long list of great French ocean liners, but she was also by far the most luxurious and innovative. Some even say she was the most luxurious ocean liner of all time.  Externally, she was one of the best looking liners ever created — she was streamlined, raked and rounded, and capped by three plump funnels done in the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique’s red and black. Very advanced in design, she was one of the most modern looking ocean greyhounds of her day. Within, she was lavishly bestowed with the finest French decorative touches — Aubusson carpets, Dupas glass panels and Lalique "towers of light". Her first class restaurant was done in bronxe and hammered glass, was illuminated by great chandeliers (again by Lalique) and sat 1,000 guests at 400 tables. The wines were included in the fare, the service impeccable and the food, of course, was the finest at sea. "You can never, ever diet on the French Line," aptly pointed out a Company brochure. Everything about the Normandie was totally and purposefully French, down to the packets of matches in the bars and the notepaper and envelopes in the writing room.

With her construction beginning in 1931, at St Nazaire on the Loire (and where the likes of the 151,000-ton, 1,132-ft long Queen Mary 2 was constructed, but some 70 years later), the 30-knot, quadruple-screw Normandie was to be the French rival to the greatest and grandest and fastest Atlantic super liners of the otherwise Depression-era 1930s. Germany had its Bremen and Europa; Italy had the Rex and Conte di Savoia; and Britain was planning two mega-ship record breakers, the first of which, the Queen Mary, was due a year later, in the spring of 1936. The French were firm on completing the Normandie a year or so earlier than the Queen Mary and therefore not only capturing the prized Blue Ribbon, but garnering the greatest publicity and public attention. Quite simply, it was all about national rivalries. The French wanted to beat the British.

The sleek-looking Normandie, which arrived at New York's Pier 88 for the first time in June 1935, fulfilled most of her expectations --- and the goals of the French Government itself, which paid for most of her otherwise Depression-era $60 million ($800 in today's dollars).   Expectedly, she was a stunning, sumptuous ambassador of everything French--from art and design to construction and maritime might--and was once described as “akin to being like a great French cathedral, but one that moved”.  Another dubbed her, "the very best of the genius of France."  Actress Marlene Dietrich, a passenger in the late '30s, remarked that she was "much more than just a ship".

The finest French designers & decorators helped to create her and, alone, her stunning public rooms had a sense of flow unlike any other liner of her time.  First class passengers (and there were almost 1,000 of them) seemed all to look like William Powell and Myrna Loy. It was Fred & Ginger-gone-to-sea --a world of gloss floors, white pianos and the smell of expensive French perfume.  Even the dogs traveling onboard were said never again to be the same after a crossing on the Normandie.  With their own meals being selected from stylized menus, they were spoiled completely.

Sadly, however, the Normandie also had a great sense of the dramatic --- she sailed for only four and a half years. But then with the coming of the Second World War in Europe in the late summer of 1939, she was mothballed (for safety) at Pier 88--never to set sail again.   She was being converted to a huge Allied troopship when, on February 9, 1942, she carelessly caught fire and later capsized.  She was a complete loss--and an embarassment to the US Navy who were in charge of her that the loss was not from one of Hitler's torpedoes. Later salvaged and then declared surplus, her rusted, scorched hulk was sold in 1946 to scrappers at Port Newark, New Jersey for a mere $161,000.

These days, however, the Normandie still fills my thoughts. Of course, I am reminded of her in new books, magazine articles, and freshly made television documentary. I also still use the Manhattan piers, arriving and sailing aboard contemporary cruise ships. These ships, white, sparkling and often larger and taller than the Normandie, sometimes use Pier 88, rebuilt these days, but once the long-ago home of the French Line and where the Normandie berthed and then burned. 

Most especially, the Normandie has come back to life, in other ways, however.  Happily, I am curator to an exhibit of her life and times, but mostly of her lavish fittings. The exhibit opened on February 18th and will run until next January at the South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan.  Aptly named Decodence, there are over 150 exhibited items on view--from grill room doors to a miniature chair from the children's playroom to the ashwood piano that was placed in the ship's lavish Deauville penthouse suite and used by Miss Dietrich herself. You can almost hear those throaty steam whistles sounding!

Indeed, the Normandie is still a great ship, a ship very much in my thoughts these days and, I suspect, in the minds and hearts of many others. I certainly agree that there was no ship quite like her. I am most happy therefore to have helped compile a tribute to her —wherein the Normandie "sails" again!

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Ship historian Bill Miller is the noted author of some 75 books on ocean liners and a popular lecturer on the cruise ships of Cunard, Crystal,  Silversea and Holland America cruise lines. His latest book on the Dutch ocean liner Nieuw Amsterdam that sailed during the years 1938 to 1974 will be published in early spring.