Tourist Third Cabin: Steamship Travel in the Interwar Years

 

Front Cover and Spine, Tourist Third Cabin: Steamship Travel in the Interwar Years by Lorraine Coons and Alexander Varias, 2003.

Front Cover and Spine, Tourist Third Cabin: Steamship Travel in the Interwar Years by Lorraine Coons and Alexander Varias, 2003. Jacket Design by Sarah Delson. Jacket Photograph © Corbis. GGA Image ID # 2041a20636

 

Review by GG Archives

Drs. Coons and Varias present a very readable account that explains the many factors that affected steamship travel during the first half of the twentieth century. Their research comprehensively guides the reader through the influences and occasional dangers of transatlantic travel. From class differences, steamship company profits and motivations, advertising and promotion, officers, crew, and passengers, all are addressed through anecdotal stories, emphasizing the social and cultural significance of each. The authors provide the readers with more than a glimpse of what steamship travel was like. Immigrants to VIP passengers, first class through steerage, and many ships are addressed throughout the book.

 

Synopsis

Ocean Liners and New Vistas of Interwar Society From Immigrants to Tourists. The Changing Complexion of Translatlantic Passengers as The Soul of a Ship. Experience and Life of Below-Deck Personnel Traveling Palace or Floating Sweatshop. The Experience of Women Seafarers Projecting an Image: The Allure of Transatlantic Travel.

 

From the Inside DJ Flap

Tourist Third Cabin offers a window into a bygone era in which modern steamships like the Queen Mary, the Normandie, and the Olympic transported new breeds of tourists between Europe and North America, dazzling them with their technological marvels and palatial interiors.

The interwar period saw the birth of mass transatlantic tourism as women, students, and ordinary people took to the seas in search of education, fun, and freedom. It was also a period of tumultuous social and cultural change.

Historians Lorraine Coons and Alexander Varias offer an intimate glimpse of the microcosm of the changing world that was the luxury liner. From crewmembers to passengers, ship decor to technological innovation, through labor unrest and political upheaval, we see the social world and travel business at the dawn of the modern age.

 

Back Cover, Tourist Third Cabin: Steamship Travel in the Interwar Years by Lorraine Coons and Alexander Varias, 2003.

Back Cover, Tourist Third Cabin: Steamship Travel in the Interwar Years by Lorraine Coons and Alexander Varias, 2003. GGA Image ID # 20421bc17b

 

From the Back Cover

"The last great age of ocean liners was also a period of great changes in clientele, design, and even the function of the giant passenger ships that traversed the Atlantic. Lorraine Coons and Alexander Varias have succeeded in recreating that social and cultural milieu.

They take us into the chains, the crew quarters, the luxurious public rooms, and the design studios of the Queen Mary and Normandie. And while seeking to capture the common experience of these liners, they are also sensitive to the variations between classes, ships, and the very identities companies like Cunard or the French Line sought to project in modern times."

—Michael Miller, Syracuse University

 

CONTENTS

  • Acknowledgments
  • Preface
  • Chapter One Ocean Liners and the New Vistas of Interwar Society
  • Chapter Two From Immigrants to Tourists: The Changing Complexion of Transatlantic Passengers
  • Chapter Three The Soul of a Ship: Experience and Life of Below-Deck Personnel
  • Chapter Four Traveling Palace or Floating Sweatshop: The Experience of Women Seafarers
  • Chapter Five Projecting an Image: The Allure of Transatlantic Travel
  • Chapter Six The Controversies of Design: Modernism and Traditional Style on the Liners
  • Conclusion Liners in the Afterglow
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index

Twenty-Four Black & White Photographs are included between pages 166 and 167.

 

About the Authors

Lorraine Coons, Ph.D., Archivist and Professor Emerita of History at the Logue Library at Chestnut Hill College. She has published two books "Orphans of the Sweated Trades": Women Homeworkers in the Parisian Garment Trades (1860-1915) and "Tourist Third Cabin": Steamship Travel in the Interwar Years (co-authored with Alexander Varias). Dr. Coons is a frequent contributor to the journal of the Steamship Historical Society of America.

Dr. Alexander Varias holds a Ph.D. from New York University in Modern French History/Intellectual History. His books include "Tourist Third Cabin: Steamship Travel in the Interwar Years (co-authored with Dr. Lorraine Coons) and Paris and the Anarchists: Aesthetes and Subversives During the Fin de Siècle. He has published numerous scholarly articles on cultural history and has been a travel writer for several publications. He has lectured at sea with several lines, including Cunard Linea and Holland America. Alexander Varias lectures in history and humanities, Villanova University.

 

 

Library of Congress Catalog Listing

  • Personal name: Coons, Lorraine.
  • Main title: Tourist third cabin: steamship travel in the interwar years / Lorraine Coons and Alexander Varias.
  • Edition: 1st ed.
  • Published/Created: New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
  • Description: xxv, 294 p., [16] p. of plates: ill.; 22 cm.
  • ISBN: 0312214294
  • LC Classification: G550 .C723 2003
  • Related names: Varias, Alexander, 1953-
  • LC Subjects: Ocean travel--History--20th century. Steamboat lines--History--20th century. Steamboats--History--20th century.
  • Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [277]-285) and index.
  • LCCN: 2003046022
  • Dewey class no.: 910.4/5/09042
  • Type of material: Book

 

 

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