The Captain’s Table

Link in bio! 🔗

#KindredSpirits #NelsonAspen #Titanic #Book #BlogPost

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Nelson Aspen’s Kindred Spirits: A Titanic Tale links a brief friendship aboard the doomed ship with a modern actor’s aimless life in Manhattan. As past and present intertwine, a supernatural bond helps him find stability and answers in this poignant, time-spanning story.

#Titanic #Movie #ShipOfDreams #LGBTQ #PrideMonth #Pride #BlogPost

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When Titanic premiered in 1997, it was more than just a movie—it was a cultural phenomenon. And for the LGBTQ+ community, the film has become a queer touchstone, resonating for over 25 years. How did this happen?

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Unfortunately, the cruise company went bankrupt in 1995 and Regent Rainbow was seized and eventually sold.

📸: Author’s collection

#RegentRainbow #SantaRosa #OceanLiner #CruiseShip #Ship

SS Regent Rainbow, the former Grace Line ship SS Santa Rosa. She’d been launched in 1957 but was modernized from 1990-1991.

Owned by Regency Cruises, Regent Rainbow was a popular ship with passengers.

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In January 2000, a made-for-TV movie called Britannic aired. It tells a highly fictionalized account of HMHS Britannic and her last days in November 1916. Twenty-plus years later, I decided to watch this film again for Movie Monday.

Link in bio! 🔗

📸: Titanic Wiki

#OTD in 1913, the SS Vaterland was launched at the Blohm & Voss shipyard.

Operated by the Hamburg America Line, the Vaterland was the second in a trio of grand ships. At 54,282 GRT, she was even bigger than the SS Imperator – her older sister.

📸: Public domain

#OTD in 1912, the Titanic began its sea trials. A series of tests were conducted in Belfast Lough and subsequently in the open waters of the Irish Sea over a 12-hour period.

Titanic passed her trials and received a sailing safety certificate.

📸: Public domain

#OTD in 1873, the White Star Line’s SS Atlantic sank off Meagher's Island, Nova Scotia after striking rocks. At least 535 people died, including all women and children (except for one 12-year-old boy).

📸: Public domain

#OTD in 1942, HMT Queen Mary arrived in Sydney, Australia with 8,398 American soldiers aboard. She’d set sail from Boston, Massachusetts on February 18th. It was dubbed the "40 Days and 40 Nights" voyage.

📸: State Library of New South Wales

America’s Flagship, the SS United States.

📸: Frederic Logghe

Violet Jessop was aboard RMS Olympic when it collided with HMS Hawke in 1911. She was later aboard RMS Titanic and survived the disaster. In 1916, with World War I in full swing, she was aboard HMHS Britannic when it struck a mine and sank in 1916.

📸: Public domain

#OTD in 1963, SS Raffaello was launched by Cantieri Riuniti dell'Adriatico in Trieste, Italy.

The Rafaello was the second in a new transatlantic duo. She and her sister, the Michelangelo, were some of the most technologically advanced ocean liners ever built.

📸: Touring Club Italiano

Belinda Bennett made history in January 2016 when Windstar Cruises promoted her to captain of MSY Wind Star. She was the first Black woman to command a cruise ship, as well as the first Black captain in the commercial cruising industry.

📸: Windstar Cruises

Lindsay Smith was the first woman to become chief engineer of a major cruise line. A graduate of the Maine Maritime Academy, she started working for Norwegian Cruise Line in 2003.

📸: US Coast Guard

There's another Lusitania prop outside the Liverpool Maritime Museum

I love this caption so much.

One of the most unlikely of finds. One of the outboard propellers from the RMS Lusitania, in of all places, the garden of a hotel in Dallas, Texas.

Olympic swimmer Hilda James posing aboard RMS Carinthia in 1925. The Cunard Line originally hired her as a swimming instructor aboard the ship, but she quickly became a sort of cruise director. This was especially important as the ship cruised in the offseason.

📸: Library of Congress

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Captain Kate McCue, who left Celebrity Cruises last month, announced on social media earlier today that she’d joined the new Four Seasons Yachts luxury brand.

📸: Marc-Henry Cruise Holdings Ltd, Joint Owner/Operator Four Seasons Yachts

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! ☘️

RMS Celtic was built by Harland & Wolff in Belfast and launched in April 1901. She was the first of a new quartet of White Star Line ships dubbed the “Big Four.” Celtic and her sisters were designed to be the largest and most luxurious passenger ships afloat.

📸: Zach W.

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Inger Klein Thorhauge made history in December 2010 when the Cunard Line promoted her to captain of MV Queen Victoria. It was a historic appointment. She was the first woman to command a Cunard ship in the company’s long history.

📸: Cunard

#OTD in 1912, the P&O cargo liner SS Oceana sank after a collision with the German barque Pisagua. A total of 17 people were killed when their lifeboat crashed into the sea and capsized.

📸: Library of Congress

The Giulio Cesare was one of the first major Italian ships built after World War II. Italy’s merchant fleet had been decimated and needed to be rebuilt. It was the first in a string of new ocean liners that marked the nation’s recovery from the war.

📸: Author’s collection

#OTD in 1918, RMS Amazon was torpedoed and sunk off County Donegal, Ireland. She went down in just 15 minutes, but all passengers and crew survived.

📸: Author’s collection

RMS Campania of the Cunard Line. Launched in September 1892, she entered service in April 1893. Campania was both the largest and fastest ship in the world for a time.

📸: Library of Congress

The Cunard Line’s RMS Lusitania in 1907. Built in response to German liners like Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse and Kronprinz Wilhelm, the “Lucy” was designed to reassert British dominance on the transatlantic passenger trade.

📸: Library of Congress

In 2007, Karin Stahre-Janson was named master of the Monarch of the Seas. She became the first woman to command a “mega” cruise ship. Captain Stahre-Janson would go on to command Serenade of the Seas and Majesty of the Seas.

📸: Royal Caribbean International

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RMS Titanic departed from Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland, on April 11, 1912, with several suffragists aboard. By a twist of fate, several of them were together in Lifeboat No. 6 after the ship hit the iceberg.

📸: Zach W.