Saga Rose Greenland Voyager August 2007

[Conte Di Savoia]

Re-checking the other photograph of Uncle Frank relaxing on the deck chair during mid-voyage, I now think that it was in a First Class space between two funnels, because if it was behind the last funnel the structure would have been the Verandah Grill which was higher above the deck. Do you agree, Conte? There is smoke streaming out of the funnel. The man sitting behind Uncle Frank has a piece of paper over his nose to protect it from sunburn.

 

Donald, I believe I can help you out with this one. This picture was not taken aboard Queen Mary but is actually set in the First Class deck space between the funnels of Queen Elizabeth. Queen Mary did not have open areas like this between her funnels and her funnels did not have the slit-like intakes seen in this photo. I checked my reference books to confirm this and also have a picture I took last February when we stayed on board her prior to our Queen Victoria cruise to Hawaii. The funnels on Queen Mary in Long Beach are fiberglass reproductions of the originals but this picture also demonstrates a feature of the Mary's....namely all those guy wires that held them in place. The picture shows that there isn't much space between the funnels for anything like the deck space seen in your photos.

 

 

I also checked some old Cunard brochures I have to try and locate the exact location aboard the Elizabeth where the photos were taken. Here is one photo with an arrow I added to show the location between the funnels and an aerial view which shows the deck with rows of empty deck chairs. So I am 100% sure that your Uncle Frank was relaxing aboard Queen Elizabeth. I like a well-traveled man!

 

 

 

 

 

 

So in gathering this information I came across a couple of old pictures of one of my (long) past voyages aboard Michelangelo in 1970. I'm the well tanned handsome chap on the far left and clockwise from there, my father, mother and two family friends. The waiters were Aldo and Vincenzo. Where are they now?

 

 

I apologize to any who might not find this minutia terribly interesting, but gathering and scanning it did occupy the better part of my morning. I love being retired!

Edited July 27, 2011 by Conte Di Savoia

[Kapricorn]

Conte, you are absolutely right, I can now see that the photograph was taken aboard Queen Elizabeth. Charles had written "Queen Mary 1953" on the backs of these two pictures. I now know that Charles indeed accompanied my uncle on that voyage, because when I visited them in Philadelphia during the mid-1990s I was shown their photo album. One picture showed them together at a shipboard dinner in 1953. Perhaps they sailed on Queen Mary and returned on Queen Elizabeth.

Yes, Uncle Frank was a well-traveled man. He sailed to Europe just about every year. During the 1960s I asked him which transatlantic liners he had been on, and he had trouble remembering them all. Unfortunately I no longer have his list, though I remember the names Alaunia, post-war Mauretania and one of the Conte ships. He favoured Cunard Line and Italian Line.

 

Your pictures did not show up in your post. I would love to see these. Did you upload to Photobucket and then copy the IMG to your post? You also can upload in thumbprints (see "manage attachments" under Additional Options when you compose your next post).

 

Donald.

[Saga Ruby]

Your pictures did not show up in your post. I would love to see these. Did you upload to Photobucket and then copy the IMG to your post? You also can upload in thumbprints (see "manage attachments" under Additional Options when you compose your next post).

Donald.

 

I had the same problem until I signed onto CC and the Snapfish links bloomed.

 

Conte - amazing photos. I like the art deco MDR chairs on Michaelangelo. And you are, indeed, a handsome lad.

 

We appreciate the time and effort which you and Donald took to find archived photos of days gone by. I envision each of you in an intense archaeological dig of your memory books and files of ocean liners. The results are intriguing and most appreciated.

 

Ruby

[Kapricorn]

I had the same problem until I signed onto CC and the Snapfish links bloomed.

 

Snapfish links? How do I see these photographs? When I open CC it says "Welcome Kapricorn" so I'm not sure if there is someplace else I need to sign into.

 

Donald.

[Kapricorn]

I logged out of CC and logged back in, but still no Conte's photographs?

 

Donald.

[MMDown Under]

Marion, so you have a 13C range between low and high daily temperatures. That is quite a wide margin! Ruby, that's a low of 48F and high of 71F which Marion mentioned. :D

 

Donald.

 

Just checked the weather and the min temperatures are lower in Brisbane, than at the Gold Coast. Our maximums are fairly constant, with sunshine forecast all week.

 

Today - 6 -21 (15c) Brisbane, 13 - 21 (8c) Gold Coast

Tomorrow - 5 - 22 (17c), Brisbane 12 - 21 (9c) Gold Coast

 

Winter is lovely here, whilst summer can be too hot and humid. However, the Gold Coast does get relief from cooling sea breezes.

 

Sorry, I couldn't open the photos either, Conte (just little round circles).

[Kapricorn]

Marion, thanks for comparing the weather in Brisbane and the Gold Coast. I know that Australia has weather variables, just like here in Canada, but yours is much milder.

 

If you saw "little round circles" you've seen much more than I did, which is a blank area. Hopefully Ruby will explain how we can see these pictures.

 

Donald.

[Conte Di Savoia]

Try right clicking on the icon and select "Open In New Tab".

I wanted the pictures to be included in the body of the posting, but despite copying what SnapFish listed as the address to use as a link, I could not get them to appear. I don't understand why.

[Kapricorn]

Try right clicking on the icon and select "Open In New Tab".

I wanted the pictures to be included in the body of the posting, but despite copying what SnapFish listed as the address to use as a link, I could not get them to appear. I don't understand why.

 

Icon? I do not see any icons where the pictures might have been. There are just blank spaces between the paragraphs. I right-clicked here and there without success. Maybe Ruby will tell me and Marion her secret to accessing these pictures?

 

Donald.

[Saga Ruby]

Icon? I do not see any icons where the pictures might have been. There are just blank spaces between the paragraphs. I right-clicked here and there without success. Maybe Ruby will tell me and Marion her secret to accessing these pictures? Donald.

 

When I am reading the posts and not logged in, there are white blank spaces between Conte's descriptions of what we should be able to see, about 8-10 blank lines between each comment.

 

If I sign onto CC, suddenly I see links to Snapfish photo galleries with the individual photos per description.

 

Ruby

[Kapricorn]

When I am reading the posts and not logged in, there are white blank spaces between Conte's descriptions of what we should be able to see, about 8-10 blank lines between each comment.

 

If I sign onto CC, suddenly I see links to Snapfish photo galleries with the individual photos per description.

 

Ruby

 

Ruby, your descriptions of the white blank spaces are exactly what I see. When you say "sign into CC" do you mean "log in to CC"? I am logged in with my username and password, and still do not see neither pictures nor icons to click on.

 

Donald.

[MMDown Under]

Try right clicking on the icon and select "Open In New Tab".

I wanted the pictures to be included in the body of the posting, but despite copying what SnapFish listed as the address to use as a link, I could not get them to appear. I don't understand why.

 

Yes, that worked.

 

I was expecting the pictures to appear where the little squares were, but they appeared up the top under Snapfish tabs.

 

Thanks for going to all the trouble to find and share those interesting photos.

 

Yes, being retired has its advantages.

[Saga Ruby]

Ruby, your descriptions of the white blank spaces are exactly what I see. When you say "sign into CC" do you mean "log in to CC"? I am logged in with my username and password, and still do not see neither pictures nor icons to click on. Donald.

 

Yes, I originally viewed only white spaces; when I logged in to CC, the white spaces had blue URL links to the pix.

 

I am Windows XP and Verizon FiOS. Are you a Mac user? Is Conte? Other than the above, I'm out of suggestions.

 

Ruby

[Conte Di Savoia]

I use Vista and XP depending upon which of my computers I'm using.

Can Host Sharon help with this? Pictures which I had posted early on in this discussion were linked to Latest Cruise News Web site. Those links have become inactive on CC and every time I tried to use my albums from that site the CruiseCritic site replaces the address with ***'s. Over a year ago I asked this site to advise why this was a problem......still waiting for a response. I will try to add these pictures as thumb nails but the size of the pictures is not the same as when they are incorporated into the body of the posting.

[Kapricorn]

Hallelujah! David explained to me that I have four browsers on my computer. I went to one of the others ... and voila! there were icons visible, and clicking on them made Conte's pictures appear! :):)

 

Great stuff, Conte! Is Aldo the one striking the Napoleon pose? Yes, Ruby, Conte was the handsome devil in these days. I would have been a geeky nerd standing beside him.

 

Conte, thanks also for the Queen Elizabeth material. Now I can imagine Uncle Frank and Charles relaxing on these deck chairs in that large space between the two funnels.

 

Ruby, I am positive that Conte has much more in his archives than I do.

 

Donald.

Edited July 28, 2011 by Kapricorn

[Saga Ruby]

Hallelujah! David explained to me that I have four browsers on my computer. I went to one of the others ... and voila! there were icons visible, and clicking on them made Conte's pictures appear!

 

Ruby, I am positive that Conte has much more in his archives than I do.

Donald.

 

Excelsior! We have pix! I'm so used to using Firefox for a browser that I forget that there are other choices out there.

 

Yes, Conte has excellent ocean liner archives. Once upon a time in this thread, he showed us a brochure from long ago where the ship was sailing, I think, from Brazil to Africa or Europe and the length of the cruise was 54 days. The ship made days'-long stopovers in various ports. The brochure demonstrated the lazy hazy days of crossings so long ago. The cover of that brochure was magnificent graphic art.

 

Ruby

[Conte Di Savoia]

I solved the picture problem by opening up an account with Photobucket and reloading the pictures. So here they are in all their glory without having to manipulate the icons.

 

 

Donald, I believe I can help you out with this one. This picture was not taken aboard Queen Mary but is actually set in the First Class deck space between the funnels of Queen Elizabeth. Queen Mary did not have open areas like this between her funnels and her funnels did not have the slit-like intakes seen in this photo. I checked my reference books to confirm this and also have a picture I took last February when we stayed on board her prior to our Queen Victoria cruise to Hawaii. The funnels on Queen Mary in Long Beach are fiberglass reproductions of the originals but this picture also demonstrates a feature of the Mary's....namely all those guy wires that held them in place. The picture shows that there isn't much space between the funnels for anything like the deck space seen in your photos.

 

 

I also checked some old Cunard brochures I have to try and locate the exact location aboard the Elizabeth where the photos were taken. Here is one photo with an arrow I added to show the location between the funnels and an aerial view which shows the deck with rows of empty deck chairs. So I am 100% sure that your Uncle Frank was relaxing aboard Queen Elizabeth. I like a well-traveled man!

 

 

 

 

 

 

So in gathering this information I came across a couple of old pictures of one of my (long) past voyages aboard Michelangelo in 1970. I'm the well tanned handsome chap on the far left and clockwise from there, my father, mother and two family friends. The waiters were Aldo and Vincenzo. Where are they now?

 

 

I apologize to any who might not find this minutia terribly interesting, but gathering and scanning it did occupy the better part of my morning. I love being retired!

[Conte Di Savoia]

Great stuff, Conte! Is Aldo the one striking the Napoleon pose? Yes, Ruby, Conte was the handsome devil in these days. I would have been a geeky nerd standing beside him.

 

Conte, thanks also for the Queen Elizabeth material. Now I can imagine Uncle Frank and Charles relaxing on these deck chairs in that large space between the two funnels.

 

Ruby, I am positive that Conte has much more in his archives than I do.

 

Donald.

 

I had to laugh about geeky nerd. Having an obsession about ocean liners doesn't exactly put me in the mainstream! I'm just another citizen of Nerdville.

 

Yes, Conte has excellent ocean liner archives. Once upon a time in this thread, he showed us a brochure from long ago where the ship was sailing, I think, from Brazil to Africa or Europe and the length of the cruise was 54 days. The ship made days'-long stopovers in various ports. The brochure demonstrated the lazy hazy days of crossings so long ago. The cover of that brochure was magnificent graphic art.

 

Ruby

 

Here's that book one more time. It is a hardcover edition given to the passengers on that voyage. The inside is filled with information about each of the countries visited and they often stayed in ports for a few days to give the guests plenty of opportunity to get a feel for the country they were visiting. None of this Florence-in-one-day type of adventure we see today. Unfortunately I never got to sail aboard the original Caronia. She was the epitome of high class cruising. I found this brochure in a small antique shop near home.

.

 

Ruby, you also noticed the chairs in Michelangelo's Monte Carlo Dining Room. They, as well as the rest of the room were designed by Gustavo Pulitzer Finali, a very prominent marine decorator/architect. In fact he was responsible for the interior decor of my namesake, Conte Di Savoia. This restaurant was his swan song for the Italian Line. Now that I have this picture posting down to a science I'm including a panoramic view of the room. The chairs were designed specifically for this public space, not like ships nowadays where the furniture seems "off the rack" so to speak. Finali also designed the dining room on one of Donald's favorite ships, Incres Line's Victoria. Finali was an interesting character. He was born in Trieste and was of Italian-Jewish heritage. He fled Italy during the war and came to the US where he worked for clients in New York City and Los Angeles. After the war he returned to Italy and resumed his career.

[Kapricorn]

Yes, I remember the beautiful brochure for SS Caronia. A very eye-catching cover! I love the leisurely pace of cruises in these days.

 

Was Victoria's dining room the only room aboard that ship designed by Finali? Here is a picture of the ship's Roman Restaurant, taken from a brochure which I still possess.

 

 

Below is the full size of the photograph taken at my table, clearly showing the light fixtures on the wall, along with the curtains and chairs. I am third from right.

 



 

Donald.

[Conte Di Savoia]

Donald, Finali was responsible for the entire ship, every public room and stateroom. From what I have read (I have a book which chronicles his career) he even designed the look of the exterior of the ship when it underwent conversion from Dunnottar Castle everything from the design of the funnel to the shape of the public rooms. A little known fact is that he also had a hand in the design of American Export's Constitution and Independence.

 

By the way, some of his cabin chairs are still available through Peter Knego's Web site, Midship Century. Peter was able to rescue some of these when the ship was dismantled in Alang. You can recreate your Victoria experience in your apartment! I always wished that I had had the chance to sail on her. She was a very highly regarded cruise ship and very popular in the New York area. It looks like you were with a pretty happy group.

 

Oh, before I forget, the waiter striking the Napoleonic pose is Aldo as you surmised.

[Kapricorn]

Conte, thanks for confirming Aldo as the Napoleon wannabe. :D

 

I will take a look at the chairs in Peter Knego's site. So, Finali designed the entire interior of Victoria! Here is a picture from the brochure of the ship's Riviera Ballroom.

 

 

And here's a photograph taken in there during a Repeaters' Ball. I am on the left. It was my first time on Incres Lines, but one of my table companions got permission from the cruise director to have me along as a guest. I am sitting on one of the armless chairs visible in the background of the brochure picture. A couple of people are sitting on chairs brought in from the card room to handle the overflow of people. It is clearly obvious that Victoria was appreciated and enjoyed by those who regularly cruised on her.

 

 

Donald.

Edited July 28, 2011 by Kapricorn

[Kapricorn]

Finali's El Patio Lounge on Victoria apparently had its interior changed by 1972, with wicker seats and wooden railing tops replaced by higher quality material. This is the only public space aboard the ship that had a slightly raised deck around the dance floor.

 

 

Compare this with the photograph taken in 1972. I'm on the right. In my opinion, the change in interior design was a big improvement. The original furnishings was too casual.

 

 

Donald.

[Conte Di Savoia]

So, Donald, I got out my Victoria brochures and found this picture of the Bamboo Club...my God they had more dance floors on that ship! This one shows chairs which are very typical of Finali. He loved this shape and used it as a signature. His studio used them repeatedly on several ships. The second picture is the First Class lounge aboard Cristoforo Colombo, another Finali ship, which shows chairs which are not exactly like those in the Bamboo Club, but the shape is very similar.

Cristoforo Colombo and Andrea Doria were twin ships but with entirely different ambiance. Here is a picture of the equivalent First Class Lounge on the Doria, a room which was the collaborative work of the other two 20th century titans of Italian design, Gio Ponti and Nino Zoncada. Notice how the entire wall is a work of art, drawing on the Italian love of fresco painting here inspired by the Renaissance artist Piero Della Francesca. Can you spot the portrait of Michelangelo (the artist, not the ship)?

[Kapricorn]

Thanks for the picture of the Bamboo Club on Victoria. I don't remember that room, as I never used it. During the cruise I did not drink except for complimentary beverages during the special events, nor did I engage in late-night partying. The chairs in the Bamboo Club certainly looked comfortable - I'm sure that Finali sat on prototypes before making his final designs.

 

The artwork on Cristoforo Colombo and Andrea Doria are splendid, though perhaps overwhelming rather than understated. But that was the Italian flair. Leonardo da Vinci's portrait is near the right side of the picture, next to the painting of the statue. It took a little bit of time to search for it among all the details. These artwork certainly must have been conversation pieces among the First Class passengers.

 

Donald.

[Conte Di Savoia]

The artwork on Cristoforo Colombo and Andrea Doria are splendid, though perhaps overwhelming rather than understated.

Donald.

 

Here is the epitome of over the top, the Gio Ponti Zodiac Suite aboard Andrea Doria. This surely had to be a tongue-in-cheek joke by the designer. I would have been afraid to fall asleep in this room with the chance that the astrological characters become alive after dark ala the movie A Night at The Museum!

 

I think we must be scaring off the other posters, but I hope people are learning a bit about ship design and how it sets the stage for the on board experience where we passengers become the actors.

Edited July 30, 2011 by Conte Di Savoia