Travel Tuesday: Mom's Trip to Europe, 1953 - The SS United States

SS United States in dock at Pier 86 in New York shortly before the 31 July 1964 sailing to Le Havre and Southampton / Jrcovert (Own work) / CC-BY-SA-3.0

From Mom's Europe trip diary, in the "GOING" section:

Went down to boat with car Wednesday [August 5] and took care of arrangements for car.

The SS United States was built in 1950-1952 and had its maiden voyage just a little over a year before Mom's sailing on it, on July 3, 1952, when it broke the transatlantic speed record.

The July 21, 1952 issue of Life magazine had an article (with great photographs!) about the ship and that record-breaking voyage.  We have that issue in print in my library - here is a cutaway diagram of the ship (from a fold-out insert between pages 58 and 59):

Mom and her friends were in Tourist Class, and her car would have been in Cargo Hold #1, in the bow of the ship.

Mom said it cost $750 to take her car overseas.  That was a lot of money in 1953!

This is the third in a series of posts about my mother's 1953 Europe Trip.

© Amanda Pape - 2014 - click here to e-mail me.