#ss leviathan

[postingcards]

uss leviathan in her dazzle camouflage running at 22 knots real photo postcard ca. 1918

[rayenigma]

it's finally time i can share my piece for @dredgefanzine !!! i had so much fun working on this piece, tried so many new things! It's almost 6 months old now but i'm still very happy with it :] me when i sneak an ocean liner into a zine piece oooooo

is it safe to say that the stellar basin passenger vessel wreck is one of my favourite characters in the game

+ft my oc dredger who dredges something something lala

[your-resident-boat-person]

whats the ocean liner with the best name, in your opinion? :3

EASILY the SS Leviathan from 1913.

I mean, can you think of a better name for a veritable SEA GIANT? She was originally launched as the SS Vaterland for the German Hamburg-America line. She was 950 feet (290 meters) long, and 59,956 Gross Registered Tons. She only completed 4 passenger voyages before the beginning of World War 1, and she was in New York at the time, so she wouldn't be making it home until the end of the war. She was laid up in New Jersey for years until the United States entered the war. Then, they seized the ship, renamed her USS Leviathan, and converted her into a troopship. Most of her luxurious passenger accommodations were literally thrown overboard as she was being converted. After the war, the US got to keep her as war reparations, while the UK got to keep her 2 sisters. Now the SS Leviathan, she needed to be re-converted to a passenger ship. This job would be given to my personal hero, naval architect William Francis Gibbs. In fact, it was the first job his firm was ever given. He would go on to design the SS America, my favorite ocean liner of all time, and then, the SS United States, the fastest ocean liner of all time, even to this day. But back to Leviathan, her German builders were holding her plans ransom for what would today be FIFTEEN MILLION DOLLARS. Wanting nothing to do with THAT, Gibbs was hired to draw up entirely new plans for her. This is actually really strange, because you build a ship from a pre-existing set of plans. Now, we're trying to make plans for a pre-existing ship. Gibbs didn't even know where her center of gravity was, but nevertheless he set to work with a small army of men measuring every inch of the ship. Once this was done, work began to redecorate the ship to appeal to a more "modern" American taste. After all, a ten year old German ship was unlikely to appeal in the mid 1920s. By the end, the Specifications Gibbs finally submitted were 1,024 pages long, with THIRTEEN PAGES dedicated to clockface design alone. Gibbs was famously very meticulous and had an insane attention to detail, and this is one of my favorite examples. The process of drawing up these new plans took an entire year, but at the end, 9 years after her launch and nearly half a decade after the end of the war, the SS Vaterland emerged anew as the SS Leviathan. Where once hung a portrait of Ludwig of Bavaria, now hung a picture of then US president Warren G Harding. Unfortunately, alcohol was VERY important to the traveling public, and since she was a US flagged ship during prohibition, alcohol wasn't allowed to be served on board. This was actually changed later in her career, when she got special permission to serve alcohol in international waters, but by then it was too late. She had gone her entire career with United States Lines having never generated a profit. She served with them from July 4th 1923, to sometime in 1938 when she was sold for scrap. Captain John Binks, retired master of the RMS Olympic was hired to take her to the scrapper, and to quote author Melvin Maddocks, "Binks was not the luckiest of men now he had a ship to match him...it was no easier steering the old monster to her slaughter than it was to steer her any where else." In the 13 years that she served United States Lines, she carried more than a quarter-million passengers, never once making a profit.

[teilzami]

Our differences make us stronger! Each woman is unique and it's amazing! We are sisters, not enemies, women should support each other, because only together we can make this world better (Fun fact: each shipgirl wears a dress of her favorite color)

This celebration is very important for me. Feminism helped me to accept myself, recover from inner misogyny, and become a better person. Something tells me our grandmothers didn't fight for prohibition of education, abortions, and other basic human rights for women in 2020s. We should pick up where they left off. Feminism is still needed (in 21st century dammit)

Another fun fact: my story of human liners isn't about ships. It's about women

[coloursteelsexappeal]

MV Georgic, RMS Olympic, SS Leviathan, SS Pennland, and SS Paris at Ocean Liner Row - New York, New York; 1930s

[voca1ion]

Magazine from 1923 promoting the United States Lines’ S.S. Leviathan, including many photos of her interior.

[bigshipfanatic]

Any SS Leviathan/Vaterland fans out there?

[lonestarbattleship]

"MIGHTIEST FOR WAR AND FOR PEACE. Uncle Sam's latest and largest battleship U.S.S. COLORADO' docked alongside the giant S.S. "LEVIATHAN."

Both Queens of the Seas. COLORADO, (left) the largest of Uncle Sam's battleships, was dwarfed in the shadow of the giant Leviathan as they lay together for the first time at the River Pier at West 44th St., N.Y. COLORADO looks like a tiny craft alongside of the mighty Levnathan."

Date: November 9, 1923

AP Photo: link