Ivernia
by Published on 11th January 2016 05:46 AM
ivernia_montreal_58_a.jpg
Sixty years ago, in the winter of 1955, the second of a new quartet of liners for the great Cunard Steam-Ship Co Ltd was being readied at the John Brown shipyard at Scotland's Clydebank. From those same illustrious builders of ships, the 23,000-ton Ivernia would follow in the wake of such illustrious liners as the Lusitania, Aquitania, Queen Mary & Queen Elizabeth.
The 900-passenger Ivernia, with quarters divided between a small, upper-deck first class and a far larger tourist class (90% of the ship, in fact), she was preceded by the Saxonia and would be followed, in 1956 and '57, by the Carinthia and Sylvania. These sister ships were in fact Cunard's very last pure Atlantic liners. Airlines would begin overtaking sea travel on the Atlantic beginning in 1958 -- and total supremacy was in place in almost a flash. Designed for UK-Eastern Canada service (and to New York in deep winter), the Ivernia was designed, much to Cunard's subsequent regret, without provision for alternate, profitable winter cruising -- there were no lido decks, outdoor pools and far too few cabins without private bathroom facilities. All four ships were soon out of step, money-losing and misplaced.
The 608-ft long Ivernia, seen here at Quebec City (on a crossing from Southampton, Le Havre & Cobh), was, however, rebuilt for more cruising (and fewer and fewer crossings) in 1962-63 as the restyled, green-colored Franconia. She endured for almost another decade. But in the new, flashier age of the QE2, Cunard retired her in 1971 and sold the ship off two years later to the Soviets, who refitted her (mostly for Western charters) as the Feodor Shalyapin.
The ship did all sorts of voyages in her second career -- UK-Australia line voyages for the London-based CTC Lines, cruises in South Pacific waters out of Sydney and even ferrying "boatloads of soldiers and students" between Odessa and Havana.
Ill-kept, rusting and idle in a Black Sea back water port in her very final years, she was renamed Salona in 2004 for one last voyage in the end -- to the scrappers out at Alang, India. Not bad as liners go -- the former Ivernia had endured for 49 years!
Last edited by Doc Vernon; 22nd March 2016 at 08:46 PM.
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