Lives of the liners: The wreckers' ball
by Published on 23rd February 2017 06:31 AM
Empress of France.jpg
During her winter refit of 1958-59, the thirty-year-old Empress of France was slightly modernized. Her funnels were tapered to give her a more modern appearance. However, time was running out – the commercial jet appeared for the first in October 1958 and the competition proved unbeatable. Shipping lines began losing business – and quite quickly. Furthermore, with the brand new Empress of Canada due to enter in the spring of 1961, the aged Empress of France was soon redundant. Her final crossing was scheduled for October 1960. Two months later, on December 19th, she left Liverpool for the breakers at Newport in nearby Monmouthshire. (Just three days before, another well known Atlantic liner, Cunard's Britannic, left Liverpool for the breakers at Inverkeithing. The Atlantic liner trade had begun its gradual, but definite decline.)
During the demolition of the Empress of France, some of the ship's wood paneling was removed and sold for use in the White Hart Pub in Machen, near Caerphilly in South Wales. It endured for decades, but the pub was closed in the spring of 2016. It has been reported that the pub was up for sale and would most likely be demolished to make way for a small housing development. The paneling will most likely be lost in the demolition.
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