The Southern Cross

[Brian Probetts (Site Admin)]

The Southern Cross

1 Comments by Brian Probetts (Site Admin) Published on 5th January 2016 12:44 PM

How passenger ships have grown and the passenger ship business expanded!

Sixty years ago, in the winter of 1955, workers at the Harland & Wolff shipyard at Belfast were adding the finishing touches to the 20,000-ton Southern Cross, the innovative flagship of Britain's Shaw Shaw Line.
The new liner had aroused and intrigued the press, the shjipping industry and ocean travelers across the globe.
In many ways, the 20-knot, twin-screw vessel would be a "ship for tomorrow".
She would be the first major liner to have her engines and therefore her funnel placed aft -- and creating a design style that became increasingly popular.
She was also one of the first all-one class, all-tourist class passenger ships (meaning a passenger in a top-deck suite would share, say, the public areas used by migrants in an inside six-berth down on D Deck).
Indeed, it was the beginning of a new social age at sea! The 604-ft long Southern Cross was also the first passenger liner of size and note that carried no cargo (other than passengers' baggage) whatsoever and so earned her keep exclusively from passenger fares.
She was also designed for a unique service: continuous 76-night around-the-world voyages out of Southampton.

The Southern Cross went on to a long and varied career -- later becoming the Calypso, then Azure Seas and finally Ocean Breeze -- before meeting the scrappers in faraway Bangladesh in 2003.
Photo: As the Ocean Breeze, the former Southern Cross is seen above at Nassau and moored alongside the far newer and larger, 102,000-ton Carnival Triumph, a new generation, 3,500-passenger ship that is in fact five times the size of the older liner. Times on the high seas had changed!

PS: If you have any stories to share about the Southern Cross and her long career, kindly forward them on. We enjoy hearing from others.

[Bill Cameron]

Was the Southern cross mentioned here a sister ship to the Dominion Monarch, emigrant ships to New Zealand in the 1960’s the Dominion Monarch if I remember correctly, had a tough reputation, to serve on her, you needed to have at least two DR’s?

[Captain Kong]

Hi Bill , the Dominion Monarch, some times know as the Dominion Maniac on the Australian coast is a completely different design than the Suffering Cross, or Southern Cross.
Two funnels midships.
built in the 1930s

[Peter F Chard]

#27 From memory we generally bunkered "Heavy Fuel " at Curacao and diesel at Tahiti so sounds like the owners had some sort of arrangement at these places regarding the fuel costs. I remember one occasion at dinner on departure Curacao being asked by an American passenger at my table about how much fuel we had bunkered. I told him 6100 tons. He replied " that does not mean much to me, how many gallons is that? I did a quick think and told him " just over a million " " Jeesus, how many miles do you get to the gallon, I told him " we think the other way around, gallons per mile " I did work it out for him but cannot recall the figure I calculated !! Regards, Peter in NZ.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi All.
This was my wife's cabin on the Southern Cross, six women.

Cheers DesBetty's Cabin.JPG

[j.sabourn]

Gee whiz Des, didn’t know you were a Quaker. Must have quaked every night. Cheers JWS.

[robpage]

That would make sense in Peter because I would have thought the Curacao would have used obey screwed from Venezuela I know one of the Gulf ships spent a lot of time from somewhere near Maracaibo to curacao or Aruba from memory I think the place was called Armoy Bay . So with Venezuelan crude as the base then no wonder you had very high vanadium . Makes you wonder why somebody chose that as a bunker point the only reason that I ever heard of it is because we had this very high sulphur crude and nobody would take it except for charter and I remember somebody saying this is like that crude from Venezuela very few of the refineries could crack it properly one of the stupid things you remember

[Peter F Chard]

Thanks for your post Des, As Inter second engineer on the Northern Star I had my own table in the Restaurant and a small allowance for entertainment. I once got my watchmates ( four engineers ) plus fourteen young female passengers into my cabin for pre-dinner drinkie poos, one of whom became my wife. AH, those were the days !!!. Cheers Peter in NZ.

[happy daze john in oz]

Southern Cross, followed by the northern Star though this ship did not liv ep to expectations and was never considered as good as the Cross. The Cross was built to replace the Dominion Monarch which at one time was for a while banned on the NZ coast due to 'performances' of some crew members.

The explosion on the Cape Town castle was attributed by some to faulty fuel, but again the number of rumors about her went on for years.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi All.
Referring for a minute to Captain Kong's post about migrant ships going via the Cape because of the heat, I can see the point if those kids died in the Red Sea. When I was on the Southern Cross we went via Madeira, Cape Town and Durban, the later two ports we picked up some fare paying passengers. Then it was Freemantle, Melbourne, Sydney and Wellington, not a bad trip for ten quid, wish I could do that now.
Cheers Des

[robpage]

Southern Cross, followed b.....................
The explosion on the Cape Town castle was attributed by some to faulty fuel, but again the number of rumors about her went on for years.

the explosion of the air bottles on the Capetown is well documented and was a bad practice involving the air start valves , forcing them , allowing cylinder gases into the air lines