Arcadia (ship, 1953)
 The Arcadia in Vancouver, May 1974
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The Arcadia was a passenger ship that entered service in 1954 for the British Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O). She was converted into a cruise ship in 1970 and remained in service until 1979. In April 1979 the ship arrived in Taiwan , where it was scrapped. The Arcadia was one of the last scheduled passenger ships to be built for P&O.
history
Planning and construction
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The Arcadia was built as one of two sister ships at John Brown & Company in Clydebank . The ship represented an enlarged and modernized version of the older Chusan and Himalaya as well as the Orcades and Oronsay belonging to the partner company Orient Steam Navigation Company .
The Arcadia was laid down on June 28, 1951 and launched on May 14, 1954. Godmother was the wife of Lord Anderson, the then chairman of P&O. On February 20, 1954, the new ship was delivered to the shipping company. The Arcadia was at that time the largest ship ever for the cruise line was built.
Sister ship of the Arcadia was the Iberia , which entered service in September 1954 , but was not built in Clydebank, but in Belfast .
Service time as a passenger ship
The Arcadia ran on February 22, 1954 on her maiden voyage from Tilbury to Fremantle in Australia . Stopovers were the Suez Canal , Aden , Bombay and Colombo .
After completing her maiden voyage, the ship was used for cruises from Southampton . In May 1954 the Arcadia collided in the port of Tilbury with the tug Cervia , which then sank. Five crew members of the tug were killed, among them the captain W. Russell. The wreck of the Cervia was then lifted and has been preserved as a museum ever since.
In October 1954, the Arcadia returned to regular service to Australia. Further cruises took place from Sydney and San Francisco in 1959 , after the ship had been modernized in the same year. Among other things, all cabins were equipped with air conditioning. From the 1960s the ship was used in addition to its activity as a liner passenger ship at regular intervals for cruises from Great Britain and Australia.
Service as a cruise ship
In 1970 the Arcadia was converted into a full-time cruise ship after the liner service to Australia had become uneconomical. For the next four years, the Arcadia was stationed on the west coast of the USA . In the summer months the ship was used for cruises to Alaska , in the winter months to Mexico and Hawaii .
On January 17, 1973, during a cruise from San Francisco to Hawaii , the ship passed the Spirit of London , which was on its maiden voyage and which was also part of the P&O fleet, as a greeting .
In 1975 the Arcadia was relocated to Australia to replace the Himalaya , which was decommissioned in October 1974 . After a last cruise to Great Britain, the ship was henceforth used for trips to Asia . The Arcadia was henceforth the last still in service unit of the passenger ships built by P&O in the 1940s and 1950s.
Retirement
In February 1979, the now 25-year-old Arcadia was decommissioned after the Sea Princess, which P&O had bought , and towed to Taiwan, where it arrived on April 30, 1979. There the former flagship of P&O was scrapped. The Arcadia had a much longer service life than the Iberia and outlived both this and its predecessor ships, which were all taken out of service between 1972 and 1974, by several years.
The ship's bell of Arcadia was saved from the scrap yard and can be visited in the Southampton Maritime Museum.
Incidents
in September 1954 the tug Cervia sank in Tilbury harbor after it had come too close to the Arcadia and was capsized by the ship's stern wave . Five of the eleven crew members of the tug were killed.
In June 1961, the Arcadia ran into a coral reef off Hawaii and was no longer able to free itself. After two days, the ship could be towed free and continue its journey. The Arcadia was only slightly damaged in this incident.
In 1962, the bow of the Arcadia was badly damaged when the ship wanted to enter the port of Tilbury in heavy seas and put the anchor. The Arcadia was pushed aside by the strong wind , causing the anchor to tear a hole in the ship's wall.
Furnishing
The public areas of the Arcadia were furnished in the Greek style and also had Greek names. The first class dining room was named Olympic , while the tourist class dining room was called the Corinthic .
The ship had a total of sixteen public rooms, nine of which were in the first class. The equipment of the first class included the so-called lookout bar , which was located directly under the ship's navigating bridge. In addition, the Arcadia was equipped with a library, a ballroom, a lounge, several cafes and bars and a pool. Children had their own playroom. The first class rooms were at the level of the promenade deck.
The tourist class on decks A, B and C also had its own pool in addition to several lounges and bars.
Others
In 1964, the Arcadia appeared together with the French liner Flandre in an episode of the American television series Perry Mason . The main characters of the series meet in a scene in the port of Acapulco in front of the two anchored ships.
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Web links
- The history of the ship on pandosnco.co.uk
- Photographs of the ship on shipspotting.com
- Arcadia postcard motifs on simplonpc.co.uk
Footnotes
- ^ P&O Heritage
- ^ Reuben Goossens: P&O SS Iberia. Retrieved August 25, 2015 .
- ↑ Steam Tug "Cervia". Retrieved February 26, 2016 .
- ^ The Royal Mail Ship ARCADIA 1953-1979. Retrieved December 8, 2015 .