The final glory of the Italian line

The Italian Line was responsible for the construction of two of the last purpose-built ocean liners. The SS Michelangelo and the SS Raffaello were built in the contemporary style of the 1960s to sail between the Mediterranean and New York. But the era also saw the rise of air travel, against which no ocean liner could compete. The fact that these two sister ships had the brief careers that they did was due to national pride and a large subsidy from the Italian government.

They are worth considering for their beauty and style. They were the actors of the swan song in the age of steam liners; their helmets appropriately decorated in white. They had very striking profiles, stylized and sharp. They had an unusual arrangement of two funnels, behind the center and like the elaborate cooling towers of some sort of sci-fi atomic power plant. This feature was advanced for its time and has been worked into the design of the funnels on today’s ships.

History of the Italian line

The SS Rex and SS Conte di Savoia dictated by Il Duce were expected to make Italy competitive at sea, in keeping with his many lofty aspirations. Claiming to be the faster of the two, the Rex won the Blue Riband in 1932, but she quickly lost it to the supership of the day, The French Line’s SS Normandie. Conte di Savoia was designed as the more luxurious of the two.

The first ships commissioned with a post-war subsidy: the Andrea Doria first sailed in the Atlantic in the winter of 1953. Her brother Cristoforo Colombo launched a year later. The two were nearly identical at over 29,000 shades. The Andrea Doria has the most enduring fame of all Italian ocean liners, sinking conspicuously after being struck by the Swedish American Line’s MS Stockholm in fog on July 25, 1956. She lies off the coast of Nantucket, having attracted daring divers for years, slowly collapsing to the sea floor due to corrosion and snagged fishing nets.

Andrea Doria’s replacement was the 33,000-ton SS Leonardo Da Vinci, with lifeboat mounts that allowed them to be lowered with up to 25 degrees of heel. A lesson learned from the slow sinking of Andrea Doria. Leonardo Da Vinci bridged the technological gap between the oldest ships and Michelangelo and Raffaello.

In 1958, Italian Line began planning a pair of super ships. They would be of a three-class design especially for the frequently scheduled transit between Genoa and New York. The capacity, including the crew, was 2,500 souls. They were built almost simultaneously by two separate shipyards. Both were 900 feet long and weighed 45,000 tons, with thirty halls and a theater with nearly 500 seats each, 760 staterooms, and 18 elevators.

The funnel design became a trademark. Some thought they were horrible, but they were effective at dispersing smoke and engine fumes. The grille construction allowed airflow to pass through, a feature that has become standard on modern cruisers.

Michelangelo: Storm Rider

Manufactured in the Genoa Sestri shipyards, it took five years to complete from start to finish and entered service from Genoa in April 1965. In the spring of 1966, during a stormy voyage to New York, a rogue wave struck headlong, collapsing on the front. of the upper structure under the bridge. Two passengers were lost, swept out to sea, and a crew member later died of his injuries. As a result of the incident, the wrinkled aluminum siding was replaced with steel, not only on the Michelangelo but also on her sister ship and many of her other rival ocean liners, including the SS United States.

She continued in service without another incident, but passenger numbers dropped along with all other ocean liners. Jets simply weren’t accepted, particularly after the introduction of the 747. There was a lackluster attempt at operating cruisers, but many of its features worked against it. Their cabins were small and windowless and of the three-class layout.

Michelangelo was finally withdrawn from service in 1975 and sold to the Shah of Iran, whose shipping plans were thwarted by the Iranian revolution. She spent fifteen years in Bandar Abbas and finally disbanded in Pakistan in 1995.

Raffaello: futuristic style, old-fashioned mode of transport

Twenty-two tons more than its sister and slightly longer, Raffaello was built by Cantieri Riuniti dell’Adriatico in Trieste. He had a relatively uneventful life compared to Michelangelo, with minor engine problems causing delays on some trips.

Raffaello had unique, modernist decor that was a vision of the future that probably wouldn’t be out of place in a modern boutique hotel. He showcased the best that Italian design had to offer in the sixties. The lines were minimalist, reminiscent of the art deco style of many of the great ocean liners. A sleek yet elegant and antiseptic “space age” look, with brushed metal, cool blues, and hardwood paneling. Traveling on this ship would have been a wonderful experience that is lost on the modern hurried traveler.

Unfortunately, she shared the same fate of being sold to Iran in 1975 and sunk by a torpedo off the coast of Bushehr in the Persian Gulf in 1983.

Remembering a bygone era

Michelangelo is long gone and the remains of the Raffaello still rest just below the surface where it sank. Like most other ships of the mid-20th century, she made declarations of romance, taste, national pride, and subsidies, but were quickly displaced by more financially efficient aircraft. There are few organizations that can oversee ships as beautiful as museums. That is the only lasting way to save the few remaining ocean liners: they must be curated as hotels to preserve the history of the time, either through grants (they are unlikely to provide more than partial funding) or by paying for their voyages as fixed hotels. .

Superliners, from the Cunard Queens and the SS Normandie to the SS United States and The Sisters of the Italian Line, had interior spaces of hundreds of thousands of square feet, the size of a great skyscraper. Not many places have a need for such things on their water fronts. Operation as a cruise ship conversion has had limited success, but may not be very competitive in cost or service with the huge modern cruise ships.

So all these ships are a story, a romantic story from a bygone era now. It is easily lost because such ships are no longer used as an exclusive mode of passenger transport. It is because they were once an important mode of transportation, highly valued and central to the pride of their nations, that all these ocean liners, and specifically these two beautiful Italian sisters, must remember.