SS NORMANDIE

Artist James A. Flood

Built by Chantiers d'Atlantique at St. Nazaire, France in 1935, the SS Normandie weighed 82,799 gross tons, was 1028 feet long, 117 feet wide, and designed to transport 1,972 passengers. Her steam turboelectric engines, quadruple screw, were technologically state-of-the-art, running at a service speed of 29 knots, 31 knots reserve.
Commissioned for the French Line in May of 1935, her impressive speed immediately earned her the coveted Blue Ribbon.

Finances had not been spared in constructing and decorating the Normandie. An unparalleled masterpiece, she was quintessentially French in her artful and opulent décor; a hallmark of post-depression success for France. Her dining room, three decks high, could serve up to one thousand patrons, and was ornately outfitted with hammered glass, Lilique, and bronze fittings. Draped with hand woven tapestries offset by gilded columns, her Grand Salon was a popular meeting place, while her Winter Garden sported live birds. The indoor pool, designed with intricately tessellated mosaic tile, contained 80 feet of graduated levels.

Sadly, her legendary days as a super liner were to be short lived. Seized by US authorities in the frenzy of World War II, she was stripped of her valuable décor and renamed the USS Lafayette. Docked at a New York pier, she was to become a casualty of incompetence rather than war. In an embarrassingly unsuccessful endeavor to convert her into a troopship, the vessel first caught on fire, was flooded in a vain attempt to save her, and ultimately capsized. It was February of 1942. She was later salvaged and broken up in 1946-1947.