Ships just like people occasionally need a little makeover to stay fresh but also
just like people sometimes those makeovers can go horribly horribly
wrong. For reasons economical unfortunate or just outright disastrous today let's run
through five of my picks for the worst ship makeovers of all time
Number five the SS America becomes the SS America again when she was first introduced in 1939
the SS America was easily the most modern and stylish American-built ship afloat the second world war
interrupted what should have been a brilliant start to a career as an ocean liner and the
ship served as a troop ship carrying thousands to the pacific and european theatres of war
renamed USS West Point and also sporting a groovy dazzle camouflage paint scheme at the end of the
war America was back in the ocean liner service. Sstill a popular choice for travellers but largely
overshadowed by her much bigger running mate the SS United States by the 1950s by the mid-1960s
the ship was a little tired so the United States Lines sold her to Chandris Lines, a Greek company
hoping to capitalize on the lucrative migrant trade between Europe and Australia you see
Chandris lines were masters at buying aging tired retired ocean liners and refitting them as humble
migrant ships and they did this with the SS America renaming her Australis and putting the
already 24 year old ship back into service for another 14 long years through the 1960s and 70s
while Chandris line was a master at acquiring old vessels and putting them back into service
they were a little less adept at maintaining them and the SS Australis started to look a little bit sad.
In some voyages the ship even developed a list or lean over to one side that wasn't really
rectified for the rest of the voyage! By 1978 the liner had transported hundreds and thousands of
families and was, simply put, run-down so Chandris put the ship on the market and found a buyer in
the form of Venture cruise line. Venture was a budget cruise line based out of New York that
wanted to capitalize on nostalgia for the good old days of american ocean-going travel by running the
ship on voyages to nowhere out of New York City but unfortunately the Australis by this point had
been laid up for a prolonged period of time and was pretty filthy. Crammed full of garbage, old and
tatted furniture and carpets, overflowing sewage and broken piping the ship was a bit of a mess
so venture had a pretty big job on their hands of converting it back into a functioning cruise
ship but they got started the first thing they did was give her her old name back; America. Then they
painted over the Chandris line colours and gave the ship a nice patriotic red white and blue paint
scheme - and that was kind of it! So when passengers stepped aboard for the first time in June 1978
they were appalled to find piles of soiled laundry and linen, rats, broken toilets, piles of trash and
a terrible, terrible smell. America departed the port and started steaming down the Hudson river
but passengers actually mutinied at the horrendous conditions. The ship had only just passed the
statue of liberty when the captain turned America back around and offloaded 960 of her passengers.
Venture was hit with 2.5 million dollars in claims from passengers all future sailings were cancelled
and the company went bust. A US public health service inspection rated the ship six out of
a possible 100 points and it was impounded and put up for sale again. sSe was bought
incredibly by her old owners Chandris line for the princely sum of 1 million dollars
having sold it to Venture for six and a half million dollars and making themselves a nice
five and a half million dollar profit while then getting their ship back in the process.
Good one Chandris! Chandris line being Chandris line they then refitted the ship a bit and put
it back into service as the Italis, cutting off one of the funnels to make the ship - and I quote
"more modern". This lasted for about a year before she was finally pulled from service for the last
time and changed hands three or four times - first to become a prison ship and then for scrap and
finally to become a floating hotel. The ship was to be towed to Thailand for this but on the way
she snapped the tow cables in a heavy sea and was hopelessly beached on the Canary Islands where
over the next few decades she slowly broke up and disappeared beneath the waves by as late as 2007.
Number four; the SS New Australia. In 1931 the Furness Bermuda line had a bit of a problem when
their star ocean liner, the MV Bermuda caught on fire in an apparently empty cabin. The ship
was mostly gutted but saved narrowly from total destruction - the hulk was then towed to Belfast
to be rebuilt by her original builders and when the ship was nearly complete in November of that
year it spontaneously burst into flames again and was a complete loss so the company decided
to replace that liner with two sister ships named Monarch of Bermuda and Queen of Bermuda.
The two sisters were eye achingly beautiful; extremely well proportioned with three handsome
funnels and lovely sweeping promenade decks. The ships were a little odd because they were
designed to operate in the treacherous strong currents around Bermuda where tugs were a little
bit of a rarity because of this the ships were built with shortened bow and stern sections to
reduce overall length and therefore the overall turning circle and to improve handling they were
given four propellers each. In 1934 the SS Morro Castle spectacularly caught on fire and burned
and it was actually the Monarch of Bermuda that was one of the ships to arrive on scene to help
but in 1947 after wartime service as a troop ship it was actually Monarch of Bermuda's turn to
follow the time-honored Furness Bermuda line tradition and spontaneously burst into flames
and she did this well. The ship was almost totally gutted by fire at the wharf side
she was sold for scrap but bought instead by the British Ministry of Transport who had the somewhat
insane idea of rescuing the empty fire damaged hulk and rebuilding it as a spartan immigrant
liner. What emerged from this scheme was the SS New Australia a confused looking squat ship with
the beautiful hull of the Monarch of Bermuda but not much else very beautiful about her. An entire
deck of superstructure was removed so the ship seemed oddly proportioned. The elegant bridge and
superstructure front was lost and replaced with a blocky square monstrosity; the huge split mast
over the brutalist bridge was actually a funnel for the forward boiler rooms and on the bow was
the remains of the original foremast cut down to a stub with derricks for moving cargo all in all the
ship was a bit of an eyesore but it didn't really matter because its role was purely utilitarian.
Her operation was taken over by Shaw Savill line on behalf of the British government for seven years
the ship was eventually sold to Greek Line renamed Arkadia and refitted for cruising but in 1966 she
was finally retired and scrapped.
Number three; the MV Astoria. Now I know a few hardcore ocean liner
nerds are probably going to be a little bit sad to see the Astoria in this list but I just couldn't
help it. The ship has one of the most fascinating and unlikely career histories of all time
she'd started out life as the beautiful Swedish America liner Stockholm. The ship was a real
stunner built in the tradition of other Swedish American line ships with beautifully curved bridge
fronts a gentle sheer curving the bow and the stern of the ship up and a single streamlined
funnel. In 1956 Stockholm gained international notoriety when she rammed the Italian luxury liner
Andrea Doria and sank her. In fact the collision was so bad that Stockholm's bow was telescoped in
and totally crushed but the ship's watertight compartments held and she was able to sail into
New York under her own power the bow was rebuilt and Swedish America sold the ship to an east
German company in 1960 who renamed her the uh the volca freud freunchshaft volca freundschaft
the Volkerfreudenschaft - which really isn't a catchy name for non-German speakers
but anyway the ship changed hands a couple of times into the 1980s serving as a floating
barracks at one point until 1989 when Star Lauro line purchased her and intended to rebuild her
as a cruise ship she was towed to Genoa which was coincidentally the Andrea Doria's homeport
and totally gutted. Her funnel was stripped off so that new diesel engines could be put in
and everything about her external appearance was completely altered the beautifully swept bridge
front was replaced with a blocky angular thing instead she received a pretty generic looking
funnel and looked overall upon completion like many other small cruise ship except for this
hideous ducktail sponson which was kind of tacked onto the stern to aid instability at
sea. It's incredible that the Astoria is actually still sailing today given that she was built all
the way back in 1948 and while it's a nice fact there's just simply no denying that she looked
significantly better during her Swedish America line days. Don't @ me! Number two; the Costa Marina
and the Costa Allegra. There's not really much to say about these ships except they were just a
little a little ugly. The Axel Johnson class were a group of utilitarian container ships designed and
built in the late 1960s - not exactly what comes to mind when you think of luxury cruising but clearly
the famous Costa line didn't agree when they purchased two of these sister ships in 1988 and
1990. Their plan was to convert them somehow into cruise ships and this they did - the results was the
MV Costa Marina and the MV Costa Allegra and bless them for trying but from the outside at least they
just weren't very convincing looking cruise ships. The ships still had those utilitarian container
ship lines but now with a nice added fat blocky superstructure on top - still they must have been
nice on the inside because the pair cruised all the way up until about 2013 before being retired
and scrapped. Number one; the SS Hellenic Prince, one of my favorite passenger ships of all time
In the immediate aftermath of the second world war almost any ship that could
float was mobilized and turned into an immigrant ocean liner to help evacuate
the war's refugees and I'm not exaggerating when I say almost everything that could float
because Greek owned China-Hellenic lines purchased a retired Australian warship
with the idea to somehow convert it into a passenger liner. That warship was the bizarre
looking HMAS Albatross an Australian seaplane tender that was a veteran of the second world war .
China Hellenic lines sent Albatross off to Aales in the United Kingdom where she was overhauled
and converted into service as a passenger ship. Would they rebuild the superstructure
to make her look sleek and modern? Would they add comfortable amenities and stylish public
rooms for passengers on board? No, no they would not - because the newly named SS Hellenic prince left
the shipyard looking almost exactly the same as she had when she arrived save for more lifeboats.
Now I mentioned this ship on a live stream the other day and somebody commented that it looks
a little bit like a kitchen knife and now I cannot unsee that. This tiny seaplane tender
somehow now managed to squeeze 1,200 passengers - yes 1,200 passengers! - into sparse dormitories
and bunk cabins throughout the ship. There were no lounges and the only covered promenade deck was at
the stern of the ship which sat extremely low to the water and therefore was often half-submerged
and totally unusable to passengers on the month-long voyage to Australia. Simply-put there
was just not enough room and the ship's decks were often crowded with hundreds of uncomfortable
and unhappy passengers. Worst of all though she was put under the command of a gruff navy veteran by
the name of P.C King. Captain King actively held disdain for his passengers and became known as
something of a tyrant. On the coming voyages to Australia she lost an anchor and even broke down
The voyages to Australia were packed with refugees and poor immigrants but the return voyages to
the United Kingdom saw the ship totally empty because the on-board conditions were so bad that
even budget tourists weren't interested. In 1951 things came to a head when Captain King accused
his passengers of mutiny and poor behaviour in the ship's on-board newsletter, the delightfully-named
'Kangaroo'. In his statement King made it clear that the "passenger's behaviour this afternoon was an act
of mutiny" and that among other things "the names of agitators are known to me." Ooh scary! You see on
that voyage passengers had actually been required to help clean and maintain the ship, some of them
working in the mess rooms cleaning dishes and even helping out in the engine and boiler rooms only to
be paid in cigarettes. Drinking water largely ran out, fridges broke down so that fresh food rotted
and passengers were refused disembarkation at any of the visited ports on the way and thanks to a
ballast pump malfunction the ship listed over the entire time leading to outbreaks of seasickness.
The whole thing was utterly miserable and the passengers responded by protesting with a hunger
strike which King then attempted to break up by spraying them with cold sea water from a hose
and issuing his statement in the Kangaroo newsletter. On arrival in Australia word got
out that something was seriously wrong so Captain King was interviewed by a local West Australian
newspaper. Ever the charmer King said of his passengers - and this is a direct quote:
"Their habits have been filthy and they were a constant worry to the crew. Some of them are not even white!"
"I do not know who is responsible for the choice of migrants to Australia but some
of these passengers are poor types. Some appear to have the mentality of children."
*sigh* What a lovely guy! Anyway, serious complaints were made by passengers - so serious that the
International Refugee Organization just had to pay attention and King and the Hellenic
Prince's owners were censured. Hellenic Prince was retired and ended up at the scrapyard
in Hong Kong in 1954. So there you go! Five totally hopeless ship makeovers! Let me know if you agree
or disagree with any of my picks in the comments below and which of these ships you would be most
willing to travel on if it came to it. I'm willing to bet it probably wouldn't be the Hellenic Prince.
Ladies and gentlemen it's your friend Mike Brady from Oceanliner Designs. Thank you so
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