In Memories of the Seas I will show some passengerships of our modern cruise age that are now out of service. Some of these are already part of our memory, because they are scrapped. Others are still around, but used or hopefully to be used as museumships in some way or another like Queen Elizabeth 2 and Rotterdam. Although the ships of this last category do have a very different purpose today as they did when they were still sailing, it is a good way to keep their memory alive and to preserve them for future generations.

It is not that long ago that it was possible to get to America by ship from almost every big harbourcity in Europe. Although it is now almost impossible to think of a world without passenger airplanes, this way of transport is only popular and affordable from the middle of the 1960's onwards. All ships feutured on these pages are the last ones to be built for these line services, or already out of date cruiseliners that still followed the designfeautures of the old liners.

Also, I added pages dedicated to Ellis Island and the memories of liner travels still to be found at the New York waterfront. These are not recent memories of the seas of course, Ellis Island was closed in 1954. But it is an important memory about shipping history and it tells the tale about a time when ships were built for another purpose then cruising.

Queen Elizabeth 2, one of the last great liners, sailing silently past the Spaarnwoude nature area in the Netherlands, on her way to Amsterdam in 2004.

At the McDonalds in Southampton, large mural paintings of the great ocean liners that once set sail from the port decorate the restauant. I have never been in a more nice McDonalds than here...

Below is the tip of the Wilhelmina pier at Rotterdam, where the great Holland America liners started their transatlantic voyages to the new world. In the middle is the former officebuilding of the HAL, beautifully restored and now serving as a hotel, restaurant and hairdressers salon. The building is flanked by two gorgeous newbuilds, to the right the highest appartment building in the Netherlands, Montevideo, and to the left the office of Rotterdams harbourcompany.

At the French side of the English channel, or La Manche of course, the quay once used by the ships of the French Line at Le Havre looks very deserted in this 2001 picture. Just where you se the big drydock is the exact spot where the liner Paris was burned out just a few hours before departure at the 19th of april 1939. I was walking here to find the art-deco railway terminal but I found just some piles of stone and large machines that just demolished it.