In the 1940s, the Normandie was the epitome of elegance and engineering—a French ocean liner renowned for its Art Deco splendor and unmatched luxury. OUPblog - Academic insights for the thinking world.
In the 1940s, the Normandiewas the epitome of elegance and engineering—a French ocean liner renowned for its Art Deco splendor and unmatched luxury. When war loomed over Europe, the ship sought refuge in New York Harbor. In this excerpt from Gotham At War, Mike Wallace shows how its transformation from glamourous ocean liner to utilitarian troopship mirrored the world’s descent into conflict.
On February 9, 1942, the Normandie—the world’s most glamorous ocean liner—had been the site of feverish activity, as 1,750 workers from the Robins Dry Dock & Repair Company, and 675 other laborers from sixty assorted subcontractors, worked to convert the rakish, Art Deco, red-and-black vessel—whose elegant staterooms had hosted the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Cole Porter, and Ernest Hemingway—into a drabbed-down, bunk-laden troopship.
The Normandie had been tied up at Pier 88 (at the foot of West 48th Street) since arriving from Le Havre on August 28, 1939, four days before Germany invaded Poland. Rather than have its crown jewel brave torpedoes at sea, or bombs back in France, the French Line, Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT), laid up its vessel indefinitely on September 6, leaving on board only a skeleton crew of 113 (out of 1,227) to keep it shipshape. There it stayed, through the fall of France, while other sea queens came and went (at one point, in March 1940, the gray-camouflaged sisters Elizabeth and Mary were berthed in adjacent piers).
On May 15, 1941, the US government took the Normandie into protective custody, leaving French ownership intact but housing a contingent of armed Coast Guardsmen on board to forestall possible sabotage by crew members loyal to the Vichy government. (The Pétain regime was getting increasingly cozy with Germany: Vice Premier Admiral François Darlan had just visited Hitler on May 11.) American thoughts turned to possible uses of the giant ship, in the event of an actual confiscation, and proposals were floated to use it as a dockside super- barracks, or to move it to Brooklyn, where it could serve as a backup power supply for the entire city, capable as it was of generating 150,000 kilowatts. When the Normandie was seized, on December 12, the day after war with Germany broke out, the troopship option won out. The vessel was transferred to the Navy, renamed the USS Lafayette, and turned over to contractors who began carting off the legendary artwork and sumptuous furniture to the Chelsea Warehouse and converting the staterooms, which had housed 1,972 First, Tourist, and Third-Class passengers, into bunkrooms that would carry 14,800 soldiers to war.
With nearly 2,500 workmen (plus Coast Guardsmen and crew) constantly coming and going, the noise, confusion and disorder on the ship attracted the attention of Ralph Ingersoll, editor of PM. Security seemed dangerously casual to him, so Ingersoll assigned reporter Edmund Scott to find out how easily a potential saboteur might penetrate the Normandie’s defenses. It proved to be a snap. Scott joined Local 284 of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and got a job lugging furniture aboard. Once on deck, it proved easy to wander about as he pleased, and he was struck by how simple it would be to set a fire. On January 3, 1942, he filed his story, which Ingersoll decided not to run—it being, in effect, a blueprint for sabotage—and instead got in touch with the authorities, who seemed uninterested.
When a fire broke out at 2:34 on the afternoon of February 9, crewmen discovered to their horror that the fire hoses could not connect to the standpipes, as the latter had been converted to American fittings, while the former still spoke French. Efforts to sound the fire alarm also failed—it had been disconnected a few days earlier, along with the ship’s link to the city’s fire department, by a subcontractor who had forgotten to tell anyone. In the meantime—it was a blustery winter day—the wind whipped through the corridors, spreading the blaze until it was beyond control, with great sheets of flame leaping skyward. Most of the nearly 3,000 on board dashed down the gangplanks and joined the thirty thousand New Yorkers who choked Twelfth Avenue. Fire trucks now combined forces with fire boats to inundate the upper decks: over the next four hours, they poured on 3,000 tons of water. The ship began to list. The French officers who had rushed to the pier realized the danger; their calls to refill the ballast tanks to ground the ship on the slip bottom were rejected, as were their urgings to close the portholes.
The inundation continued, as La Guardia, who had rushed to the pier, said it was out of the question to let a fire rage unchecked in midtown Manhattan. Even after the inferno seemed contained, around 8:00 p.m., the fireboats—ordered by Commissioner Walsh to stop pumping—didn’t get his radioed message; and having gotten dark, his semaphore signals went similarly unheeded. By the time a cutoff was accomplished, the Normandie had taken on 16,000 tons of water, most trapped on the port side, a burden no ship could have borne. At 12:30 a.m., Admiral Andrews gave the order to evacuate. At 2:32 a.m., it rolled over in the gray Hudson ice and came to rest, its funnels just barely above the waterline, slumped ignominiously in the mud.
The U.S. Coast Guard flies over the wreckage of the USS Lafayette (previously known as the SS Normandie) at Pier 88, 12 August 1943. US Navy Photograph.
Rumors of sabotage flew, starting at the top. FDR asked Navy Secretary Knox the next morning if any enemy aliens had been permitted to work at the site. The truth flew almost as quickly yet had difficulty catching up. The first press reports carried District Attorney Frank Hogan’s statement—“There is no evidence of sabotage”—and Admiral Andrews’s concurrence, along with the facts they had ferreted out. The fire, they said, had been an accident, caused by carelessness. One worker had been using an acetylene torch to cut down a metal stanchion in the Grand Salon, the resulting sparks contained by an asbestos board held up by another laborer. When the second man put down his board for a minute to help a colleague, a spark leapt toward a pile of 1,140 life jackets, each filled with flammable kapok, each wrapped in even more flammable burlap. Up they went, in turn igniting a nearby mass of bunk-bound mattresses. On February 12, the FBI staged a re- creation at the Brooklyn Navy Yard; followed up with a full-dress investigation in which they interviewed 760 people, and came to the same conclusion. So did two congressional committees. No sabotage.
Nonetheless, doubts continued. Many refused to buy the verdict, especially after PM published Scott’s original story. The notion that Nazi saboteurs had done the deed was further nurtured by Alfred Hitchcock, then shooting and editing Saboteur (1942). The director inserted a sequence that showed his weaselly Nazi villain (played by Norman Lloyd) being taxied down the West Side past the capsized Normandie (shown in actual newsreel footage). As he surveyed the wreckage, Lloyd gave a perfectly calibrated, wickedly knowing half smile, as if to say: “Ah, our handiwork.” The Navy tried hard to muscle Hitchcock into excising the bit; it failed, and the ranks of doubters grew.
There was one person who did more than doubt—he was utterly certain the Normandie was the victim of foul play, because he himself had ordered the hit. No Nazi, he was the nation’s most celebrated jailbird, languishing up in Dannemora Prison (known as “New York’s Siberia”), doing a thirty-to-fifty-year stretch.
Featured image: SS Normandie at sea, colorized by Vick the Viking. Derivative work of Altair78. CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
In conducting research for The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America, Kathleen B. Casey discovered how one everyday object—the purse—could function as a portal to the past. She encountered purses in museum collections, photo albums, advertisements, trial transcripts, and much more.
Here are some highlights she discovered in the cultural history of the purse.
In the spring of 1791, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, accompanied by Jefferson’s enslaved chef James Hemings, took a road trip. In six weeks, they covered more than 900 miles, travelling through New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut before returning across Long Island. Suffering from various physical ailments and exhausted by the political travails of the day, they sought “health, recreation, and curiosity.” Madison said as long as they were together they could “never be out of their way.” Decades later, he recalled that the trip made them “immediate companions.”
Few rites of passage are as venerated in American culture as the road trip, the journey of discovery to places unfamiliar or unknown. Here are ten noteworthy ones in literature and film in chronological order:
1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
Mark Twain knew about travel! In his famous novel, we follow Huck and Jim as they stream down the Mississippi in a biracial journey of discovery and escape. The trip gets a bit complicated in the novel’s third act, but, on the journey, they prove their manhood and confess their feelings for one another. Jim discovers he is free and Huck realizes the road is the only place for him. At the end, Huck continues his travels as he lights out for the Territory.
2. It Happened One Night (1934)
In this classic screwball comedy, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert find themselves together on a bus heading to New York from Florida. They hitchhike and encounter all kinds of difficulties as they fall in love, even though Colbert is married to a charlatan. Of course, they end up together. The film swept the key Academy Awards categories̶—and it did something else. In one scene, Clark Gable takes off his shirt to reveal he is wearing nothing beneath it. As a result, T-shirt sales in America plummeted.
3. The Grapes of Wrath (book 1939; film 1940)
In John Steinbeck’s stirring novel, the Joad family, victims of the dust bowl and ruthless bankers, are forced to flee their Oklahoma home and head to California. They travel along the legendary Route 66, where they experience cruelty and kindness as they make their way to what they think will be the promised land. Unfortunately, it isn’t paradise, and at the end Tom Joad commits himself to forever travelling the country and serving as an agent of justice. “I’ll be everywhere,” he states.
4. On The Road (1957)
Jack Kerouac’s novel is the one everyone thinks of when it comes to road trips. Much of the book focuses on the travels of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty. It is a tale of friendship and discovery, written in a stream of consciousness that matches the improvisational genius of jazz, which is a current that runs through the book. The novel has influenced generations of creative artists. Paradise says it best: “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
5. Travels with Charley: In Search of America (1962)
John Steinbeck makes this list twice. In 1960, aging and feeling that he had lost the feel for America, he embarked on a 10,000-mile journey across the nation, accompanied by his French poodle Charley. Part travelogue, part fiction, he wrote about the people he met. He gloried in the gifts of nature at Yellowstone and agonized over scenes of racial violence in New Orleans. In the end, he was uncertain what he found, and he lamented the loss of an older America. “The more I inspected this American image, the less sure I became of what it is.”
6. Easy Rider (1969)
The film follows Captain America (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) as they travel by motorcycle from Los Angeles to New Orleans. The pair sold cocaine to finance their trip, and drugs, from marijuana to LSD, are part of their journey. In their travels, they experience life in a commune and befriend a lawyer (Jack Nicholson). But they face hostility (the lawyer is murdered) and, in the end, they are also killed. The movie defined an era where the rebellion of youth came to the forefront and the soundtrack forever linked rock ‘n’ roll to the journey on the road.
7. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)
Robert Pirsig’s book became a surprise bestseller, despite being rejected initially by dozens of publishers. It tells the fictionalized autobiographical story of a motorcycle trip he took with his son from Minnesota to California. Along the way, the narrative contemplates various philosophical and psychological issues. What the travelers found was inward, not outward. “Sometimes,” Pirsig writes, “it’s a little better to travel than arrive.”
8. Rain Man (1988)
Awkward pairings are elemental in road narratives. Few are as different as the brothers Charlie and Ray, portrayed by Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman. One is an upscale collectibles dealer and the other is an institutionalized autistic savant. On their car journey from Cincinnati to Los Angeles, Charlie copes with the regimented habits of his brother and comes to appreciate and understand him. In Las Vegas, Ray uses his mathematical abilities to count cards and win big at blackjack. In the end, Ray returns to the institution where he lives, and Charlie promises to see him again, having come to appreciate his brother and realize he wants him in his life.
9. Thelma and Louise (1991)
What starts as a girls’ weekend away becomes a one-way road trip to eternity. Geena Davis (Thelma) and Susan Sarandon (Louise), looking to escape from a domineering husband and deadening job, plan a weekend at a cabin. But after a stop at a roadhouse where Thelma is nearly raped and Louise kills her attacker, the women go on the lam. Along the way, their friendship and confidence grow, but they reach a point of no return as authorities bear down on them. They gas the engine and head toward a gorge. The film leaves the two of them in still frame, forever suspended in mid-air, pointed upward, out and away.
10. The Road (2006)
In this famous post-apocalyptic work, Cormac McCarthy tells the story of a loving father and his young son journeying across a forbidding landscape. There is danger and horror everywhere and the pair struggle to survive. They strive to reach water, and do. But the father dies and the son is left to carry on with another family, who discover him. Father and son had “set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other’s world entire.” If each is the other’s world entire, it matters not where you are on the road.
As shocking as the Pearl Harbor attack had been for the Naval Academy Class of 1940, the sudden arrival of peace was nearly as disorienting. Most of the Forties, as they were known, were still only 27 years old, and the great adventure of their lives was now behind them. The war had dominated virtually all of their adult lives, from Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936 to Japan’s surrender in 1945. For nine years, they had been directed by circumstance, authority, and a shared feeling of responsibility. They had served in different theaters, in different jobs, on different ships—or planes, or battalions. Yet all of them had been forged, tempered, and tested. Every man in the class knew someone who had been killed in the war, and the sacrifice of their classmates was etched into their hearts.
They had learned to live in the moment; now they had to think of the future. For the next two decades and longer, they served in a wide variety of assignments throughout the world. For some of them, there was another war, in Korea. For a few, there was even a third war, in Vietnam. Throughout it all, they stayed in touch with one another, attended class reunions when they could, and caught the occasional Navy football game. Eventually, they retired. Some took up a new profession; several became teachers. But none of them ever forgot their trial by fire in the Second World War, nor did they forget one another. They were always Forties.
Feature image credit: Graduation day at Annapolis, Class of 1940. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Harris & Ewing, [reproduction number, e.g., LC-USZ62-12345]. Public domain.
Benjamin Franklin left many anecdotes about his reading in his autobiography and other writings. Though he presents himself as an example of how reading can enrich a person’s life, he never really codified his personal reading as how-to advice, but that does not mean that I cannot do so. Therefore, in Undaunted Mind: The Intellectual Life of Benjamin Franklin, I discuss many aspects of Franklin’s reading life: what he read, where he read, how he read, and why he read. What follows is a set of practical tips derived from Franklin’s experience to get the most from your reading.
1. Take advantage of spare moments.
Reading about vegetarianism in Thomas Tryon’s Way to Health, Long Life and Happiness when he was an apprentice in Boston under his brother James, Benjamin Franklin convinced himself that he could prepare cheaper and healthier meals than James and his other employees took at the local tavern. When they went to lunch, Franklin stayed behind in the printshop, enjoyed his solo lunch, and spent the spare hour reading. He used the money he saved on meals to buy more books: the mark of a true bookman. In a life jampacked with activity to benefit the community and the nation, Franklin would apply what he learned as an apprentice: he always took advantage of whatever spare moments he could to enjoy reading.
2. Keep an open mind about unusual ideas.
One book he read as an apprentice was Philemon Holland’s English translation of Pliny’s Natural History, a landmark in Franklin’s reading life. He laughed at Pliny’s account of a practice among the seamen of his time to still the waves in a storm by pouring oil into the sea, which Franklin considered a silly superstition. When he learned decades later that oil could indeed calm bodies of water, Franklin felt embarrassed by how readily he had rejected this Plinyism without careful consideration. It took a long time to learn, but he eventually realized that readers must not dismiss ideas from different times, lands, or cultures.
3. Talk about books with others.
Here is something nonreaders never realize: people’s conversation reflects their reading. Franklin learned this lesson after he had run away from Boston. Passing through New Jersey, he encountered a surgeon and poet named John Browne, who could tell by the way the teenaged Franklin talked that he was an avid reader. Their shared love of literature formed the basis for their lifelong friendship. Once Franklin settled in Philadelphia, he befriended other young men who loved to read. Eventually, he and his friends formed a mutual improvement club they called the Junto, and, as in a modern-day book club, book discussions became a prominent feature of their weekly meetings.
4. Assemble your own home library.
The Junto members each had a personal library, but Franklin got the idea for them to combine their collections to form a library greater than any of them could assemble individually. The communal library did not work, but it would lead to the formation of the Library Company of Philadelphia, the first subscription library in North America. Though the Library Company was a great resource for its subscribers, Franklin still recognized the importance for them to have home libraries of their own, which would provide ready references in the case of practical works and a never-ending source of entertainment, which a good collection of poetry, essays, and plays could provide.
5. Share your books with others.
Sir Richard Steele’s Dramatic Works was one book of plays Franklin had in his personal library, at least until he loaned it to a friend, who never returned it. More than most possessions, books are notoriously difficult things to return. Franklin told his friend Benjamin Rush “that a man lost ten percent on the value, by lending his books, [and] that he once knew a man who never returned a borrowed book, because no one ever returned books borrowed from him.” Despite the unreturned books, Franklin continued to loan volumes from his library to friends throughout his life. He decided that the opportunity to share the ideas they contained was worth the risk.
