This guest post, by past guest blogger Philip Vorwald, offers new details about one of Louise Brooks trans-Atlantic journeys. Philip wrote, "I was investigating the White Star Line for a friend when I thought about her trip to Germany in 1928. On a lark, I plugged a few things in, and found out an interesting error regarding her trip. She did not sail on the S.S. Majestic."
R.M.S. Majestic
Louise Brooks left
New York harbor on October 6, 1928 at midnight, bound for Cherbourg, France.
The ship she was sailing on would continue through to Southampton, England, but
she would disembark in France for Paris, and then on to Berlin by train to film
Pandora’s
Box later in the fall of
1928.
Barry Paris’
biography of Louise Brooks states she sailed on the S.S.
Majestic. My research into this voyage shows the name of the vessel to
be incorrect.
She actually sailed for France aboard the R.M.S. Majestic. This is not just a
simple moniker name error. They were two completely different ships, operating
at two different time periods.
There were two (2)
White Star Liners with the name Majestic. The first, known as
the S.S.
Majestic, ran from 1889 to
1914. It was built by Harland and Wolff Shipyards in Belfast. She was
de-commissioned and scrapped in 1914, 14
years before Louise’s voyage. She couldn’t have been on it.
At the time, the S.S.
Majestic was one of the
largest and fastest trans-Atlantic liners. By the early 1900s, however, she was
getting too old and too slow, so the White Star Line commissioned a
new, larger vessel that was to replace the S.S.
Majestic, and
this vessel was also was built by Harland and Wolff Shipyards in Belfast. This ship was launched as the R.M.S. Titanic.
The second “Majestic”
was the R.M.S.
Majestic. This ship was
originally built in Germany in 1914 and named the S.S.
Bismarck. After WWI, the
Germans handed the vessel over to the British, who renamed it the R.M.S.
Majestic.
The R.M.S. Majestic served with the White Star Line from 1922
to 1934, running a common
route from New York to Cherbourg / Southampton. Then she ran with the Cunard White Star Line
company from 1934 to 1937. She sank on 1939, and was raised and scrapped in
1943.
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