Cruising, or ‘travel without tears’

We’re all in the same boat, aren’t we?, Adam Curtis on the world of the ‘funship’, and how they are floating kingdoms, a law unto themselves: ‘And in the strange fun-world of the superliners the waiters, the cabin staff, the cooks and everyone else who serves, live in a state of continual vulnerability – unprotected by most of the employment laws that apply on land’. Curtis brings his usual blend of old footage and nuanced observations to the post, with excerpts from a 1966 Alan Whicker documentary aboard the Andes, a seething hotbed of class jealousy and social indicators. It gets worse, and the tale of the nascent cruise industry’s swift descent from world-uniting dream to floating entertainment industry hub is enthralling. Did you know there are Dreamworks Cruises? / related. one small thorn in the side of the Thames Hub concept is the SS Richard Montgomery, a WWII American warship sank that sank in the area loaded with explosives and a constant menace to shipping.

//

London in the 1960s, Phil Gyford links to a few choice short films on these short films of the city at work and play fifty years ago / Pixar Engineers Leave to Build Real World Living Toys. The world of Blade Runner’s Sebastian and the teddy bear ‘super toy‘ in Spielberg’s AI. Or a basement-dwelling small scale construction company (via MeFi). Or you could always get a custom-designed toy of your own.

//

Peter Knego’s MidShip Century was establised as a ‘logical outlet for the container loads of materials [the ocean liner historian and journalist] salvaged from a long procession of celebrated vessels scrapped at the (frankly hellish) shipyard on the beach at Alang, India in recent years.’ Strange that remarkable objects – such as ‘Classic Italy‘, a Thirteen Section Hand Painted Panel by artist Emanuele Luzzati, taken from the First Class stairtower of the SS Ausonia (and paired with this) – should emerge from the wastelands of Alang (which also functions as a counterpoint to the indentured labour aboard the boats before they’re broken). Related, the shipbreakers of Gaddani and a video tour of the RMS Windsor Castle at Alang. The latter ship in her prime.