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The Sway of the Grand Saloon: A Social History of the North Atlantic (1971)

door John Malcolm Brinnin

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1152235,536 (3.55)22
"In January 1818, six hardy souls made the first scheduled Atlantic passenger ship crossing, and a new industry was born. Reckless competition, horrific disasters, and human dramas shaped it. But with Jenny Lind, Lily Langtry, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oscar Wilde, and Mark Twain among the newsmakers who decorated passenger lists, the liners' appeal proved irresistible. Business flourished and with it adventure and romance. By 1900, the Golden Age was in full swing. The great liners with their grand "saloons" became playgrounds for gilded society and magnets for the rising middle class. But danger was ever threatening. In 1912, an iceberg ripped open the Titanic, a tragedy in which John Jacob Astor's heroism made history. In 1915, the torpedoed Lusitania went down with Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, who refused to rush for the lifeboats, and in 1956 the Andrea Doria, victim of a collision, shattered yet again the myth of unsinkability. During the 1950s, the proud transatlantic liners steamed off the front page of history, victims of inexpensive air travel. John Malcolm Brinnin's unerring eye for fascinating details captures the excitements and traumas of a splendid century. Through the triumphs and tragedies of Inman, Cunard, Brunel, and their fellow titans, Brinnin tells how the grand saloons shaped architecture, design, and fashion - creating a world of unforgettable interest."--… (meer)
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Toon 2 van 2
The Sway of the Grand Saloon is a minutely detailed account of shipping and travel over the North Atlantic from the days of sail, through the development of steam power, and into the 20th century. It’s filled with the people, politics, commerce, and engineering that seems so commonplace today that we forget how difficult it was. Full of toothsome facts, they sometimes get lost in the laborious tendency of historians for multi-claused sentences that can dawdle for half a page until the reader forgets the point. Nonetheless, it’s a very useful reference for anyone with an interest in shipping. ( )
  varielle | Dec 7, 2021 |
Image that! Here was one, enjoying a deeply researched yet well-written narrative HISTORY book on long-gone passenger ships and historical Atlantic shipping lines to discover that – having sailed past many of these liners, and actually served as a steward on one and been a passenger on another - that one now must form part of history oneself. Bit disconcerting.

And a thoroughly enjoyable book it is too, Brinnin brings alive the Brunel and Cunard ambitions and achievements and writes the adventure-story of the challenges and competition of the early transatlantic crossings, by steam rather than the glorious ”cloud driven” sailing packets and schooners of the East Coast and the Maritimes. From the first ‘hybrids’ of steam-assisted clippers through to the close of the glorious trade of the super-liners with their swaying Grand Saloons the author humanizes a history peopled by many strong and daring characters (Captains Preserved Fish and Pardon Gifford) but always dominated by the Halifax based Cunarders.

Originally an immigrant family from the Rhine the Kunders became Cunard – one of the most recognized and the longest lasting shipping families in the Maritimes. The pages (and excellent index and bibliography) echo with the glorious names – the Aquitaine, Great Eastern and Western, the Queens, America, Bremen, Lusitania … and, of course, RMS Titanic.

Against all current business sense and advice, Sir Samuel Cunard alone bid compliantly to the demands of the Victorian government (with the Royal Navy in the background thinking ahead to alternative uses of such a fine training ground) for fast, reliable and steam-driven fleet to be awarded the rights – with accompanying guaranteed subsidiary – to carry the Royal Mails across the Atlantic. Hence the prefix of RMS on these great majestic ships.

Finally their glorious reign was ended by cheap and – nowadays spartan and arrogant – air service, the need for a regular crossing was being satisfied by the end of the 1960’s by multiple flag-carriers. Only in the cruise ships – those massive and probably far less seaworthy floating hotels – are there any slight echoes of the grandeur and luxury of those Grand and Swaying Saloons.
  John_Vaughan | Mar 20, 2012 |
Toon 2 van 2
It's the kind of book that has gone the way of the leviathan ocean liners that it chronicles: vast, ornate, eclectic, high-toned. For all its datedness, however, The Sway of the Grand Saloon conveys its rich material in ways that might elude contemporary argument- or narrative-driven histories.

Brinnin was a man of letters -- another now-archaic category -- and his scope in Sway is not documentary history alone, but literature, popular culture, journalism, engineering, and even ancillary fields like medicine (to witness the discovery of Dramamine) and art history (to relate how Blue Boy came to reside in the Huntington Gallery). In his voracious interdisciplinary reading, Brinnin anticipated the purview of cultural studies, if none of its theoretical or political underpinnings.
toegevoegd door John_Vaughan | bewerkLection Utah Edu, Tim Morris (Mar 16, 2012)
 
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Author's Preface -- Not long ago I boarded the rubber duck of a ferryboat that crosses Halifax Harbor, got off on the Dartmouth side and stepped forty years back into a neighborhood I used to know.
January 5, 1818. A small blizzard, skittering down Broadway, suddenly envelops that "immense pile" of red brick, five stories high, known as the City Hotel, then blusters on toward the tip of Manhattan and out across the harbor.
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"In January 1818, six hardy souls made the first scheduled Atlantic passenger ship crossing, and a new industry was born. Reckless competition, horrific disasters, and human dramas shaped it. But with Jenny Lind, Lily Langtry, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oscar Wilde, and Mark Twain among the newsmakers who decorated passenger lists, the liners' appeal proved irresistible. Business flourished and with it adventure and romance. By 1900, the Golden Age was in full swing. The great liners with their grand "saloons" became playgrounds for gilded society and magnets for the rising middle class. But danger was ever threatening. In 1912, an iceberg ripped open the Titanic, a tragedy in which John Jacob Astor's heroism made history. In 1915, the torpedoed Lusitania went down with Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, who refused to rush for the lifeboats, and in 1956 the Andrea Doria, victim of a collision, shattered yet again the myth of unsinkability. During the 1950s, the proud transatlantic liners steamed off the front page of history, victims of inexpensive air travel. John Malcolm Brinnin's unerring eye for fascinating details captures the excitements and traumas of a splendid century. Through the triumphs and tragedies of Inman, Cunard, Brunel, and their fellow titans, Brinnin tells how the grand saloons shaped architecture, design, and fashion - creating a world of unforgettable interest."--

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