Seventy-five years after she lay burning and capsized in the New York harbour, the French SS Normandie still holds the record as the most powerful steam turbo-electric-propelled passenger ship ever built. She is considered one of the greatest of ocean liners in history, a floating palace of Art Deco majesty so dazzling, they nicknamed her the “Ship of Light” similar to Paris as the ‘”City of Light”. The gilded first class dining hall was longer than the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles and guests included Ernest Hemingway, Colette, Fred Astaire, Walt Disney and even the von Trapp family singers, who all sailed aboard the Normandie during her career of 139 westbound transatlantic crossings from Le Havre, France to New York City. She was, for a brief time, Queen of the seven seas, before war, negligence and possibly sabotage, sealed her fate.
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