MICHELANGELO: drama a sul dos Açores

Ao amanhecer de 16 de Abril de 1966 o paquete italiano MICHELANGELO entrou em Nova Iorque procedente do Mediterrâneo com a bandeira a meia haste e inúmeros vestígios de avarias ocasionadas por um golpe de mar extremamente violento que atingiu o navio na manhã de 12 de Abril, quando este navegava a sul dos Açores, rumo a Nova Iorque com 745 passageiros e 710 tripulantes a bordo.

Inaugurado um ano antes, em Abril de 1965, o MICHELANGELO e o seu irmão gémeo RAFFAELLO eram o orgulho da Marinha Mercante italiana, com 45 900 toneladas de arqueação bruta, capacidade para 1771 passageiros e 27 nós de velocidade de serviço. 

O Inverno de 1965/66 foi particularmente rigoroso no Atlântico Norte, cujos meses mais difíceis são habitualmente Março e Abril. O MICHELANGELO fazia a viagem 15,  iniciada em Génova a 7 de Abril, com um dia  de atraso devido ao mau tempo verificado durante a viagem anterior e fez as escalas habituais em Cannes 7-04 das 22h40 às 23h50) e Gibraltar (9-04 das 06h50 às 08h10), fazendo-se ao Atlântico, seguindo uma rota por sul da ilha de Santa Maria, para tentar fugir aos efeitos de um violentíssimo temporal. Durante a noite de 11 para 12 de Abril, vários navios nas proximidades do MICHELANGELO emitiram pedidos de socorro, tendo a Guarda Costeiro dos EUA pedido o auxílio do paquete italiano que foi desviado para norte da sua rota para tentar socorrer o navio libanês ROKOS, sendo depois anulado este pedido. Com mar de força 10, pelas 10h20, a proa do MICHELANGELO foi atingida por uma onde gigante que destruiu parcialmente a zona de proa e o casario do navio junto à ponte de comando que ficou alagada, com diversas janelas destruídas, etc...

Por baixo da ponte, as suites de luxo foram destruídas, pois o alumínio das anteparas não resistiu à força do mar. Em resultado, para além da destruição material, morreram 2 passageiros, 1 tripulante e registaram-se ainda 12 feridos graves. 

O MICHELANGELO foi reparado provisoriamente em Nova Iorque de onde largou a 20 de Abril, sendo depois reparado em Génova, com importante reforço estrutural e a substituição de alumínio por aço na zona de vante do casario, durante a reparação de Inverno no início de 1967, tendo-se seguido intervenção semelhante no RAFFAELLO.

Estas fotografias foram feitas pelo meu Amigo Bill Miller, de Nova Iorque, que se recorda da situação do MICHELANGELO nos termos seguintes: "memories of a Saturday in April 1966 when Italian Line's less-than-a-year-old MICHELANGELO arrived at Pier 90 with her forward superstructure gashed and mangled after sailing through an unusually ferocious Atlantic storm. We stared in curiosity - she looked "badly wounded" and, like bandages, those fore decks were draped in canvas tarps. Word along the waterfront was that the giant, 902-ft long liner would be moved over to Hoboken, to the Bethlehem Steel shipyard, for repairs. Instead, the shipyard's work boats, including a floating crane with tug, made temporary repairs at Pier 90. The Michelangelo later returned to Italy, to her builders at Genoa, for full repairs that included reinforcement of the 45,000-ton liner's superstructure. Similar changes were made to her twin sister Raffaello."

O MICHELANGELO e o seu gémeo RAFFAELLO só navegaram 10 anos, sendo retirados da carreira do Atlântico Norte e imobilizados em 1975 acabando vendidos ao Irão dois anos mais tarde, onde acabaram por ser destruídos. O MICHELANGELO foi desmantelado no Paquistão enquanto o RAFFAELLO está afundado no Golfo Pérsico, vitima da guerra entre o Irão e o Iraque. Mal empregados navios...

Texto e imagens /Text and images copyright L.M.Correia. Favor não piratear. Respeite o meu trabalho / No piracy, please. For other posts and images, check our archive at the right column of the main page. Click on the photos to see them enlarged. Thanks for your visit and comments. Luís Miguel Correia 

Italian liners in Genova 1954 and the RAFFAELLO in Napoli

Bill Miller has sent this suggestive image of five great Finmare passenger liners in Genova in December 1954.

Bill comments: "After the devastation of the Second World War, the Italian passenger fleet was in ruins - only 4 sizable liners remained. Even the likes of the giant Rex and Conte di Savoia were gone. But on December 28th 1954, nine years after the War ended, there was a coincidental gathering at Genoa. It symbolized Italy's postwar renaissance.

From left to right are 5 liners belonging to the Italian Line -- the new Cristoforo Colombo, Vulcania, Conte Grande, Giulio Cesare and Andrea Doria. There were two other passenger ships, the Saturnia and Amerigo Vespucci, in port as well -- creating a gathering of 7 Italian Line ships. But by midnight, this grand collection changed -- the Saturnia, Vulcania and Amerigo Vespucci sailed."

Bill further adds on the Italian Line subject:"My friend Dieter Killinger worked in Lower Manhattan, in the steamship industry and this included Italian Line on Whitehall Street. It was still the boom days of trans-Atlantic service. I sent out a photo recently of a grand gathering of 5 Italian liners at Genoa in December 1954.

Dieter wrote back: "This brings back so many wonderful memories. Often, I lie awake at night and try and remember all the names of the great people I worked with at One Whitehall Street in the early 60's.

Those were the days! I met all incoming Italian Line ships and sailed up the Hudson to the Pier and while doing so, I interviewed passengers in all three classes. On sailing day, I would have a VIP list and make the rounds of the important passengers. Two I particularly remember are Joan Crawford and Giovanni Martinelli, the opera singer. He was gracious; she was not!! Oh what fun! "Thanks for the memories," as Bob Hope used to say. I snapped this photo of the inbound Raffaello at Naples, in August 1973. I was boarding the next day for a 10-night homeward voyage to New York."

Texto e imagens /Text and images copyright L.M.Correia. Favor não piratear. Respeite o meu trabalho / No piracy, please. For other posts and images, check our archive at the right column of the main page. Click on the photos to see them enlarged. Thanks for your visit and comments. Luís Miguel Correia

Great liners of the 1960s...

Lloyd Triestino's magnificent liner GUGLIELMO MARCONI photographed arriving in Cape Town early in the morning, see a coal burning tug "smoking" on starboard. Built in 1960-1960 for the Europe to Australia service, the MARCONI used the Suez but had to divert to the Cape route after 1967 due to the Suez waterway closure. This hadded extra weeks on the liner voyages East and in the end led to an earlier demise for many ships. MARCONI had a final stint of liner service in the Brazil and River Plate service from January 1976 until June 1977 and laiter was rebuilt as the COSTA RIVIERA, but her original good looks were sploiled by then.

The MARCONI, her sister GALILEO and the sisters MICHELANGELO and RAFAELLO had their keels laid in the same day - 8 September 1960, and were some of the best passenger ships of the 20th century, but some say they were built too late and survived only thanks to the Italian tax payers until the 1970s. In fact they were constructed mostly to keep Italian yards in Genova and Trieste busy and give employment to Italian seafarers... Anyway it was a nice form of public spending, we still talk on those ships and the Italian maritime perfection.

Bill Miller says that some of the best passenger ships built in the 1960s were Italian:
"The ITALIAN SENSATION - The GUGLIELMO MARCONI (and her twin sister, GALILEO GALILEI), commissioned in 1963, was one of the great Italian liner "sensations" of the early '60s. It was a hugely significant era, begun with the very beautiful LEONARDO DA VINCI and concluding, in 1965-66, with the likes of the MICHELANGELO, RAFFAELLO, OCEANIC & EUGENIO"C"."

Texto e imagens /Text and images copyright L.M.Correia. Favor não piratear. Respeite o meu trabalho / No piracy, please. For other posts and images, check our archive at the right column of the main page. Click on the photos to see them enlarged. Thanks for your visit and comments. Luís Miguel Correia

RAFFAELLO em Nápoles

Em 1965 a companhia Itália colocou em serviço na carreira dos Estados Unidos dois navios gémeos absolutamente extraordinários, o MICHELANGELO e o RAFFAELLO, ambos de 45.000 toneladas de arqueação bruta e 27 nós de velocidade de serviço.

Vieram substituir duas unidades do final da década de 1920, os navios motores SATURNIA e VULCANIA, mas chegaram demasiado tarde a um mercado em fase de desaparecimento, com a preferência dos passageiros pelas viagens aéreas transatlânticas e em 1975 acabaram retirados precocemente na baía de La Spezia, onde permaneceram até serem vendidos para a marinha da Pérsia.

Ainda se tentou a sua utilização em cruzeiros mas a divisão interna em três classes e o consumo muito elevado destes paquetes a turbinas, aliado à pouca procura por navios de passageiros com as características do MICHELANGELO e RAFFAELLO determinaram um final de carreira inglório no Golfo Pérsico.

Tal como os navios, que tive oportunidade de conhecer em Lisboa, porto que frequentaram nas viagens regulares e em cruzeiros, esta fotografia, registada em 1973 no porto de Nápoles, é extraordinária: "tinha chegado a Nápoles de comboio na véspera e ao amanhecer era esta a vista do meu quarto de hotel - o RAFFAELLO, à minha espera atracado na Estação Marítima a caminho de Nova Iorque", contou-me Bill Miller, que tirou a fotografia com uma teleobjectiva de 210 mm. Estava muito calor e poeira, criando um ambiente de "smog", traduzido na fotografia por este tom de ouro. De facto o RAFFAELLO e o seu irmão foram dois dos últimos grandes paquetes dos anos sessenta, um período de ouro na história da navegação de passageiros do século XX, então considerado por muita gente como o final de uma época de viagens marítimas de longo curso em grandes paquetes.

Texto de L. M. Correia e imagem de Bill Miller /Text by L.M.Correia and image copyright Bill Miller. Favor não piratear. Respeite o meu trabalho / No piracy, please. For other posts and images, check our archive at the right column of the main page. Click on the photos to see them enlarged. Thanks for your visit and comments. Luís Miguel Correia

Bill Miller ships and photos...

Another of Bill Miler recollections about the port of New York and respective ships: "Some years ago, I began assembling photos of passenger ships at New York. The group grew and grew. I felt it was a book idea and decided to list these ships alphabetically. The collection dates from the end of the Second World War, in 1945, and continues, although in less detail, to the 1970s & ‘80s. The primary concentration is in the 1950s & ‘60s, the great and sadly final heyday of the cherished, much remembered Atlantic liners. As these ships sailed from varied ports such as Oslo, Rotterdam, Southampton, Lisbon and Genoa, the Port of New York was the primary destination on the western end of the Atlantic. Happily and fortunately for me, I was born and raised on the very banks of the Hudson River, in Hoboken, New Jersey. It was like a front row seat in a great production. Hoboken faced across to New York City, its magnificent skyline and its long collection of finger piers. Amidst the tugs, barges and ferries, the great liners were the leading ladies. Sometimes, six of them would depart in a morning’s procession; otherwise, in high summer, there might nine or ten of them grouped together at berth. They created a fascinating, evocative, alluring collection. In ways, they were also like “friends”. The Queen of Bermuda, one of my favorites, came and went on a weekly basis; the big Cunard Queens rotated with either the Mary or theElizabeth each week. 

Late afternoon arrival: In this photo, I caught the Raffaello as she made her way up along the Hudson, just off Jersey City. Due to an Atlantic storm, she was 12 hrs late. She sailed, however, on schedule at Noon on the following day for the Mediterranean. The date is October 1973." 

Texto e imagens /Text and images copyright Bill Miller. Favor não piratear. Respeite o meu trabalho / No piracy, please. For other posts and images, check our archive at the right column of the main page. Click on the photos to see them enlarged. Thanks for your visit and comments. Luís Miguel Correia

Crossing on the RAFFAELLO

In the summer of 1973, the Raffaello was booked solid for a 10-night westbound crossing from Naples to New York. She'd also call on that voyage at Genoa, Cannes, Barcelona, Gibraltar & Lisbon. My sister had a boyfriend at the time & he had an uncle who owned a travel agency in Hoboken, but also worked for the Italian Line in their Lower Manhattan offices. His name was Nick De Bari and he managed to find a berth for me in a cabin class double. The fare was $600 or $60 a day. I was, of course, absolutely thrilled.
Texto e imagens /Text and images copyright Bill Miller. Favor não piratear. Respeite o meu trabalho / No piracy, please. For other posts and images, check our archive at the right column of the main page. Click on the photos to see them enlarged. Thanks for your visit and comments. Luís Miguel Correia

THREE LINERS - SIX FUNNELS...

The magnificent Italian Line sisters RAFFAELLO and MICHELANGELO photographed in the port of New York in 1965. The UNITED STATES can also be seen at her berth...

I remember seeing all those three ships in Lisbon in the late 1960s...

Texto e imagens /Text and images copyright L.M.Correia. Favor não piratear. Respeite o meu trabalho / No piracy, please. For other posts and images, check our archive at the right column of the main page. Click on the photos to see them enlarged. Thanks for your visit and comments. Luís Miguel Correia

The RAFFAELLO off Palma de Mallorca

When introduced in 1965 the new sisterships MICHELANGELO and RAFFAELLO replaced the veterans SATURNIA and VULCANIA of 1928 on the Mediterranean - North America route and allowed the Italian Line to became the first company on the North Atlantic in terms of passengers surpassing Cunard. However it was the swan song for those great liners and the ships only operated for ten years until laid up in 1975...
Photograph by Michael Sutcliffe. The RAFFAELLO is about to enter at Palma de Mallorca.
Texto e imagens /Text and images copyright L.M.Correia. For other posts and images, check our archive at the right column of the main page. Click on the photos to see them enlarged. Thanks for your visit and comments. Luís Miguel Correia

ITALIAN STYLE AT SEA

In 1965 the Italian Line introduced their final transatlantic superliners, the sisters MICHELANGELO (45.911 GRT / built 1965) and RAFFAELLO (45.933 GRT / built 1965) on the Genoa - New York express service.

Two handsome futuristic liners financed by the Italian taxpayers, built too late to be successful in the dwindling liner trades and too expensive to run on cruises, so their spectacular careers were short. By 1975 both sisters were laid up at La Spezia and nobody seemed to be interested in the twin flagships.

In the end both were sold in 1977 to the Iranian Navy and used as accommodation ships in the Persian Gulf... Later the MICHELANGELO was scrapped while the RAFFAELLO was sunk during the Iraq - Iran war.
Despite those sad events, the MICHELANGELO and RAFFAELLO were two of the greatest post-war passenger liners, with their unique modern latice funnels...

Text and images copyright L.M.Correia collection. For other posts and images, check our archive at the right column of the main page. Thanks for your visit and comments. Luís Miguel Correia