From my early pictures' album, I particularly like those two images of Soviet passenger liners on their first visits to Lisbon: the SHOTA RUSTAVELI docking at the Rocha Passenger Ships Terminal on 23rd March 1975 on the first call ever of a URSS passenger ship to Lisbon; the LEONID SOBINOV docking at Alcântara also doing her first call since sold by Cunard to the Soviets in 1973.
The SHOTA RUSTAVELI was the fourth of five sisters of the IVAN FRANKO-class, and was built in East Germany in 1968. She was doing a round the world liner voyage and shared her berth in Lisbon with ITALIA's CRISTOFORO COLOMBO, then a regular visitor on her Mediterranean - Brazil - Plata service. Like most Soviet liners, the SHOTA RUSTAVELI looked in need of some attention to her hull, with rust and an image of neglect...
The LEONID hull was also far from pristine... She was doing a series of summer cruises for CTC Cruises of London, and I enjoyed her calls particularly, for she had been built as the original Cunarder SAXONIA in 1954, converted for cruising in 1963 as the CARMANIA and sold ten years later to the URSS "en block" with her sister FRANCONIA. Both ships visited Lisbon several times over the years although not very often...
When I started taking photos of passenger ships in Lisbon in February 1975, the Soviet Union had the largest fleet in the world. Most of the older ships had been taken over from Germany in 1945 and rebuilt. This original fleet was followed by several classes of new ships, including the MIKHAIL KALININ-class, formed by no less than 19 sisters, built in East Germany in 1958-1964, the IVAN FRANKO-class (five ships introduced 1964 to 1973) or the then brand new Finland-built five sisters of the BYELORUSSIYA class... The flagship was the MAKSIM GORKIY, the former German HAMBURG of 1969, who still visits Lisbon regularly and must be nearing the end of her working life, still in steam, still looking very German and modern-sixties...
Copyright photos and words by Luís Miguel Correia - 15 February 2007
