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"."

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