[PRCo] SS Normandie (OT from: car restoration work)

[Donald Galt]

On 27 May 2003 at 2:56, rogertrolley.1 at juno.com wrote:

> Actually the Normandie was destroyed by fire and the
> water used to try to put it out in New York City along the Hudson
> River. It was in a dock being retroffited as a troop transport at the
> beginning of WW2 and my father drove along the highway past it and I
> could see it lying on its side in the docking area it was at.

One wartime disaster that couldn't be kept secret.

It was a shock even to us a continent away. The "Weekly Reader" had only just 
come out with an article about the SS Lafayette - immediately recognisable as 
the Normandie even to one as young as I - when the daily paper headlined the 
ship on fire. The next day's front page showed her capsized, the final nail in 
the coffin.

I would point out that in Feb 1942 the war was already more than two years old 
for everybody but the US.

The NYC fire department took some flak for the capsize. But precisely the same 
thing had destroyed the Paris nearly three years earlier at Le Havre (she was 
in service at the time, not undergoing refitting as I said previously.) Fire 
aboard ship was typically a total disaster.

Don