“This is for you,” he said.
It was a signed pencil sketch of the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, reaching across the Atlantic and shaking hands. Krudener took it right to his office, put it on his desk, and returned to work. When Krudener came back, he found his room cleaned, and the sketch gone.27
The crew was officially forbidden from “fraternizing” with passengers in all classes, but at least one of them broke the rule. During a crossing in 1957, deck steward Jim Green was walking on the sun deck when a ladies’ kerchief fluttered down from the tourist-class promenade above. He looked up and saw a young woman saying, “It’s mine.”
Green clambered up and handed the kerchief to a beautiful twenty-seven-year-old named Frieda Kerstgens. Five years earlier, Frieda and her family had watched from the railings of America as the brand-new United States swept by on her record-breaking voyage. As she watched the beautiful ship disappear on the horizon, Frieda vowed that one day, she would take a trip on the superliner.
Jim Green and Frieda Kerstgens fell in love, and were soon married.
When asked if she dropped the kerchief on purpose many years later, Jim Green’s answer was “She’ll never tell.” After which, she said, “No, I won’t.”28
Although popular with celebrities, United States also attracted many ordinary travelers, for whom the voyage was the trip of a lifetime. Cabin class was popular with prosperous professionals, as well as the privately rich who wanted to keep a low profile. Joseph and Judith Follmann, a couple from New Rochelle, New York, were typical of the prosperous rather than superwealthy clientele who sailed on United States. Joseph was an insurance executive, while Judith worked with the American National Standards Institute. On a trip to Paris in the 1950s, the Follmanns traveled first class to Europe, and cabin class back home. For Judith, first class was supremely elegant, a glimpse into a champagne-and-caviar world they could sample once in a while.
The passage back home in cabin class was much more sedate. “We played bridge all the way across the Atlantic,” she recalled.29
In tourist class, American college students mingled with European budget travelers and immigrants. Public rooms were stark, staterooms cramped, and the lack of private bathrooms made this part of the ship feel like a college dormitory. But for young people on board, tourist class was the liveliest part of the ship, much more fun than bingo games with a bunch of old people in suits and tuxedos.
Frank Nolan, a nineteen-year-old student at Notre Dame, booked a tourist-class berth on the way to a study abroad program at the University of Innsbrück in Austria. There were more than thirty people in his group of college students, all of whom were “on the look-out for a good time the moment we set sail.” Since days were largely unscheduled, most of them spent their time drinking beer in the smoking room until their cash ran out. Sometimes, “sugar daddies” would sidle up to the bar and buy the young college women drinks. Passengers gathered around the piano, alcohol and cigarettes in hand, for late night sing-alongs. Even in tourist class, Nolan could ring a steward to deliver a club sandwich and bottle of beer to his stateroom at 3 A.M. The gala dinner, which took place on his birthday, was better than he expected: crab salad, pâté de foie gras, stuffed Cornish game hen. He also tried his hand at skeet shooting—the clay pigeons were flung from the fantail, and passengers fired at them from the railings as they flew over the ship’s wake. And despite the wind, Nolan spent hours walking the decks, contemplating the vastness of the North Atlantic. “We were always discovering new things and meeting new people,” Nolan recalled. “We were not conscious of time during the voyage.”30
For immigrants in tourist class, United States was often their first taste of America. One was ten-year-old Kurt Wich, whose family fled war-devastated Germany for a new life in Philadelphia. At the gala dinner of their February 1953 crossing, immigrants and students alike were dressed in party hats and blowing noisemakers. Kurt’s father, who had served time in an American POW camp, pointed out the African-American waiters in the tourist-class dining room. “They are celebrating the birthday of the president who gave them their freedom.”31
A more recent president than Lincoln had left political office virtually penniless three years earlier, and might have booked tourist class if not for a windfall. After leaving the White House, the highly unpopular Harry Truman went back to Independence, Missouri, and took up residence in a white frame Victorian house that belonged to his wife, Bess. With no personal wealth, Truman was forced to make do on a scant Army pension of $111.96 per month, barely enough to pay the bills, let alone the cheapest stateroom aboard United States. But then the ex-president received an offer from Life magazine for $670,000 to write his memoirs.
When they were published, Harry Truman and Bess decided to sail to Europe in style. They had other reasons to celebrate: their daughter Margaret had just married New York Times editor Clifton Daniel Jr.
The United States left New York with the Trumans aboard on May 11, 1956. The last time Truman had been at sea was eleven years earlier, when he sailed aboard the cruiser USS Augusta to the Potsdam Conference. This was a different kind of trip. The sea was smooth, his suite spacious and comfortable, and the service impeccable.
The first morning at sea, radio bellboy Joe Rota knocked on Truman’s stateroom door.
Bess Truman opened the door. “Yes, come in,” she told Rota.
He saw the former president enjoying breakfast in the suite’s sitting room.
“I’m Joe Rota,” he said. “I’m the radio bellman. I’ll be handling all the radio telegrams, and I’ll be glad to bring them to you in the morning.”
“Where are you from, Joseph?” Truman asked, peering through his thick glasses.
“New Jersey,” Rota responded.
Truman leaned in closer. “Are you a Democrat or a Republican?”
“Mr. President,” he answered, “everyone’s a Democrat in this room.”
Truman chuckled. “You should be working in Washington.”
While on his daily rounds delivering radiograms, Rota would see the president pacing the promenade deck arm in arm with Bess, his eyes trained on the gray ocean rushing past the windows.
When he ran into Rota, he always asked the same question: “So how are things in New Jersey, Joseph?”
“The same, Mr. President,” he would answer. “Unfortunately the same.”32
The Trumans’ trip was a public relations coup for the United States Lines. When the former president disembarked in Le Havre, the newsreel cameramen filmed him coming down the gangplank and greeting the French honor guard. The great ship loomed behind him as he held his hat to his chest and walked down the pier. The bitter controversy surrounding the ship’s construction had faded into a distant memory—even Truman recognized what a great national achievement United States was, and the place she held in the hearts of the American people.
The mid-1950s was a halcyon era for United States—she was consistently sailing at or near capacity—but there had been one ominous incident during that high-water mark year of 1956, a tragedy that not only validated Gibbs’s obsession with safety, but also gave the American public the chance to watch a big liner sink on television. The Atlantic was as treacherous as ever, and as ever, punished negligence.
On July 25, 1956, the three-year-old Italian liner Andrea Doria, carrying 1,706 passengers and crew, was on the final stretch of a routine voyage from Genoa to New York. Although not in the same superliner class as United States and the Queen s, the beautiful 697-foot-long flagship of the Italian Line was a symbol of the rebirth of postwar Italy. Top-flight cuisine and service made her popular among wealthy Americans.