The Book About The Ship And More ...

S.S. AMERICA / U.S.S. WEST POINT / S.S. AUSTRALIS

The Many Lives of a Great Ship

You can order it through Amazon: The book about the ship - the S.S. AMERICA.

Author Lawrence (Larry) Driscoll wrote the book in 2002; it is available again as a new edition from 2003 (status May 2006).

Obviously, it is only available in English; however, that should not bother the real enthusiast of the ship. It is authentic in this language. It is about a ship that was the flagship of the American Merchant Marine ...

The book about the ship ...

Our author Bill Lee was also part of this book: In his unique way, he contributed several articles - among others, especially chapter 3 is very impressive; that was completely written by him. When describing the shipyard´s everyday life of building the ship and the many inconveniences that did not make life easy for the shipyard workers in the beginning of the 20th century, we felt like being with them under the deck: Bill is virtually placing the maddening noise, the smell, and the other severe working conditions during the construction of such a passenger ship in front of our eyes ...

... with contributions by Bill Lee ...

Larry Driscoll is also able to fascinate the reader in the remaining chapters: Already the book´s interesting introduction showing the connection among the former German ocean giant VATERLAND (renamed as LEVIATHAN after the capture by the Americans), the AMERICA, as well as the later flagship UNITED STATES makes the book worth reading. The connection of all three ships through the exceptional designer and shipbuilder William Francis Gibbs will be obvious to the reader.

From the LEVIATHAN to the AMERICA ... But at this point, we do not want to tell too much - the fan of the later AMERICAN STAR should experience the exciting story by him/herself ...

The additional chapters guide through AMERICA´s careers: beginning with the design, her construction, as well as her decor the book is telling the complete story that we have in condensed form on our website: S.S. AMERICA - Queen Of The American Merchant Marine is the name of Bill Lee´s contribution.

We also find the glorious years of the AMERICA in the book after she was working for the military as WESTPOINT during the Second World War and before she had another career high as the AUSTRALIS.

Also, the later dark times of the ship´s history will be pointed out: From her idle periods under various names until her sad end as the AMERICAN STAR off Fuerteventura´s coast, all chapters of this glorious ship´s life are described.

To prepare reading this book and as an addition we will provide the readers of our CD exclusively with Bill Lee´s diverse articles about the ships of the United States Lines: There are two stories regarding the smokestacks of the AMERICA and the UNITED STATES and a story about the radio room which we publish as PDF file.

While the article "A Lesson for Mr. Gibbs" talks about the experiences and the development of the different heights of both ships´ smokestacks the article "AMERICA´s Steel-Lined Foxhole" and the one about the "Radio Room Recollections" were created for a veteran´s meeting of the USS WESTPOINT - several crewmembers once sat on top of the first dummy smokestack which then served as observation and command post as Bill Lee had already described in his above story ...