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John Maxtone-Graham (1929–2015)

Author of The Only Way to Cross

23+ Works 526 Members 16 Reviews 2 Favorited

About the Author

John Kurtz Maxtone-Graham (August 2, 1929 - July 6, 2015) was a speaker and writer on ocean liners and maritime history. He was born in Orange, New Jersey and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey. He graduated from Brown University in 1951. He served in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War show more and had once worked unsuccessfully as a Broadway stage manager. In 1972, he wrote his first book on ocean liners, The Only Way to Cross, to be followed by numerous other books for small publishing houses. France/Norway, was published in 2010, and in March 2012 he wrote and published Titanic Tragedy. He is the father of writer Ian Maxtone-Graham. John Maxtone-Graham died from respiratory failure in Manhattan on July 6, 2015, aged 85. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Works by John Maxtone-Graham

The Only Way to Cross (1972) 202 copies
Liners to the Sun (2000) 47 copies
Cunard: 150 Glorious Years (1989) 12 copies
From Song to Sovereign (1987) 4 copies

Associated Works

Titanic Survivor (1997) — Editor — 331 copies
MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History — Winter 1989 (1988) — Author "Conscripting the Queens" — 27 copies
MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History — Summer 1999 (1999) — Author "Experience of War: The Unseen Enemy" — 11 copies
Crossing the Atlantic (2006) — Preface — 7 copies

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Common Knowledge

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Reviews

I couldn't resist reading another one about this tragedy. It was good except some parts were a little too technical for me (the measurements of the drydock in Southampton, for example. I did learn a few more facts.
 
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kslade | 1 other review | Dec 8, 2022 |
This book starts with a tragedy and ends with a tragedy, but in between there is much to celebrate.

The opening tragedy is the loss of John Franklin's Northwest Passage expedition -- or, more specifically, the events which followed as people tried to learn its fate. It ends with Robert Scott's death on his way back from the South Pole. It is a vivid exposition of all the dangers and horrors that awaited polar explorers.

With more than half a century to cover between those events, and three major regions (North Pole, South Pole, Northwest Passage), the accounts of each particular event are necessarily brief. But this is in many ways a benefit: instead of getting deeply bogged down in the details of a particular expedition, it's possible to see what they have in common -- the problems, the tricks they used, the way the high latitudes affect people. I can't recall a polar book that does a better job of giving a sense of what actually happened.

If I have one gripe, it's that the author has a pro-American bias. He downplays Charles Francis Hall's obsessions, he largely ignores Elisha Kent Kane's goofiness -- and he would have us believe that Robert Peary reached the North Pole. He admits that there is controversy, but he treats it as a simple two-way possibility: If Frederick Cook made the Pole, then Peary didn't, and if Peary made the Pole, then Cook didn't, and Cook didn't, so Peary must have. But this ignores the possibility that neither one of them made it -- and so leaves aside the exceptionally strong indications that Peary lied about his last arctic expedition, and went to great lengths to cover it up.

Leave that aside and it's a great book. I know enough about polar exploration that I learned very little from the volume (and nothing at all about the North Pole and Northwest Passage expeditions), but I enjoyed it anyway, for its sheer verve.
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½
1 vote
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waltzmn | Jul 17, 2019 |
Imagine having a job traveling around the world on cruise ships and ocean liners and then writing about the experience. Surely that’s dying and going to heaven — assuming each ship has a well-stocked library, of course. That’s basically what Maxtone-Graham does. I had the good fortune last fall to stay at a small hotel next to Miami Dade Community College for the Miami Book Fair. The college is located a stone’s throw from the Port of Miami, where the cruise ships dock. What glorious ships. A cruise around the harbor brought us close to seven of them that happened to be in port that weekend. Astonishingly, the newer ships, one of which was the largest in the world, dwarfed the S.S. Norway, formerly the France, a liner built several decades ago and at the time the largest and most prestigious.. Carnival Lines really created the cruise industry in 1972 when it purchased an older Canadian Pacific liner and converted it to Caribbean travel. Soon, for reasons Maxtone-Graham delineates, the company was immensely profitable and was buying and building all sorts of new ships. One amusing anecdote from Japan reveals that country’s rigid and paranoiac trade laws. The S.S. Vaal was in dry-dock being converted to the Festivale. From its previous trip it had seven tons of first-rate Argentinean beef aboard that Carnival offered to donate to the local poor. Japan’s strict import restrictions forbad the entry of any foreign beef into the country, so that was out. They were unable to dump it into the harbor because that might be polluting, so the company was forced to seal it up in large steel canisters and then dump it into the ocean for the sharks once the retrofit was completed.

All the early conversions were of W.N.A. ships (built for the Winter in the North Atlantic) and were extremely well built, with reliable engines. They will last decades more. The newer vessels all have a much boxier look that has a tendency to catch the wind. One ship plucked out several bollards from the Miami pier there was so much wind pressure. Carnival’s director has a background in ship building and engineering, so he can speak the language of the ship builders — a handy ability. The mini cruise ship is making a resurgence although the newer ones resemble a scaled down version of their larger sisters rather than the yachtlike appearance of the original Polaris Stella. They cater to a more affluent and academic crowd that requires less external stimulation and entertainment. Originally these smaller ships thrived in the Mediterranean cruise business, until the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cast such a pall over the business that they couldn’t give cabins away. The larger Caribbean ships spend almost as much time in port as at sea, providing a continual opportunity for passengers to shop.

The Normandie, despite her short life – she burned at a New York pier in 1942 – remains the ship with the most mystique, perhaps because she never lived to the end of her days. Her design was clearly beautiful: three (one fake) rakish funnels seemingly planted on the ship unlike previous ship designs that had rigid funnels held in place with ungraceful guy wires and swept back bridges (although they were later replaced when they proved unpractical). She had no sister ship; indeed, the concept was foreign to French shipbuilders and no equivalent phrase existed in the French language. Each Frenchbuilt liner was unique. She had long, graceful staircases that connected multi-level dining rooms with enormous multi-decked ceilings that created a ballroom effect for the black- or white-tuxedoed passengers. (I would have eaten in my cabin – the thought of having to dress for dinner is positively loathsome.)

We have detailed descriptions of the Normandie from a series of preserved letters sent by Everett Moore to his family. He apparently did not socialize with the other passengers, much to the author’s consternation, but to my complete understanding. After all, why would anyone ever want to stand around over coffee or whatever, making small talk, when one can sit in the library overlooking the ocean with a stack of books.

One of Maxwell’s most interesting chapters relates his experiences accompanying the delivery of some new ships to their new owners. In one case, he and his wife were the sole passengers on a huge new cruise ship. What a deal!
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ecw0647 | Sep 30, 2013 |
The heyday for ocean liners was the period just prior to WW I. The ships grew in size and luxury. Emigration paid the way. The peak year, 1907, witnessed the departure from Europe of 1,300,000 new emigrants to the United States. Most traveled third class, steerage, in dormitory style bunks, with adequate food.

It was abuse of emigration that abetted its demise. The steamship lines tried all sorts of ways to persuade people to ship out on their ships. Their agents would often pay bureaucrats to deliver potential emigrants. Countries willingly complied, delighted to rid themselves of undesirables. That fueled the call for more anti-immigration bills in Congress, and in 1921 Congress passed a law drastically cutting back the number of legal immigrants.

Maxtone-Graham obviously loved travel by ship, and the book is a delight to read. It's filled with amusing anecdotes and information about what it was like.

Coal dust was a major problem. Before loading, all the vents and louvers and interior spaces were shut off. The coal was then loaded manually off barges, a process that took about 24 hours. But then the entire ship, layered in coal dust, required cleaning. The switch to oil-fired burners occurred following WW I. The ship's doctor was the first to benefit. No longer was he inundated with passengers who had cinders in their eyes.

My favorite story pertains to the infamous Foo-Foo Band. They were a cacophonous group of musicians who greeted the arrival of every steamer with raucous music, parading up and down the gang plank and over the ship. This went on for some time until one very sharp-eared customs agent realized that the tuba sounded flatter leaving the ship than it had boarding. A search revealed drugs hidden in the tuba's bell.

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1 vote
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ecw0647 | 7 other reviews | Sep 30, 2013 |

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Works
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Rating
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