Comments by "Andrew Brendan" (@andrewbrendan1579) on "Oceanliner Designs" channel.

Another outstanding Mike Brady production! Thank you, Mike, for all t he time and work that go into your videos. These videos are of such high quality they could be on television networks. --- I once read a book called "Fourteen Minutes", about the sinking of the Empress of Ireland. Something that stood out for me from the book was how the Canadian Pacific line after Titanic sank had a policy that crew members were to be so familiarized with the layout of their ship that they could find their way out onto the open deck in complete darkness. My recollection is that many of the survivors were crew members rather than passengers who had boarded the ship only hours before. Because of the conditions of the sinking, the crew could do little beyond trying to save themselves. I'd like to encourage viewers/readers to thoroughly familiarize themselves with the layout of their homes, workplaces, schools, etc. so that they know how to get out in an emergency and maybe get other people out as well. Even in stores and malls and other public spaces, it could be good to look around and have an idea about how to quickly get out in a crisis situation. I'm not talking about living in fear, and parnoia, but about being realistic and having a sensible plan of action.
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Mike, I'm glad you added a mention of the Dreadnought Hoax. Some fun facts are that the faux Abyssinian on the far left of the picture you showed is the author Virginia Woolf (still Virginia Stephen at that time) and the man at the far right is Duncan Grant, the post-impressionist painter, and the tall man at the back may be Virginia's brother Adrian Stephen who later, along with his wife Karin, became two of the first British psychoanalysts.
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Fascinating video with so much spoken and visual information. This may seem to be a small point but I especially noticed the comment that when the Olympic returned to service in May of 1912 there were only 500 passengers and 900 crew. Ordinarily there would have been a huge number of people in steerage. I wonder how many Third Class passengers, if any, were aboard the Olympic for that crossing. It would be interesting to know how far in advance Third Class passengers were booked and where those passengers were that would have been aboard the Olympic had not the Titanic sank. Maybe travel agents or White Star staff re-routed those people to other liners in the White Star fleet or even to the ships of other lines if White Star was out of space?
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Thank you, Mike, for all that went into this video: it was a great session of cringe-worthy ships! The worn-out Australis appeals to me in the same way I like abandoned, somewhat dilapidated mansions. As with an unoccupied house showing its years, the same with an ocean liner that is at the end of its career.
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Mike, you have taken your channel to a new level with this video. A remarkable production all around and along with that I wouldn't be surprised if you've been part of saving lives. People who watch this video may start thinking about safety issues right where they are and about how sometimes we have to take action and make decisions for ourselves rather than waiting to be told what to do. In the book "Fourteen Minutes" about the Empress of Ireland disaster I read how the crew of Canadian Pacific ships had to know the layout of their ships so well that the crewmembers could find their way out onto an open deck even in the dark. We all should know the layout of our homes and schools and workplaces so that we can get out in an emergency. This doesn't mean living in and acting from fear, but it's about being realistic and sensible and prepared. Well done, Mike!
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Outstanding work, Mike! This is the work of a professional. This video could be used for teaching in a college class. I'm glad you mentioned Elaine Kaplan. Not only did she have to deal with the unwillingness of many businesses at that time to hire women, Mrs. Kaplan also had to deal with barriers because she was of the Jewish faith. Gibbs & Cox looked for the best in employees regardless of sex, religion or race.
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Hi, Mike! I'm glad I found your channel and I just now subscribed. I've seen your video on the Titanic then found this one. Wow! I respect and admire the amount of time and effort that goes into your videos. I've been an ocean liner enthusiast since I saw "The Poseidon Adventure" on Christmas Day of 1972 when I was 11 but you had information and photos that are new even to me! Very informative and entertaining. I know that hindsight is 20/20 but when I see photos of the Lusitania there just seems to be a sense that something bad is going to happen, there's a foreboding that goes with that ship. Maybe just my imagination... Something I'd like to suggest for an upcoming video is one about the post-war Ile de France. You probably have seen the 1960 movie "The Last Voyage" that was filmed aboard the Ile de France just before she was scrapped. Some liner lovers hate the movie but I see it as a terrific movie and one that provides an extraordinary amount of documentation about the ship on which it was filmed. The camera takes us from all the way down in the boiler room up to the bridge and top of the ship and so much of the interior is shown. "The Last Voyage" is a treasure chest of visual information. I'm looking forward to watching your next video!
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Back in the early 1990's I worked in Red Cross Blood Services here in the U.S. and I remember talking to an elderly volunteer lady name Inez. She knew of my interest in ocean liners and told me that though the loss of the Titanic was of course terrible, what really had an effect on her parents was "...the sinking of the Lusitania". I suppose it was because the sinking of the Cunard liner was done intentionally while the Titanic disaster was an accident.
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It's fun to play Ocean Liner What-If. We can speculate on the career the Britannic might have had had she survived the war. I've wondered if those huge davits might have been removed and replaced with more conventional davits and the lifeboats in more of a line along the deck. That scenario happened with one of the Union Castle four-funnel liners. Of the Olympic-class liners I think the Britannic was the most attractive onthe outside though I found her interiors just a little too ornate. I was once writing a short story written in the form of a letter and it took place aboard the Britannic in 1936. In the story the ship had become an economy liner with lower fares. Her hull had been painted white and the fourth funnel had been removed and the remaining three lowered to give the ship a more modern look.
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Very interesting! Just now found your channel. I enjoy those might-have-beens and what-ifs. During the video I was reminded of a picture I saw years ago of how the Queen Mary might have looked: the drawing or painting showed hull 543 looking much as we know it now as the Queen Mary but the last third or last quarter of the ship looked like aft portion of the Aquitania including the counter stern. I'm going to check out the website you mentioned.
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Great to see the America/West Point/America/Australis/Noga/Alferdoss---if I have all those names right! She was a beauty and had such a long career. I think part of that is because the ship was large but not too large to be economical. From what I've read she sailed with a lot of empty cargo space as the America and then there were problems with striking workers but was most successful as the Australis. On a liners Facebook page just today there's been some discussion about how the Australis had a gray hull while the other Chandris liners had white hulls. The original black paint of the America was bleeding through the white paint of the Australis so the Australis was given a gray hull. I love the white-painted Chandris liners but for some reason the white didn't look as good on the Australis as the gray that was eventually used.
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Thank you, Mike, for bringing another outstanding presentation to us. Your work is that of a professional. It's so well done and it's educational as well as entertaining. What a great ship the Olympic was. Wouldn't it have been something to be a 1920's passenger aboard the Olympic!
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Now that's the way to get your point across! Beautiful images of the liners and it's great to see them together and get a sense of scale as well as design. Some liners are or were bigger than others but there is no such thing as a small ocean liner!
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@OceanlinerDesigns Mike, you very likely know about this book already but just in case you don't: I'd like to highly recommend "A Man and His Ship---America's Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the S.S. United States" by Stephen Ujifusa, published by Simon and Schuster, 2012.
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Wow! Mike, you have done yourself proud: I am so impressed with the talent and self-discipline and attention to detail and with the amount of information that went into making this video. I've known of and have seen pictures of the Chusan but your video has given me so much knowledge of the ship and so much appreciation of her. Well done! I know I'll enjoy seeing and learning about any liner you feature. Two that I would especially enjoying seeing are the postwar Ile de France (also known as the S.S. Claridon!) and the Dominion Monarch.
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I'm glad to learn that someone else has read "The Celtic Queen'! I read it many years ago and it was a great story.
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@rael5469 Thank you for your comments! I don't have a car so I often travel by bike and with a backpack on me. In one of the pockets of my backpack I always have a little flashlight.
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Terrific video, Mike...as always! Not simply a well done and entertaining production but educational as well. If you ever decide to change occupations you'd make a great teacher!
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More congratulations from me! 15,000 and on your way to 20,000! Your videos are so well done and so informative that I can see how you attract more and more viewers and subscribers. I don't recall who it was that made this observation but I'll pass it along: the name Britannic was more likely than Gigantic because just after the Titanic sank, the Imperator, a much a larger ship than the Olympic-class liners, was launched to be followed by two more even bigger. To name a liner Gigantic when there were larger liners wouldn't have made much sense. Britannic really was the better, more logical choice. Have a wonderful time in Sidney!
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Loved it, Mike! What a pleasure to watch and listen to your videos. Though not mentioned here (maybe in a sequel?) my favorite transformation is that of the Ile de France after World War II with the Liberte a close second. I may have mentioned before that the Arundel Castle was intended to be the liner in the movie "The Last Voyage" but, for some reason, the Ile de France was used instead. It would have been great if the Dominion Monarch had had a longer life. I've imagined her becoming a Chandris liner, but I suppose turning all that cargo space into passenger space was more complex than using ships that were already liners with only limited cargo space.
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Outstanding production! What a mixture of fact and fiction and so well thought out, such attention to details. Have you ever read John Maxtone-Graham's book "Crossing to Cruising"? Only a few pages long but one chappter, "The Once and Future Normandie" has a fiction section that tells about the Normandie's time as the Lafayette during World War II, her return to peacetime service and her original name and what happened during her the rest of her career that lasted until 1966. I never met him but I know that John Maxtone-Graham would have loved this video of yours!
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Mike, if you You Tube had an equivalent of Oscar and Tony and Emmy awards, you should have a shelf of them for the quality of your work. --- Also you and your viewers might be interested in the memoir "The Last Voyage of His Majesty's Hospital Ship Britannic" by Reverend John A. Fleming who was a young chaplain on the Britannic. It may have been in that little book or elsewhere that I read about how Rev. Fleming for years dreamed of water flowing down the corridors of the sinking Britannic. Unknown if he and Violet Jessop ever met, but since they were both religious (though one was Catholic and the other Protestant) people maybe they were in church services at the same time.
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