I got that picture from this site: http://ssmaritime.com/APL-4-Luxury-Cargo-Liners.htm, See also: https://lastoceanliners.com/line/american-president-lines/?l=APL
There's lots of pictures on the site. It didn't identify the ship in the picture I posted. Each of the four Mariner Class C-4's passenger accommodations were designed by a different famous interior decorator and had different themes. The photos look like sets for that TV series, "Mad Men." Check out the "vacation casual" dress code! Very uptight early sixties culture.
The article doesn't mention the S.S. President Roosevelt (1944), another WWII troop transport as were the Wilson and Cleveland, which was transferred to MARAD after the war and bounced around the Ready Reserve Fleets, being reactivated during the Korean War, and on commercial lease until purchased by APL in 1960 to replace two of the retired Mariner Class cargo/liners. After a total remodel, she took over for APL's Round-the-World cruise service in 1965 and ran until 1970 when APL got out of the passenger business and she was sold off. The Roosevelt was really a transitional vessel, since the earlier passenger and cargo/passenger hybrids operated as true passenger transportation vessels intended to carry passengers to a given destination.
S.S. President Roosevelt
The Roosevelt was one of the first real cruise ships, where the round trip was the whole point of the voyage. All of her accommodations were First Class. There were no economy fare classes. She was one of the first to operate in the now-familiar "cruise ship" format, making "tourist stops" at ports of call with passengers disembarking to take organized sightseeing tours and shop, etc. and all remaining with the ship until she completed her loop and returned to San Francisco. Roosevelt was ahead of her time, though, and a victim of the triple-whammy of international jet airline travel, the rising costs of union crew under the Jones Act, and the difficulty of obtaining extensions on USCG registration of the "aged out" hulls. By the end, cruise passenger service just didn't pencil out. I remember the last of it, though, when I would work filing bills of lading during high school summers, and see the unbelievable stores that went aboard the passenger liners... cases of caviar, top shelf liquor, and filet mignon by the pallet load. Those passengers had it good! It would be some time before the Scandinavians would develop the wildly successful business model of packing passengers like sardines into "Vegas hotels on barges" and hauling them around the Carribean on cruises, all foreign flagged and non-union crewed, of course.
I got a good laugh from the fares in the old advertising brochures:
Sample minimum one-way fares from San Francisco to Honolulu: First class $250; Economy class $165; from San Francisco to Manila: First class $645; Economy class $445; All fares are per person in U.S. dollars.
Adjusted for inflation between 1970 and 2025: "Sample minimum one-way fares from San Francisco to Honolulu: First class $2,087; Economy class $1,378; from San Francisco to Manila: First class $5,386; Economy class $3,716; All fares are per person in U.S. dollars."
Last edited:
