Ocean State Libraries

"In an engaging and anecdotal social history, Maiden Voyages explores how women's lives were transformed by the Golden Age of ocean liner travel between Europe and North America. During the early twentieth century, transatlantic travel was the province of the great ocean liners. It was an extraordinary undertaking made by many women, whose lives were transformed by their journeys between the Old World and the New. Some traveled for leisure, some for...

When John Moynihan decided to ship out in the Merchant Marine during the summer of his junior year, his father, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was not enthusiastic, but his mother, an avid sailor, liked the idea. John was urged not to tell the crew that his father was a senator. The job ticket read "45 days from Camden, N.J., to the Mediterranean on the Rose City," a supertanker. But the orders changed, and 45 days became four months--across the...

The story of the daughter of a Maine sea captain, born on a merchant ship off Singapore and for fifteen years brought up and educated on her father's vessel. Her later life is spent in a little Maine village where her sterling traits come to fine fruition.