A tribute to the SS Leviathan with music from her ship's orchestra

The SS Leviathan has the distinction of being the only American Super-Ocean Liner prior to the 1950's.  She was known for the elegance and comfort of her rooms and her orchestra was so famous that they cut their own records in the 1930's and went on to play in ballrooms long after the ship was taken out of service.  The ship also had a Ritz Carlton restaurant on board whose cuisine was on a level normally only found on the French liners of the period.

All of which said she suffered from three strikes which combined to make her a commercial bust.  All of those strikes were related to the fact that she was an American ship.  First the United States never really showed much interest in trans-Atlantic ocean liners.  In general we seemed content to leave that to the Europeans.  As a consequence the Leviathan had no running mates which left her at a considerable disadvantage to rival companies who typically had enough big steamers to maintain a weekly service between New York and Europe.  The very fact we had her at all was largely an accident of war.  We got her from the Germans as war reparations (originally SS Vaterland one of Albert Balins "Big Three").  After her World War I service as a troopship she was gutted and redecorated to American tastes.  But we would never have built such a ship on our own.

Her second 'strike' was that, fairly or not, American ships were  widely believed to have inferior service compared to those of Great Britain, France and Germany.  And lastly, but perhaps most seriously, because she was an American vessel she was "dry" throughout most of her service years which coincided with Prohibition.  Seriously, who would want to spend five days on even the most comfortable boat sailing away from the social conservatism run amok that was the United States in the 20's without being able to have a drink?  Maybe a convention of Baptist ministers.  By contrast foreign flagged liners were able to open their bars the minute they crossed outside the three mile limit then recognized as US territorial waters.

In the end, the Leviathan rarely sailed after her first year with more than half her cabins booked.  She was a huge financial lemon that was kept in service only by a combination of government subsidies and mandates.  But even with the subsidies the losses kept piling up and when the Depression hit she was retired from service and eventually broken up in the late 30's.  Ironically had she been kept from the ship breakers for just another year or two she would likely have ended up performing invaluable service as a troopship in World War II.  The lack of any large American passenger ships was felt very keenly during the war years.