WORLD SHIP SOCIETY

Although they are among the better-known passenger-cargo liners, American Export Lines’ postwar “Four Aces”—EXCALIBUR, EXOCHORDA, EXETER, and EXCAMBION—are nevertheless often seen as adjuncts of the express liners INDEPENDENCE and CONSTITUTION rather than important in their own right. Yet these four ships are notable in several ways. Rebuilt from WWII U.S. Navy attack transports as passenger-cargo liners for AEL’s service from the U.S. to the Mediterranean and as far as the Middle East, they are exemplars of the many vessels converted from wartime to peacetime use after the war, as well as of a mid-20^th century U.S. Merchant Marine that was heavily subsidized partly in anticipation of yet another world war. They are also among the very earliest postwar liners, both having entered service in 1948, and represent the brief trend toward smaller passenger-cargo liners in the immediate postwar years. Lastly, they represented the height of postwar modernity, both as single-class ships with private facilities in every stateroom and as the world’s first fully air-conditioned liners, as well as in their modernist art and design. Join Doug Newman as we explore the five lives of these four famous, yet perhaps underappreciated, liners.

This encore showing featured a recording of Doug’s informative program originally presented on June 17th.

(Image courtesy of Wolfsonian-FIU)