John Maxtone Graham, the New Yorker and marine historian, after offering an important work on the world of transatlantic ships, from Titanic to Queen Mary II, is now presenting American and British readers with a considerable book about the liner Normandie.
Sixty six years have now elapsed since she so tragically ended in the port of New York, but this mythical ship still fascinates American people, and first of all John Maxtone Graham, a renowned historian in the world of seamen over the Atlantic.
This very fine book, with its 200 photos and illustrations, is an ode to the memory of the most majestic liner ever built.
John Maxtone Graham was born in New Jersey in 1929, from an American mother and a Scottish father. All through the book, he gives recognition to the part Breton people and Brittany took in the existence of Steamer Ship Normandie. From the first chapter to the last pages of the book the Breton workmen and engineers of Saint-Nazaire who built her, the Breton seamen who sailed her, all are constantly remembered and recalled.
The book was warmly welcomed by American experts on its coming out. John Maxtone Graham's Scottish roots gave him a strong feeling for the Scotsmen who created, in 1862, in Penhoet, the first modern shipyard, with John Scott, an engineer from Greenock.
Our author notes that in the competition between Cunard and Compagnie Générale Transatlantique through their liners, in the thirties, the Breton learners outdid the master from the Clyde in the building of Normandie, technically better than S. S. Queen Mary.
John Maxtone Graham does not fail to put forward as obvious, while French specialists ignore it, that Normandie is undoubtedly French in her decoration, but basically Breton in its naval architecture — a field where Breton savoir-faire in an international reference for ship-owners.
All lovers of those mythical liners, this side of the Atlantic, are hoping for a publication, soon, in French, of this historical work of John Maxtone Graham.
NORMANDIE, by John Maxtone Graham, 260 pages, illustrated.
Éd. W.W. Norton, London, 2007, 100 €
Hubert Chémereau
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