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Ocean Liners: Going In Style At 9 a.m. sharp she came into sight. Passing the Statue of Liberty, the Norway headed slowly up the Hudson river, saluted by fireboat spray, by fleets of tugs and by helicopters fluttering over her gleaming decks. The bright blue-and-white ship then turned into her Pier 52 berth, a surviving symbol of the grand days of ocean liner travel. "The last great maiden voyage in history," shipping historian John Maxtone- Graham believes. Many of the Norway's sisters from the old days have been gutted and sold as scrap; a few now lie wrecked and rusting in foreign waters; one is a tourist at­ traction and another rests in dry dock, waiting for another chance at sea. But the Norway managed to outmaneuver such a fate- though just barely. Launched in 1960 as the France, maritime history's longest express liner was taken out of service in 1974, the victim of high labor and energy costs and a losing battle with jet service to Europe. But on May 16, under her new name and Norwegian ownership, she arrived once again in New York, enroute to a new life in -the West Indies. In her earlier incarnation, the France had ferried thousands of passengers across the North Atlantic in the "grande luxe" tradition that survives only on the Queen Elizabeth, the last ocean liner plying the Atlantic sea lanes. As the born-again Norway, she is now expected to compete for a share of the sybaritic Caribbean cruise trade, but like the smaller ships already profiting in those waters, she surely will seem more like a "floating hotel" in competition with land- based resorts than a form of transportation steaming toward a destination. The same, however, could not be said about one of her ancestors, the Britannia, the first Cunard transatlantic steam packet, which was launched in 1840. Charles Dickens, sailing to the United States two years after the little ship's maiden crossing, complained that his cabin was "an utterly impractical, thoroughly hopeless and profoundly preposterous box." Worse, the dining room reminded the British author of a "hearse without windows." As in Dickens' day, ocean travel through the years has not been all champagne bon voyage parties, haute cuisine and deck tennis. From the late 1800s to 1921, the Atlantic liners carried millions of European im­ migrants to the United Slates in usually cramped, unhealthy steerage quar­ ters. Other serious chapters of transatlantic shipping unfolded during World Wars I and II when the converted and camouflaged luxury ships transported thousands of GIs to European and Asian battlefields. Yet the impact of the ocean liner does not end with its cultural and military roles. "The ocean liner has a fascinating social history, and now has considerable nostalgic appeal," Lisa Taylor, director of the Cooper-Hewitt museum, the Smithsonian institution's National Museum of Design, says, "But perhaps its most important legacy is what it shows us about design." From the massive bulk of hull and propulsion systems to the smallest detail of shipboard life, the liner was meticulously designed, she explains, and as one of the. largest objects in the world, it exerted great influence in matters of design. In effect, it was a design laboratory. During the 1930s and '40s, buildings, movie sets and interiors were created which incorporated the materials of the liners' streamlined, modernistic look -- steel tubing, indirect lighting, plastics and other metals that today continue to serve artists and designers. Then too, "the size, speed and luxury of an ocean liner has seemed to symbolize the 20th century," Richard Oliver, curator of design at Cooper-Hewitt, suggests. Along with the skyscraper, transcontinental train and airplane, he adds, the passenger strip has represented "progress and the integration of art and technology." All transatlantic express ocean liners, Oliver ex­ plains, shared three design goals--"the desire for speed and stability, which involved the hull, superstructure and propulsion system; the a c c o m m o d a t i o n o f passengers, crew, service functions and machinery in a rational way, and the design and decoration of interior spaces for comfort and luxury." Reminded, perhaps, of Dickens' woes at sea, designers at the turn of the century thought in terms of fast, reliable express service that at the same time would distract passengers from the often unpleasant ordeal of sailing the hazardous, foggy North Atlantic. To improve See Us First for all your Dry Clmiig Needs! Conveniently Located at McHenry Market Place SHAMROCK CLEAj|IEftS 385-1944 7-6Sa^.8-5:30 stability and speed, iron and steel replaced wooden hulls and decks of earlier years; propellers and compound steam engines took over the work of paddle wheels and simple steam engines. In the 1920s, turbine engines and the conversion from coal to oil added still more power. As for the interiors, Arthur Davis, the designer of the Aquitania *(1914), once recalled the design concepts prevailing before the 1930s. "When I first engaged to start this work...I said to the directors of the company that employed me: 'Why don't you make a ship look like a ship?...' But the an­ swer I was given was that the people on these ships are not pirates...and the one thing they want to forget when they are on a vessel is that they are on a ship at all." The idea at the time was to give the passenger the illusion that he was living in a luxurious London club, a French chateau, a Bavarian cafetle or maybe an Italian palazzo. The contemporary design dictum that form follow function would apply as well to changes in ship design that occurred in 1921, the year the U.S. Quota act was enacted to limit the flow of European immigrants to the United States. On early ships, there were just two passenger classes-first, which received the lion's share of space, and steerage, which produced most of a company's revenue. This inequitable arrangement, typical of the day, did simplify design and plan­ ning, according to Oliver. But when the Quota Act was passed, the immigrant flow dried up overnight; as a result, design goals changed radically and quickly. The steamship lines began altering the former steerage space to accommodate the booming 1920s tourist trade/ a logical step that took up Ik financial slack but one tjuat nevertheless carried wit! it complex planning decisions. Most ships were redesigned to accommodate three Russells Furniture Ltd. Our Business Is m FULL SIZE SLEEPER COVERED IN 100% HERCULON SHRIMP VELVET Sofa Beds $39900 DELIVERED QUEEN SIZE TIGHT BACK COVERED IN MATCHED CHENILLE PLAID BROWN Recliners $279°° DELIVERED MULTI POSITION WALLA WAY COVERED IN 100% ACRYLIC m MULTI POSITION WALLAWAY COVERED IN SAGE STRIPED HERCULON CHENILLE 4507t»ft*| $M*vcky fried Chick**: I I IS iwiiaitti Fowler's. Carpet 4507 W. Elm St., McHenry 344-5400 Sales - Installation - Repairs Introducing: Commendable by World Carpets Choose from 13 lively coJors 100% Nylon with TYPAR backing. Reg. 8.99. NOW 6.99. Watch our ads for weekly savings leading up to our September Grand Opening Paintings on display by local artists Governor Signs Bill PAGE S • PLAINDEALER - FRIDAY. AUGUST 22, ltM classes-sometimes four-- and the quarters and facilities for each, early 20th-century shipboafd service standards dictated, had to be self-contained and separate from the others. Complicating the design process was a fundamental feature of ocean travel: "Life aboard a liner is not like everyday life, but rather like an extended house party," Oliver says. "Ac­ cordingly, the public spaces were designed not for work but for diversion." The major precedent setting breakthrough in ship design came^l927 with the launching of the lie de France. Influenced by the 1925 Paris Exposition that popularized the Art Deco style, the ship's interiors were the "great divide from which point on decorators looked forward rather than back," John • Maxtone- Graham says. The ornately carved surfaces of earlier ships, for example, gave way to marble, glass, lacquered surfaces and synthetic materials. From then on. ship interiors "came to have a design quality that related to that of the hull and superstructure," Oliver says. Graphic artists cap­ tured the change, depicting the liners as sleek, streamlined forms with clean deck lines and short, sweeping funnels. A final destination for transatlantic ship design was reached in the early 1950s with the com­ missioning of the United States. With its aluminum and synthetics, she was a ship that looked like a ship. Of the overall appearance, her designer once noted, "The United Slates is a ship, not an ancient inn with oaken beams and plaster walls." Decked out in a resort-like look in contrast to the United States, the QE2 (probably the last superliner to be built) today sails the Atlantic as practically a democratic experience. The ship, unlike her earlier sisters, has only two classes. The Norway, meanwhile, will cruise the Caribbean with no class distinctions at all in her f'ne con- temporary-looking j iblic rooms. But in some ways, this revived liner still has a rudder or two in the past. Recalling the days when references to land in ship design were mandatory to calm queasy passengers, one side of the Norway's old promenade deck has been named Champs Elysees, the other, Fifth avenue. Simple Needs "The makings of a per­ fect life are simple. After all, you need only to own a comfortable bed and a com­ fortable pair of shoes, be­ cause you're in one or the other practically all of your life." Aid Insurance Consumers Legislation to help in­ surance consumers, par­ ticularly the elderly, better understand their coverage and to help them make certain they obtain the coverage they believe they are purchasing was signed Friday by Gov. James R.. Thompson. The measure was proposed by the Governor SERVICE NEWS Begins Duty Aboard Ship N a v y O p e r a t i o n s Specialist Seaman Ap­ prentice Carl A. Anderlub, son of Mr. and Mrs. Carl A. Anderlub of 410 W. Ringwood road, McHenry, has reported for duty aboard the amphibious transport dock USS Coronado, homeported in Norfolk, Va. He joined the Navy in January, I960. REPORTS FOR DUTY Jeffery L. Cox, son of Phyllis P. Chandler of 5114 W-120th, McHenry, has reported for duty with the 1st Marine division, Marine corps base, Camp Pen­ dleton, Calif. He joined the Marine corps in January, 1980. and includes an un­ conditional right to a refund on Medicare supplement policies if it is requested within 10 days after the policy or certificate is delivered. s "This new law will be bad news for high pressure salesmen who come into people's homes and peddle policies that are not needed or wanted," Thompson said. Effective date of the new "Medigap" provisions in the Illinois Insurance Code is July 1.1981. Sponsors of the measure are Reps. Clyde R o b b i n s , F a i r f i e l d ; Josephine Oblinger, Sher­ man; and William Marovitz, Chicago; and Sen. John Davidson, Springfield. Provisions in the bill in­ clude: a required check list to be completed in the presence of the purchaser at the point of sale, a copy to be provided the buyer, clearly outlining added benefits under Medicare supplement policies, the right of a purchaser to return the policy within 10 days oft its delivery for a full premjum refund, if the policyholder is not satisfied for any reksoi^ a ban on advertising language that implies that a failure to respond to the advertisement might result in loss of Medicare benefits, a requirement that com­ panies keep records of their salesmen's solicitations, ban issuance of Medicare sup­ plement insurance policies that do not offer benefits that equal or exeeed the amount of Medicare and a civil penalty of from $100 to $1,000 to be levied by the Depart­ ment of Insurance for a violation by an agent or company. MORTON REUNION The Alumni association of Morton high school, Cicero, will hold a reunion for the class of 1965, Saturday, Oct. 2$, at the Indian Lakes Country club, Bloomingdale, III. For details, contact Morton East high school public relations at area code 312, 696-2300, or write 2423 Austin Blvd., Cicero, 111., 60650. The McHenry Plaindealer f Mil W«»l III* llrad (UtnSMIM) (•••Mltfca* 1171 McHMtf, HHMII HwmIIMIMIN PuMtiHad (vary ft Prlftay KWNlwry. Hlbwlt Claat NM at MiHufy Mttwli •r McHINftV PUMtftNtNO COMPANY POlTMAtTII: Sand (Mtmi ctinf» It McNoitf fWoMti. Mil W MmM. McHanry lllliwU tMM. . * Ivkuriktf, •• pravM* Immediate natk* at clttitft at mMtmi t* The McHenry Helnfteeler Mil W llm It McHenry. IN. HW A 4a<MClla» el one menHi Irem Hie eiplretlen el e tufctcriyliee will be made where e cfcenfe el eMrett It pre*Med tfirevfti the Nil OHtce deyertmewl. Larry K. Lund-Publisher Adtlft Froellch-Idltor Dress smartly and com­ fortably in August by wear­ ing all cotton garments. The next in comfort is the 60 percent cotton and 40 per­ cent polyester blend. NATIONAL NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION The smaller shoulder bag in soft leather will be quite popular with the college miss. SUBSCRIPTION SATIS 111 M I Veer . • I* I In McHenry Cewniy OeltMe McHenry Cevnty Xv» OLDSETTLERS REUNION The season for old- fashioned memories is about to become a reality in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, as preparations are finalized for the thirty-first annual Midwest Old Settlers and Threshers reunion, Aug. 28 through Sept. 1. Theme for this year's get-together will be "The Year of the Engineer". 4NAPA} murrisn icedtcr JOHN L FftEUNO Freund Funeral Home Serving Wonder Lake and Chicagoland Area 815-728-0233 7611 HANCOCK DR. WONDER LAKE We may never replace your muffler. You may not need a muffler right now But how can you be sure? 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SALE Woolette 4.79 3.59 Crayon Plaids ft Solids 2.79 2.09 Butter Boude 3.99 2.99 Fleece 3.49 2.62 Cavalier Mylar 2.99 2.24 PolyVel 5.99 4.49 Plaid Flannel 2.49 1.87 Quilts 3.49 2.62 Corduroy 2.99 t 2.24 Christmas Cut-outs • 2.99 2.24 Calicos 2.99 2.24 Raggedy Ann Prints 2.99 2.24 25% All Fall Fabric 0 F F Plus All Summer Clearance Fabric Reduced An Additional 25% For This Sale. This 25% Discount will be deducted at cash register. Prices shown reflect your net cost per yard.