- photo: Nathan Olsen
Next to me in this picture is my Dad, Gordon Ghareeb, noted Maritime Historian and co-author of From Hollywood to Honolulu: The Story of the Los Angeles Steamship Company. We attended a wonderful lecture given by him and co-author Martin Cox detailing this fascinating chapter in nautical history (with all the juicy bits left in)!
- photo from Maritime Matters; Martin Cox
This book tells a story of fame and fortune, glitter and gossip, as the Los Angeles Steamship Company ferried movie stars and millionaires to the Hawaiian Islands in the 1920′s and 30′s.
According to Mr. Cox, this is one of the few well-researched examinations of this particular bit in west-coast maritime history. The authors used family interviews, pictures taken by senior crew members at the time, and spent hours combing through every edition of the Los Angeles Times on microfilm to gather a complete picture of not only how these ships ran, but also how the LOSSC impacted society around it.
The Honolulu Star Bulletin has called this book a “must read for steamship enthusiasts.” If you’re a librarian of any Nautical Collection, of Maritime History, or of Los Angeles/ California history, give me call. This is a book you’ll want to include.
- Co-authors Gordon Ghareeb and Martin Cox sign books after the lecture
3 Comments
Hi, I’m a writer and I’ve written a short story that makes mention of the Queen Elizabeth I. In the story I mention that there was a tennis court on the Q. E. I. but because the main protagonist in the story was defecting from a communist country she avoided the tennis court on the boat. My question to Mr. Ghareeb, who obviously knows his way around these ships is this: was there in fact a tennis court on the Queen Elizabeth I? If not on the Queen Mary?
Thanks,
David Breitkopf
According to my dad: Neither the Queen Elizabeth nor the Queen Mary had tennis courts as we know them; they both had “deck tennis” which is more like badminton. Good luck on the story!
Ah, too bad. I’ll change the story to be historically accurate. Thank you for getting back to me. I didn’t mention this, but the story was about a great tennis player who defected from Romania. Her name was Magda Rurac. It’s a true story, though I’ve created a fictional setting to tell her life, which includes her coming to America on the QEI.
Thanks again.
db