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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Nov. 30, 1958)
' awiii iiwiiMMi.i...i.i i , L,-.J.U - 1 -lu -U- H-lin.l -." '"J" , n JUHJ i i. - r-ji rr : ss - - Those cabins got Cantor's closest attention. They are where the passenger lives, he feels, and they should be as much like home, with a fillip of ad venture, as modern design and budgetary limits can make them. The flexible plan he worked out with Yourkevitch can be adjusted or modified when con struction gets under way, but for now it lists 2,000 two-passenger staterooms, 100 singles, 300 triples, and 350 for four persons each. Along with air-conditioning controls, private closed-circuit television, decor of bright eye-pleasing colors and light woods, and room to relax, every cabin on the world's largest, fastest steamships will have its own bathroom, com plete with stall shower. Yourkevitch warmed to Cantor's bid for youth groups and family trade, but privately won dered whether such handsome quarters might run away with the cost factor. He needn't have. From his sleeve, Cantor drew an ace. During his many years of hotel operation, the New York tycoon watched a trend in transient hotels that finally erupted after World War II into the motel boom. Many of the 58,000 motels that now blanket the U.S., Cantor knew, built their more than 1,000,000 rooms via the prefab route. Some hotels did the same thing. Why not do it with the superliners? Cantor went to the Pullman Company to find out. Executives there assured him it would be no prob lem. When each of the twin mammoth bottoms is ready to receive them, Cantor's thousands of prefab staterooms all fixtured, decorated, draped, rugged, and furnished will be trucked to the yard, hooked up with lines already installed in the hull and bolted into place. Cost: a small fraction of what it takes to outfit luxury liners half the size by today's pains taking hand and piecework methods. Will all those cabins leave room for much else in Cantor's superliners? Yes. For one thing: a cafe teria. A large kitchen at the center of each ship will serve 1,500 people at a clip there, and another 1,000 in a formal dining room. In addition there will be two self-service canteens on each deck, and four bars and cocktail lounges. Since food will be an extra item over and above the $50 fare, Cantor has made these arrangements so that his clientele can eat well at a top figure of $4 per person per day, or $16 maximum for the entire voyage. But that's only a start Each ship will also have: two indoor swimming pools and another outdoor one; a 'skating rink; two theaters; outdoor sports equipment; a concert hall; and facilities for religious services. There will be shopping centers with mer chandise from both sides of the Atlantic for sale at economy prices. A convention hall for business groups will have a capacity of 4,000; rollaway doors will permit partitioning it for smaller gatherings and conferences. The top deck of each liner will have a clear space of 450 feet by 80 feet, to the rear of the smokestack, for outdoor sports and sunbathing. Under it will be a double-decked, glassed-in aircraft-hangar space, which in peacetime will be the convention hall described above. In time of war both ships with 20 airtight compartments apiece to make them as un suitable as possible can be converted within three days to aircraft carriers or division-strength troop ships. No costly major renovations would be necessary for the conversion. fANTOR is determined that every passenger who boards the Peace or the Good Will shall enjoy the utmost safety that scientific ingenu ity can offer. Besides radar, fathometers, ship-to-shore radio and similar electronic safety devices, each ship will carry standard lifeboats to accommo date all 7,350 persons aboard, plus life jackets for everyone. In each lifeboat there will also be two extra inflatable lifeboats of Swedish design which have been tested as even safer than wooden lifeboats and can take care of all hands should the original double-enders broach and swamp or otherwise meet disaster in heavy seas. Each wooden lifeboat and each of its auxiliary inflatables which blow up in stantly with a twist of an attached metal bottle of carbon dioxide gas carries a week's supply of rations, water, flares, and drugs. Cantor has set up a Carter Hotels subsidiary called Sea Coach to operate the superliners and is already planning low-cost, two-week vacation packages. All-expense tours can be arranged for as little as $330. If he desires, the tourist need lay out only $30 in cash. The rest he can pay off in 10 monthly installments. While the 56-year-old Cantor is a ball of fire on every other aspect of his superliners, he is conserva tive about accepting reservations until the keels are laid and the ships abuilding. The bookkeeping head ache is part of it Legal problems are another. Probably a sense of playing hard-to-get enters in. In any case, the Dutch Travel Verein has happily ignored Cantor's ban on reservations and offered him a fat cash deposit to tie up thousands of cabins for its members for three years from the date of first sailing of the big ships. Cantor says Adm. John Will, head of the Navy's Military Sea Transportation Service in Washington, is so keen about the saving the superliners would mean to the Government in its world-wide transfers of personnel that the admiral is guaranteeing Sea Coach 150,000 passengers a year. One offer among many of a kind that particularly pleases Cantor is his assurance from Youth Hostels that it will implement its international travel pro grams with up to 200,000 bookings on his superliners each year. He realizes that among the millions of Americans who would love to travel in Europe, but till now could not afford it, students and young people have always ranked high. For a start, the 95-percent-untapped transatlantic tourist market will find his twin superliners operat ing between Boston and Zeebrugge, Belgium. One reason: Boston has superb port facilities that are far less jammed than New York's. Another reason: Boston is 174 miles nearer to Europe. As for Zee brugge, it is a roomy, good-weather port with un cluttered access to the Continent in every direction. Eventually, with port improvements, which the "cafeteria ships" themselves may bring about, New York will probably become an alternative destina tion. Within his lifetime, Cantor expects to extend his superliner service to South America and the Pacific "isles of Paradise." But right now he faces some interesting snags. As far as building the ships and putting them into serv ice is concerned, Cantor is confident of succeeding. What troubles him is getting it done the right way. In Cantor's book, that means seeing to it that his marine giants sail under the Stars and Stripes in stead of some foreign flag. How could that happen? Very easily. Yourkevitch estimates that it will cost $135,000,000 to build each superliner. For decades now the law has empowered the Federal Maritime Board of our Maritime Ad ministration in Washington to subsidize ship con struction. Cantor's vast project unfortunately goes beyond the law's scope, but it is so obviously worth while for millions of ordinary American citizens, so fraught with prestige for our badly lagging position as a first-class merchant marine power, and of such Family Weekly, Novrmbtr 30, 195J 11
