Ships just like people occasionally need
a little makeover to stay fresh but also just like people sometimes those
makeovers can go horribly horribly wrong. For reasons economical unfortunate
or just outright disastrous today let's run through five of my picks for the
worst ship makeovers of all time Number five the SS America becomes the SS America
again when she was first introduced in 1939 the SS America was easily the most modern and stylish
American-built ship afloat the second world war interrupted what should have been a brilliant
start to a career as an ocean liner and the ship served as a troop ship carrying thousands
to the pacific and european theatres of war renamed USS West Point and also sporting a groovy
dazzle camouflage paint scheme at the end of the war America was back in the ocean liner service. Sstill a popular choice for travellers but largely overshadowed by her much bigger running mate the
SS United States by the 1950s by the mid-1960s the ship was a little tired so the United States
Lines sold her to Chandris Lines, a Greek company hoping to capitalize on the lucrative migrant
trade between Europe and Australia you see Chandris lines were masters at buying aging tired
retired ocean liners and refitting them as humble migrant ships and they did this with the SS
America renaming her Australis and putting the already 24 year old ship back into service for
another 14 long years through the 1960s and 70s while Chandris line was a master at acquiring
old vessels and putting them back into service they were a little less adept at maintaining them
and the SS Australis started to look a little bit sad. In some voyages the ship even developed a
list or lean over to one side that wasn't really rectified for the rest of the voyage! By 1978 the
liner had transported hundreds and thousands of families and was, simply put, run-down so Chandris
put the ship on the market and found a buyer in the form of Venture cruise line. Venture was a
budget cruise line based out of New York that wanted to capitalize on nostalgia for the good old
days of american ocean-going travel by running the ship on voyages to nowhere out of New York City
but unfortunately the Australis by this point had been laid up for a prolonged period of time and
was pretty filthy. Crammed full of garbage, old and tatted furniture and carpets, overflowing sewage
and broken piping the ship was a bit of a mess so venture had a pretty big job on their hands
of converting it back into a functioning cruise ship but they got started the first thing they did
was give her her old name back; America. Then they painted over the Chandris line colours and gave
the ship a nice patriotic red white and blue paint scheme - and that was kind of it! So when passengers
stepped aboard for the first time in June 1978 they were appalled to find piles of soiled laundry
and linen, rats, broken toilets, piles of trash and a terrible, terrible smell. America departed the
port and started steaming down the Hudson river but passengers actually mutinied at the horrendous
conditions. The ship had only just passed the statue of liberty when the captain turned America
back around and offloaded 960 of her passengers. Venture was hit with 2.5 million dollars in claims
from passengers all future sailings were cancelled and the company went bust. A US public health
service inspection rated the ship six out of a possible 100 points and it was impounded
and put up for sale again. sSe was bought incredibly by her old owners Chandris line
for the princely sum of 1 million dollars having sold it to Venture for six and a half
million dollars and making themselves a nice five and a half million dollar profit while
then getting their ship back in the process. Good one Chandris! Chandris line being Chandris
line they then refitted the ship a bit and put it back into service as the Italis, cutting off
one of the funnels to make the ship - and I quote "more modern". This lasted for about a year before
she was finally pulled from service for the last time and changed hands three or four times - first
to become a prison ship and then for scrap and finally to become a floating hotel. The ship was
to be towed to Thailand for this but on the way she snapped the tow cables in a heavy sea and was
hopelessly beached on the Canary Islands where over the next few decades she slowly broke up and
disappeared beneath the waves by as late as 2007. Number four; the SS New Australia. In 1931 the
Furness Bermuda line had a bit of a problem when their star ocean liner, the MV Bermuda caught
on fire in an apparently empty cabin. The ship was mostly gutted but saved narrowly from total
destruction - the hulk was then towed to Belfast to be rebuilt by her original builders and when
the ship was nearly complete in November of that year it spontaneously burst into flames again
and was a complete loss so the company decided to replace that liner with two sister ships
named Monarch of Bermuda and Queen of Bermuda. The two sisters were eye achingly beautiful;
extremely well proportioned with three handsome funnels and lovely sweeping promenade decks. The ships were a little odd because they were designed to operate in the treacherous strong
currents around Bermuda where tugs were a little bit of a rarity because of this the ships were
built with shortened bow and stern sections to reduce overall length and therefore the overall
turning circle and to improve handling they were given four propellers each. In 1934 the SS Morro
Castle spectacularly caught on fire and burned and it was actually the Monarch of Bermuda that
was one of the ships to arrive on scene to help but in 1947 after wartime service as a troop
ship it was actually Monarch of Bermuda's turn to follow the time-honored Furness Bermuda line
tradition and spontaneously burst into flames and she did this well. The ship was almost
totally gutted by fire at the wharf side she was sold for scrap but bought instead by the
British Ministry of Transport who had the somewhat insane idea of rescuing the empty fire damaged
hulk and rebuilding it as a spartan immigrant liner. What emerged from this scheme was the SS
New Australia a confused looking squat ship with the beautiful hull of the Monarch of Bermuda but
not much else very beautiful about her. An entire deck of superstructure was removed so the ship
seemed oddly proportioned. The elegant bridge and superstructure front was lost and replaced with
a blocky square monstrosity; the huge split mast over the brutalist bridge was actually a funnel
for the forward boiler rooms and on the bow was the remains of the original foremast cut down to a
stub with derricks for moving cargo all in all the ship was a bit of an eyesore but it didn't really
matter because its role was purely utilitarian. Her operation was taken over by Shaw Savill line on
behalf of the British government for seven years the ship was eventually sold to Greek Line renamed
Arkadia and refitted for cruising but in 1966 she was finally retired and scrapped. Number three; the MV Astoria. Now I know a few hardcore ocean liner nerds are probably going to be a little bit sad to
see the Astoria in this list but I just couldn't help it. The ship has one of the most fascinating
and unlikely career histories of all time she'd started out life as the beautiful Swedish
America liner Stockholm. The ship was a real stunner built in the tradition of other Swedish
American line ships with beautifully curved bridge fronts a gentle sheer curving the bow and the
stern of the ship up and a single streamlined funnel. In 1956 Stockholm gained international
notoriety when she rammed the Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria and sank her. In fact the collision
was so bad that Stockholm's bow was telescoped in and totally crushed but the ship's watertight
compartments held and she was able to sail into New York under her own power the bow was rebuilt
and Swedish America sold the ship to an east German company in 1960 who renamed her the uh
the volca freud freunchshaft volca freundschaft the Volkerfreudenschaft - which really isn't
a catchy name for non-German speakers but anyway the ship changed hands a couple
of times into the 1980s serving as a floating barracks at one point until 1989 when Star Lauro
line purchased her and intended to rebuild her as a cruise ship she was towed to Genoa which
was coincidentally the Andrea Doria's homeport and totally gutted. Her funnel was stripped
off so that new diesel engines could be put in and everything about her external appearance was
completely altered the beautifully swept bridge front was replaced with a blocky angular thing
instead she received a pretty generic looking funnel and looked overall upon completion like
many other small cruise ship except for this hideous ducktail sponson which was kind of
tacked onto the stern to aid instability at sea. It's incredible that the Astoria is actually
still sailing today given that she was built all the way back in 1948 and while it's a nice fact
there's just simply no denying that she looked significantly better during her Swedish America
line days. Don't @ me! Number two; the Costa Marina and the Costa Allegra. There's not really much
to say about these ships except they were just a little a little ugly. The Axel Johnson class were a
group of utilitarian container ships designed and built in the late 1960s - not exactly what comes to
mind when you think of luxury cruising but clearly the famous Costa line didn't agree when they
purchased two of these sister ships in 1988 and 1990. Their plan was to convert them somehow into
cruise ships and this they did - the results was the MV Costa Marina and the MV Costa Allegra and bless
them for trying but from the outside at least they just weren't very convincing looking cruise ships. The ships still had those utilitarian container ship lines but now with a nice added fat blocky
superstructure on top - still they must have been nice on the inside because the pair cruised all
the way up until about 2013 before being retired and scrapped. Number one; the SS Hellenic Prince,
one of my favorite passenger ships of all time In the immediate aftermath of the second
world war almost any ship that could float was mobilized and turned into an
immigrant ocean liner to help evacuate the war's refugees and I'm not exaggerating
when I say almost everything that could float because Greek owned China-Hellenic lines
purchased a retired Australian warship with the idea to somehow convert it into a
passenger liner. That warship was the bizarre looking HMAS Albatross an Australian seaplane
tender that was a veteran of the second world war . China Hellenic lines sent Albatross off to Aales
in the United Kingdom where she was overhauled and converted into service as a passenger
ship. Would they rebuild the superstructure to make her look sleek and modern? Would they
add comfortable amenities and stylish public rooms for passengers on board? No, no they would not -
because the newly named SS Hellenic prince left the shipyard looking almost exactly the same as
she had when she arrived save for more lifeboats. Now I mentioned this ship on a live stream the
other day and somebody commented that it looks a little bit like a kitchen knife and now I
cannot unsee that. This tiny seaplane tender somehow now managed to squeeze 1,200 passengers
- yes 1,200 passengers! - into sparse dormitories and bunk cabins throughout the ship. There were no
lounges and the only covered promenade deck was at the stern of the ship which sat extremely low to
the water and therefore was often half-submerged and totally unusable to passengers on the
month-long voyage to Australia. Simply-put there was just not enough room and the ship's decks
were often crowded with hundreds of uncomfortable and unhappy passengers. Worst of all though she was
put under the command of a gruff navy veteran by the name of P.C King. Captain King actively held
disdain for his passengers and became known as something of a tyrant. On the coming voyages to
Australia she lost an anchor and even broke down The voyages to Australia were packed with refugees
and poor immigrants but the return voyages to the United Kingdom saw the ship totally empty
because the on-board conditions were so bad that even budget tourists weren't interested. In 1951
things came to a head when Captain King accused his passengers of mutiny and poor behaviour in the
ship's on-board newsletter, the delightfully-named 'Kangaroo'. In his statement King made it clear that
the "passenger's behaviour this afternoon was an act of mutiny" and that among other things "the names
of agitators are known to me." Ooh scary! You see on that voyage passengers had actually been required
to help clean and maintain the ship, some of them working in the mess rooms cleaning dishes and even
helping out in the engine and boiler rooms only to be paid in cigarettes. Drinking water largely ran
out, fridges broke down so that fresh food rotted and passengers were refused disembarkation at any
of the visited ports on the way and thanks to a ballast pump malfunction the ship listed over the
entire time leading to outbreaks of seasickness. The whole thing was utterly miserable and the
passengers responded by protesting with a hunger strike which King then attempted to break up by
spraying them with cold sea water from a hose and issuing his statement in the Kangaroo
newsletter. On arrival in Australia word got out that something was seriously wrong so Captain
King was interviewed by a local West Australian newspaper. Ever the charmer King said of his
passengers - and this is a direct quote: "Their habits have been filthy and they were a constant
worry to the crew. Some of them are not even white!" "I do not know who is responsible for the
choice of migrants to Australia but some of these passengers are poor types. Some
appear to have the mentality of children." *sigh* What a lovely guy! Anyway, serious complaints
were made by passengers - so serious that the International Refugee Organization just had
to pay attention and King and the Hellenic Prince's owners were censured. Hellenic Prince
was retired and ended up at the scrapyard in Hong Kong in 1954. So there you go! Five totally
hopeless ship makeovers! Let me know if you agree or disagree with any of my picks in the comments
below and which of these ships you would be most willing to travel on if it came to it. I'm willing
to bet it probably wouldn't be the Hellenic Prince. Ladies and gentlemen it's your friend Mike
Brady from Oceanliner Designs. Thank you so much for watching! I hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, like and subscribe to the channel! Every bit helps and I put out a new video
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