Caribia - A Sad Ending
Page 6
The Former Caronia - Now Universal Cruise Line's Caribia
The aftermath of a famous British cruise liner
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An Art-Deco Sale Like No Other
Rob Mason continues his story...
In 1974, I knew that the Caribia had been sold for scrap and was towed out of New York, and subsequently sank off Guam on the way to the scrap yard. What I, nor most people apparently did not realise at the time, was that the ship was stripped bare of virtually all of its fittings before leaving New York.
In the mid-1970's, there was an annual Art Deco Exposition held every January in the preeminent
existing Art Deco palace in New York City at that time - Radio City Music Hall. At the 1974
exposition, there was a very small, unmanned booth set up with a few unidentified and unmarked
chairs (these being immediately recognisable as vintage Cunard furniture to those in the know).
A small poster on the stand advertised...
“Classic Art Deco Furniture Sale: Pier 54”
Caribia at New York in 1972
[Photo: Courtesy of Rob Mason]
By this time, the Caribia was long gone from New York. However, Pier 54 was filled from end-to-end with everything from the ship. The swimming pool ladders, rows and rows of battered, bent and beaten kitchen pots, life-jackets, those cheap aluminium framed chairs and boxes of blank Cunard menu stock, mattresses, telephones, signs, chairs, tables, light fixtures, etc.
Everything had a fixed price; there was no haggling. It was all so cheap; no one really wanted Art Deco in 1974. In addition, everything on the pier was heavily used and nearly 30 years old at the time.
I purchased two stateroom chairs, a table from the main entrance foyer, several signs, and several cabin dressers. It was interesting trying to assemble the dressers. Apparently, all of the drawers were removed from the ship first, and stacked on the pier. Then the cabinet cases were separately unscrewed from the bulkheads and removed from the ship. Since each cabinet was custom built to fit in a specific cabin location with its unique shear, the drawers were also built for each unique cabinet. Nothing modular here!
Caribia's aft Sun Deck - at New York in 1972
[Photo: Courtesy of Rob Mason]
The big challenge was to locate a base cabinet in reasonable condition on one side of the pier, then go to the other side to try and locate drawers that would actually fit in the cabinet. There were many, many cabinets that probably never found drawers that would fit.
I understand that the sale was eventually stopped by US Customs. All the goods being sold, being of “foreign” manufacture, (in the UK of course), had no customs duty paid to “import” them. Both the State and the City of New York wanted their share of sales taxes on these items (no sales tax was collected on the items that I purchased).
Of course, by the time the government officials finally took notice, virtually everything had been sold. There was really very little left on the pier, except for those mismatched cabinets and drawers and other damaged items. All of the “good stuff” had made its way off the pier.
It has been over 30 years since the sale, and it would be interesting to know where any of these items are now.
The story continues with...
- A selection of photographs of artefacts bought at the Pier 54 Sale
- More photographs of artefacts bought at the Pier 54 Sale
If you can contribute any information, do please get in touch...
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