Place: Taco John's
Lunch: Four tacos (mild sauce), small Super Ole's (no tomato, no guac), Pepsi
Ohhh I'm sleepy. Had to be at work at five. Which thanks to daylight savings time feels more like four. Which means I was up at what felt like three. The cats were all like "Why are you feeding us at three in the morning?" I don't see why I have to understand Daylight Savings Time if my cats don't.
Once upon a time in a land far far away, I lived in a dreary rainy island town that relied on fishing, logging, and tourism. It was a town I really really hated. But as much as I hated the place, it did make for a childhood with unique experiences that would later become stories to tell. And some of those stories came from the cruise ships that filled downtown with visitors each summer.
Today, I will share with you my cruise ship stories as we mourn TV's official "Love Boat". The ship once known as the Pacific Princess is to be scrapped. I not only knew her from television...I knew her personally.
Stanley McDonald founded Princess in the mid sixties. The jet age was in its infancy and passenger ships, at the time used merely for transportation, were evolving into floating vacation resorts. McDonald chartered a ship from Canadian Pacific for winter cruises between Los Angeles and Acapulco when the ship would otherwise be laid up. The ship, the Princess Patricia, was where Princess Cruises took its name from.
Princess Pat only served the charter for a couple of years as it proved under-suited to the task (lacking air conditioning for one thing). Princess then chartered the newly built and much grander Italia, which was marketed as (but never officially named) "Princess Italia", a ship much more suited to modern cruising. This was the first ship to have the Princess sea witch logo on her funnel. In an oddball publicity stunt, her maiden voyage also served as a premiere tour of the film "Valley of the Dolls". You can watch a feature about it on the Criterion "Valley of the Dolls" release and see footage of the ship.
When the Italia charter ended, it was replaced by Costa's "Carla C", which Princess marketed as "Princess Carla". It was on this ship that Princess cruise director Jeraldine Saunders started writing a book called "Love Boats".
Princess was sold to British cruise and shipping operator P&O in 1974. P&O's Spirit of London, a ship originally started for another cruise line that went bankrupt during the construction process, was transferred to Princess. This ship became the original Sun Princess. P&O then acquired two ships from Flagship Cruises...the Island Venture and the Sea Venture...which were renamed the Island Princess and the Pacific Princess respectively.
These were the three ships that became known around the world as the Love Boats.
(Fun side fact you probably didn't realize...Princess didn't purpose-build a ship until Royal Princess in 1984.)
Island Princess and Sun Princess were among the many ships that made our town a regular port of call (Pacific Princess showed up once or twice a year). Cunard, Holland America, Carnival, Costa, and even CP Line's Princess Pat, the ship from which Princess took its name, made regular appearances through the summer.
I had a couple of jobs that got me official access to some of the ships. I had a gig as a cadence drummer for a baton twirling group, and we'd occasionally greet a ship when it came into port. Then we'd get a ship tour. I also worked for the local paper, who printed visitors guides. I would deliver boxes of the guides to the ships. Depending on the ship, the guy manning the gangway would either take them and thank you, or send you to the purser's office. If you got to the purser's office, you were on board and could wander around for awhile. I once wrote my grandparents a letter on Princess letterhead from one of the Sun Princess's lounges while overlooking the narrows.
Some of the ships didn't have much going on in the form of security (Princess was not among them) and you could just walk on board. This was routine for local kids. Go on board, wander around, go through the lunch buffet line, steal everything that had a company logo on it that wasn't nailed down...
Ship quality varied not only by age, but by line. The Cunard ships were modern purpose-built cruise ships, but weren't the nicest. They seemed to look dated pretty quickly. Holland America ships were better. Some of the older ships, designed for simple transport long before modern cruising was ever thought of, were horrible...clearly from another time. Some smelled. One ship was openly known as the "cockroach boat" by even the crew.
The Princess ships were among the finest on the seas, and the Island Princess and Pacific Princess were as good as it got with luxurious public areas and amenities. They were about as big a ship as you could dock locally (a few larger ships who called had to anchor in the bay and ferry passengers in and out on cutters). The Sun Princess was smaller and wasn't quite on par with luxury or some of the amenities of its bigger sister ships, but was still better than average, and it is to this day my favorite ship design from an exterior standpoint. With its long sweeping bow and sleek sloping curves, it had a very unique look shared only by its twin sister (which was sold to another company by the builder).
The modern cruise industry was doing fine in its infancy, but nothing like it did once "The Love Boat" hit the airwaves. That was the catalyst that REALLY popularized cruising to mainstream audiences.
What you saw on television didn't really translate the true grandeur of the ships...the interiors were shot in a studio mockup. Exteriors of ports of call and ships arriving were shot by a minimal traveling crew. Our downtown was featured in a single episode with a roughly three-second pan shot, plus some footage of two ships arriving at our docks, and I happened to be there when they filmed it.
I was down at the docks hanging out, as bored kids sometimes did (either checking out the ships or trading fish they'd caught that morning with crew members from the big Japanese lumber ships docked at the spruce mill in exchange for Japanese cigarettes and Coca Cola...long skinny cigarettes, long skinny Coke cans), and I saw a man and a woman with a film camera on a tripod. A real film camera, not a touristy one. So I wandered over. They were shooting some shots for the series, and they were more than happy to have me and the few others who noticed them hang out and chat. They were waiting for one of the ships to arrive (either the Island Princes or Pacific Princess...one was already docked) so they could capture it for the show. That in itself was an event...the Pacific Princess was NOT a regular caller, let alone having the twins in the same place.
The second ship arrived...and docked in the wrong direction. This was pointed out to the cruise director, who came off the ship to see if the crew got what they needed. (No, they didn't pull out and re-dock.)
As they chatted, a passenger among the masses disembarking noticed us and wandered over to see what was going on. I stepped aside to explain. He was keenly interested, and at some point one of the locals among us paused and said "Hey...Aren't you Arte Johnson?"
You know...Laugh-In's Arte Johnson?
And he WAS. A real television star. On a cruise. Just as interested in what was going on as we locals were.
He was a grand presence and funny guy who was only too happy to chat and cut jokes before jumping on a sightseeing bus. The cruise director told us he was having a blast and had been really good about interacting with the passengers. He struck me as a guy who really appreciated his place in life and enjoyed his fame and fans.
As the years went by, the industry grew, evolved, and innovated. Fleets got bigger, ships got bigger, as did all the amenities and luxuries that go in them. Ships that were once massive wonders became small and dated. Princess never rested on its laurels, and eventually the original Love Boats were sold off to smaller companies.
Sun Princess was the first to go in 1988. It served several other cruise lines under several different names in several different paint schemes. It was sold for scrap, but the deal fell through, and it sat anchored off Port Klang for a couple of years in a sorry state, unwanted, awaiting its fate. Incredibly, it found its way back into service as the Ocean Dream sailing cruises between China and Vietnam, then China and Thailand. Her last owners went insolvent and the crew anchored and abandoned the ship off the coast of Thailand somewhere around 2014 or 2015. She took on water and capsized February, 2016., laying on her side in shallow waters, half submerged. Last available word was they had started cutting her apart for scrap right where she lay. A sad and undeserved end to a 40-plus year career. Her twin sister that went to another company, MV Southward, was scrapped in 2013.
Princess is now operating its second Sun Princess, built in 1995. A Love Boat revival television series starring Robert Urich ("Love Boat - The Next Wave" - UPN 1998-1999) featured the new Sun Princess.
Island Princess left the Princess fleet in 1999. It sailed for years as the Discovery, sailing the Baltic, Aegean, and Mediterranean, apparently. After being sold again and given one more season, she was scrapped at Alang in 2015.
Princess is currently operating its second Island Princess, built in 2003.
Pacific Princess, the focus ship of the Love Boat series, left the Princess fleet in 2002. Renamed Pacific, it sailed for a few companies for several years before being seized for nonpayment of repair bills. It sat idle at Genoa for a couple of years. In 2012, it was announced the ship had been sold to a Turkish scrapper. That original widely publicized deal that sparked this blog post fell through and she sat for another year before being sold again and finally towed to Turkey, where she took on water and was hurriedly beached listing at an alarming 45 degree angle. The scrappers pumped out the water (not without incident...two people died) and cut her apart.
Princess is currently operating its second Pacific Princess, a ship built in 1999 for Renaissance Cruises and launched as the R Three. It was re-christened Pacific Princess in 2002. It's small...the smallest ship in the Princess lineup... compared to today's behemoths, but has been described as 'cozy' and 'elegant'.
Suddenly find yourself interested in old ships? Check out Simplon Postcards for old pictures and information on ships of days gone by.
I've never taken a cruise. Probably never will.
But I'll never forget the Love Boats.
(Final fate of ships updated in 2017)
(The Love Boat episode referred to is a two-parter...episodes 22 and 23 from Season 5, "Pride of the Pacific / The Viking's Son / Separate Vacations / The Experiment / Getting to Know You." It's two hours of the most godawful dumb television ever made.)
