Grace Shipping Company

The Grace Line began service in 1882, with ports of call between Peru and New York City. The main source of shipping revenue was from the exporting of guano from the Chincha Islands of Peru to fertilizer manufacturers in the United States. Regular steamship service was established in 1893, with a subsidiary called the New York & Pacific Steamship Co. The first ship to test the route was SS Mount Tabor. Steamships utilized the shorter route of the Strait of Magellan, whereas a sailing ship needed to go past Cape Horn. File:Chincha drawing 1865.jpg|Drawing of Chincha Islands, Peru. 1865 File:Chile.estrechodemagallanes.png|Strait of Magellan File:Kap Hoorn vs Magellanstr.jpg|Cape Horn vs. Strait of Magellan == Beginning of the 20th century ==

The New York & Pacific Steamships, were built outside the United States. These ships sailed under the British flag because foreign built ships before 1914 were banned from the US registry based upon a federal law that had been enacted in 1789. However, US-flag service began in 1912 with the Atlantic and Pacific Steamship Company. In 1913, the company acquired SS Santa Cruz for service from the West Coast of the U.S. to the Pacific coast of South America. The ship had been acquired from the shipbuilder William Cramp & Sons of Philadelphia. The Grace Lines started with five ships for service from New York City to as far as Chile. There ships were the: • SS Santa Ana • SS Santa Luisa • SS Santa Elina • SS Santa Teresa • SS Santa Leonora Due in part to the enactment by the United States Congress of the Panama Canal Act of 1912 which prohibited railroad companies from owning ships passing through the Panama Canal, Grace Shipping was able to acquire a controlling interest in the Pacific Mail Steamship Company in 1916. Also in 1916, two new ships were acquired in and . Santa Paula would later enter service with the United States Navy and gain the prefix USS Santa Paula in World War I. The names Santa Paula and Santa Rosa would later become the names of several ships in the history of the Grace Line. File:Santa Paula builder image.jpg|SS Santa Paula, c. 1916 File:USS Santa Paula D-1590.jpg|SS Santa Paula later became the USS Santa Paula, c. 1919 == 1920s ==

In 1921, Pacific Mail Steamship Company received five President-class ships from the United States Shipping Board for transpacific operations. These ships were the: • President Cleveland (ex Golden State) • President Lincoln (ex Hoosier State) • President Pierce (ex Hawkeye State) • President Taft (ex Buckeye State) • President Wilson (ex Empire State) In 1923, the US Shipping Board decided to place the five ships up for bid and Dollar Shipping Company won the bid. With no large ships for the transpacific operations, Grace sold the Pacific Mail, its registered name, and its goodwill (the intangible asset of company name recognition and other assets) to Dollar in 1926. Santa Paula was renamed Montanan. File:Panagra DC6 B (7059144555).jpg|Panagra DC-6 File:Pan American-Grace Airways Douglas DC-2.jpg|Panagra Flight (circa 1930s–1940s) == 1930s and 1940s ==

In order to comply with existing U.S. Mail contracts, the Grace Line acquired four Santa Rosa-class ships from the Federal Shipbuilding Company of Kearney, New Jersey. The ships were designed by William Francis Gibbs of the naval architecture company Gibbs & Cox. The four ships were , Santa Elena, , and . As of 1932, the new Santa Rosa was the most economical steamer at sea in terms of specific fuel consumption. The 1932 Santa Paula was a replacement for the 1916 Santa Paula. In 1934, Grace Line and the Panama Pacific Line announced a collaborative service for fast passenger service between New York and West Coast of the U.S., by means of the Panama Canal. The first ship to launch service from the Grace Line was the Santa Lucia. In 1936, Grace Line acquired the Red D Line (the Atlantic and Caribbean Steam Navigation Company). During World War II, Grace Lines operated transport for the U.S. War Shipping Administration, including . Only two ships of the line's fleet would survive,Santa Paula and Santa Rosa. The ships were: == 1940s–1950s ==

After World War II, the Grace line operated 23 ships totaling , and an additional 14 more on bareboat charters. However, immediately after the end of the war, private ships were under requisition of the U.S. Government. In collaboration with the United States Maritime Commission, the Grace Line built a new fleet of vessels for post-war shipping services. On November 4, 1945, the president of the Grace Line, R. Ranney Adams, announced the post-war shipping services: Our new combination passenger and cargo liners will be fast and efficient vessels with accommodations for 52 first-class passengers. Each stateroom will have a private bath. All cabins and public spaces will be air conditioned, first applications of the Latin-American trades. The 1958 versions of Santa Rosa and Santa Paula In 1956, Gibbs & Cox was again the designer and had designed the replacements for Santa Rosa and Santa Paula, the new and . Newport News Shipping Company built the ships. The ships had the following features: • Aluminum paneling for fire protection. • Gyrofin stabilizers were fitted to improve stability. • Each room had its own bathroom. • Extended automatic conveyors for palletized cargo in the holds (cargo compartments). The ships were designed for twelve-day voyages, with ports of call in Aruba, The Bahamas, Curaçao, Jamaica, and Venezuela. The key textile designer for the interiors was Dorothy Liebes, who had previously worked with Gibbs & Cox and interior designers Smyth, Urquhart & Marckwald on the . A profile in Handweaver & Craftsman magazine explained the interior design of the ships for these types of routes as follows: Handwoven fabrics, along with the work of contemporary artists, sculptors, ceramists, and craftsmen in metal, enamel and glass help to create a fresh, cool, relaxing modern atmosphere, a new-ship look in keeping with holiday travel in tropical waters. Santa Paula was launched on January 9, 1958 by Patricia Nixon, the wife of then Vice President Richard Nixon. == 1960s ==

In 1960, the Grace Line sought to begin containerizing its South American cargo operations by converting the conventional freighters and Santa Leonor into fully cellular container ships. However, the effort was opposed to by the longshoremen in New York and Venezuela, and the ships were repeatedly laid up idle. The ships were ultimately sold to the domestic container line Sea-Land Service in 1964. Sea-Land immediately modified the two ships to carry its 35-foot containers. Santa Eliana was temporarily renamed Sea and Santa Leonor became Land. The ships were employed on the U.S. coastal and Puerto Rican trades. The L and M ships L ships The Grace Line replaced the aging freighters and added six newly built freighters called the L ships. M ships In 1963, Grace made a second attempt to containerize its South American trade when it ordered what was referred to as the M ships, which were: • Santa Magdalena • Santa Maria • ''Santa M'ariana'' • Santa Mercedes The ships were combination passenger-cargo ships with partial cellular holds. Each ship could carry 125 first class passengers. However, they were no real gain as mixing conventional breakbulk cargo (shipping goods loaded individually) and containers in the same ship was less efficient in terms of the operating economies than full containerization (intermodal freight transport) was capable of. Santa Magdalena, the first of the class, was delivered to Grace Line on February 4, 1965. File:Paper roll loaded on ship.jpg|An example of breakbulk cargo File:Line3174 - Shipping Containers at the terminal at Port Elizabeth, New Jersey - NOAA.jpg|Example of shipping containerization M ship design The ships were designed by George G. Sharpe Company, naval architects and engineers. As an engineering company, operations analysis (operations research) of the trade route was made to determine: • Having trends analyzed • Having trends projected into the future. Sale of the shipping company In December 1969, Grace Line was sold to Prudential Lines for $44.5 million, with the merged company renamed Prudential Grace Line. Spyros S. Skouras was elected president. A Pacific and Atlantic Division were created. The divisions were managed as follows: • Arthur C. Novacek, the last president of the Grace Line, headed the Atlantic Division. • Edmund J. Camuti, the former traffic vice president for the Prudential Line, headed the Pacific Division. == 1970s ==

The Prudential Grace Line was taken over by Delta Steamship Lines of New Orleans, Louisiana in 1978, allowing Delta to carry on shipping services to Latin America from both the U.S. Atlantic and Pacific Coasts. However, the purchase saw the extinguishing of the name Grace in ocean shipping. The following events took place for Santa Paula (1958) in the 1970s: • In 1972, the ship was sold to a Greek cruise company, Oceanic Sun Line, which planned to convert her into the Mediterranean cruise ship SS Stella Polaris. However, the plan was not successful. • In 1978, the ship was later converted into a floating hotel in Kuwait, the Kuwait Marriott Hotel. Twenty years after it first set sail, it was set to become a floating hotel. File:"Athinai" - Eleusis, 1986.jpg|The Athinai (ex Santa Rosa) was used in the filming of Raise the Titanic. Image c. 1986 File:S.S. Santa Rosa, 1932.jpg|Santa Rosa in 1932 == 1980s ==

Santa Paula (1958) in its converted form as the Kuwait Marriott floating hotel officially opened in 1980. In 1989, The hotel later became the Ramada al Salaam Hotel. Santa Magdalena, the first of the M ships to have been delivered in 1965, was scrapped in 1988. == 1990s–2010s ==

Santa Paula (1958) as the Ramada al Salaam floating hotel was destroyed during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the exception of its spare machinery. The spares were later used in the sister ship of the former Santa Rosa (1958). In 1991, the same Santa Rosa was converted into a more modern cruise ship, at the cost of $70 million. The ship was later scrapped in 2012. Almost a century before, the company had acquired the Santa Cruz in 1913 for service from the West Coast of the U.S. to the Pacific coast of South America. File:The Emerald in Venice, Italy on May 13, 2008.jpg| (ex Santa Rosa) c. 2008 == References ==