Helping Mom sort through some old photos, I got transported via the Way-Back machine to the SS Statendam, September 1959.
(Header photo courtesy of Ocean Liner Art.)
Muster drill, SS Statendam, 1959. My parents are at the far right. Everyone looks about as excited as they do nowadays, just better dressed.
My parents in the dining room, SS Statendam IV, 1959.
And for fun, I scanned the wine list and saved it as a PDF.
The SS Statendam, the fourth of her name, was built in 1956, sold by Holland America in 1984 and finally scrapped in 2004.
Her stats:
| Tonnage | 24,294 gross tons |
| Length | 642 ft (195.7 m) |
| Beam | 81 ft (24.7 m) |
| Speed | 16.5 knots (30.6 km/h) |
| Capacity | 881 passengers |
Quite a difference from the MS Nieuw Statendam, built in 2018:
| Tonnage | 99,902 gross tons |
| Length | 983 feet 5 in (299.75 m) |
| Beam | 114 ft 10 in (35 m) |
| Speed | 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) |
| Capacity | 2,666 passengers |
Keep up the good work.
Hi Lisa Ann
My name is Steve and following my Mum’s recent passing I have been looking through some of her stuff and came across some dinner menus from the S.S. Statendam of all things which relate to her and my fathers trip to New York and Canada in the late fifties. There is a date in the menu which is September 27th 1959 so it may be the same sailing that your parents were on, which is why I mention this to you – I guess there may be no way of knowing and I am not sure even if the ship was travelling to or from the US on this journey. Noting you have a wine list from this ship I could scan and email these items for you if of interest?
Hi, it’s Steve again! More sorting through Mum’s stuff and have found an actual passenger manifest for the sailing of the T.S.S. Statendam from New York to Rotterdam via Southampton (where my parents would have disembarked) on September 22 1959 – arrival 30th September. What are your parents names and I can see if they were on this ship if of interest?