I have been reorganizing my library and have found that I have amassed a large collection of cruise books over the years. Most are from friends and relatives, and some are from garage sales and auctions.
I find that no other book can really tell the history of the ship of a specific time like a cruise book. It has all the crew and minute details that a “History in Scale” book cannot give you.
So far, here are a few I have collected:
USS Oriskany 1972 Westpac
USS Lexington (Ichiban) 1958 shakedown and Westpac
USS Ranger (Lost Horizons) 1987 1988 Westpac
USS Independence 1989 Med Cruise
USS JFK 1968 Westpac
USS Hayler 1990 “Operation Northern Crude”
USS Kansas City 1971 Westpac
USS Samual Gompers 1983 Westpac and Med cruise
USS Halibut
Anyone else collect these and use them as references?
Scott
That sounds like a remarkable collection. I hope you’ll take good care of them - and, eventually, make arrangements for them to go to a library or other repository when you’re gone. People often don’t take such things as seriously as they should, and valuable documents like cruise books go into the trash when the original owners pass on. Imagine, for instance, what a treasure trove a big stack of cruise books from the fifties would be.
This past summer I had the pleasure of interning at the US Navy Library. I hate to diminish your collections, but the library takes great pride in its collection of literally thousands of cruise books dating back as far as the Spanish-American War.
I often found myself quickly scarfing down lunch so I could spend more of my break time reading them! It was great being able to chat with the guys who came by to reminisce with a cruise book.
I also aught to mention what I spent a considerable portion of my time working on, the ship files. My job was to catalogue all the Commissioning, Welcome Aboard, and Decommissioning pamphlets, along with all sorts of neat little documents dating back as far as the 18th century.