Collection of Mario J. Pulice The Normandie made its entrance on June 3, 1935. For a few short moments, a breath of life pushed through the lungs of a steam whistle that once gave a loud presence to the Normandie, the French luxury liner that was known as the fastest, most fashionable way to get to Europe in the 1930s.
In billows of creamy steam and a throaty honk, the ship’s ghost rose audibly 75 years to the day of its first arrival in New York harbor, when tens of thousands of New Yorkers lined the waterfront of Lower Manhattan to see the 1,029-foot, 83,423 ton vessel glide toward the 48th Street pier. It was fresh from victory at sea, having traveled from France in a record-breaking 4 days, 11 hours and 33 minutes, earning it a blue pennant that waved from the topmast to signal to other ships that it was the fastest of them all.
To commemorate the anniversary on Thursday, Con Edison engineers temporarily put the whistle on what looked like life support with bright orange and black cables leading to a hole in the ground. Steam under 150 pounds of pressure from a power plant on 14th Street blasted through a two-inch connection, erupting in a white plume. Onlookers squealed and clapped, and some were sprayed with water when it blew.
The 600-pound solid brass whistle is known as a three-note chime, because each of the three bells blows a different tone, which creates a low chord, like a foghorn. It was one of the larger steam whistles of its day and was common among the larger liners made in the early 20th century, such as the Titanic or the Aquitania. It sounded at 60, 30, 10, 5, 2 and 1 minutes before departure. One long horn, and three short ones, meant the gangway was pulled and the ship was backing out.
The Normandie, which cost $60 million, met an untimely death when it capsized and burned in its docking grave in 1942, and its Art Deco grandeur and sophisticated design were reduced to scrap metal sold for $3.80 a ton.
But the whistle survived. It was transported to a railroad dump car in Newark, with other parts from the ship. And somehow it ended up in Bethlehem, Pa., where it was put to use at the Bethlehem Steel powerhouse to call workers to duty until the plant shut down in the 1980s.
Conrad Milster, the chief engineer at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, has been the custodian of the whistle for 25 years. He houses it at the college with a collection of other whistles that are blown every New Year’s Eve on campus.
Emily S. Rueb The Normandie’s whistle billowed steam in front of the South Street Seaport Museum on Thursday.Thursday’s whistle-blowing ceremony downtown ties in to an exhibit dedicated to the ship, “DecoDence: Legendary Interiors and Illustrious Travelers Aboard the S.S. Normandie,” at the South Street Seaport Museum. The exhibit, which is up through January, showcases much of the memorabilia owned by Mario J. Pulice, a private collector whose apartment is decorated with some of its wares.
The event on Thursday drew dozens of tourists, maritime enthusiasts and historians. Among them was Richard Morse, 85, who boarded the ship in 1939, the last year it was in service. As a 14-year-old boy, he was awed by the ship’s grandeur.
“She was like Radio City Music Hall gone to sea,” he said.
When he watched the Normandie back out of the pier that day, he said, it seemed to go on forever. And when the three-chimed whistle on the aft end of the third stack blew, he put his hands over his ears. On Thursday, he left them uncovered.
“It was wonderful to hear her voice again,” he said. “But the memory is there, and that I’ll never forget.”
Collection of Mario J. Pulice The ship was flanked by a fleet of smaller vessels as it passed by the Statue of Liberty.
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