Who saved the Cruise Industry?

Did you know that the fledgling cruise industry nearly finished before it ever really got started?
Back in the 1930’s it was in some serious trouble with more and more people opting to fly, when help came from the most unlikely of sources.

Can you guess who?

The ‘golden era’ of cruising, (if we don't count now anyway), really had to be the late 1800s and early 1900s. It was the introduction of the steam ship taking immigrants across the Atlantic that really started off the cruise industry, as whilst a trans-Atlantic cruise was still normally only a one way affair many affluent passengers had started to travel back and forth between England and New York on holiday and for business purposes.

It was the White Star Line who assembled the first ‘cruising fleet’ as we today would recognize it. From 1849 forward they revolutionized trans-Atlantic crossings, setting records for size, grandeur, building and speed.

But the cruise industry was facing increasing competition from a new source. The popularity of the trans-Atlantic crossing was waining with the arrival of the airplane. People could fly to many more destinations in a fraction of the time it took a cruise ship so the cruise lines had to change their business model to survive, focusing more on tourism rather than passenger transportation. The age of the ‘modern cruise’ had arrived.
However, this is where it gets really strange. During the early 1930s, the cruise industry was again struggling to keep up with ‘flight holidays’, new business model or not, so Adolf Hitler started a program to boost the cruise industry by offering subsidized holiday packages to German workers as part of a state sponsored effort to unite the nation. Hitler even went so far as to commission several new ships for service, making, believe it or not, the Nazi party early pioneers of the cruise line industry we know today.

Strange but true.