RMS Caronia Timeline: Caribia - A Sad Ending

An Art-Deco Sale Like No Other

Rob Mason continues his story…
In 1974, I knew that the Caribia had been sold for scrap and was towed out of New York, and subsequently sank off Guam on the way to the scrap yard. What I, nor most people apparently did not realise at the time, was that the ship had been stripped bare of virtually all of its fittings before leaving New York.

In the mid-1970s, there was an annual Art Deco Exposition held every January in the preeminent existing Art Deco palace in New York City at that time - Radio City Music Hall. At the 1974 exposition, there was a very small, unmanned booth set up with a few unidentified and unmarked chairs (these being immediately recognisable as vintage Cunard furniture to those in the know). A small poster on the stand advertised…
“Classic Art Deco Furniture Sale: Pier 54”

Caribia at New York 1972 — Caribia at New York in 1972
Photo: Courtesy of Rob Mason

By this time, the Caribia was long gone from New York. However, Pier 54 was filled from end-to-end with everything from the ship. The swimming pool ladders, rows and rows of battered, bent and beaten kitchen pots, life-jackets, those cheap aluminium framed chairs and boxes of blank Cunard menu stock, mattresses, telephones, signs, chairs, tables, light fixtures, etc.

Everything had a fixed price; there was no haggling. It was all so cheap; no one really wanted Art Deco in 1974. In addition, everything on the pier was heavily used and nearly 30 years old at the time.

An Enduring Mystery

As Rob Mason has stated, the contents of Caronia had been stripped-out a long time ahead of this “fire-sale”. Everything that had particular value had already been sold through word-of-mouth.

Kiki Kogelnik had equipped his restaurant on 5th Avenue with Caronia furniture. Apparently, the beautifully veneered grand-piano from the Main Lounge had been bought and shipped to Hollywood by a famous singer.

A lot of the finer pieces, never intended to be offered for sale, also never made it to Pier 54. Instead, they were crated-up and shipped directly to Greece, where now they probably change hands for vast sums of money.

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A Mean Twist!

All this applied to the contents of the 1st Class Smoking Room; all the major artworks, including all 12 of E.R. Thompson's decorative panels from the spectacular ceiling, along with the wall paintings by José Mari de Uzelai (Ucelay) were all packed into a container placed on the quayside ready for shipping.

However, the story has a sad and distinctly mean twist. To this day, nothing is known of what happened to that container or its valuable contents. Obviously, speculation is rife!

Some Interesting Challenges

Rob continues…
I purchased two stateroom chairs, a table from the main entrance foyer, several signs, and several cabin dressers. It was interesting trying to assemble the dressers. Apparently, all of the drawers were removed from the ship first, and stacked on the pier. Then the cabinet cases were separately unscrewed from the bulkheads and removed from the ship. Since each cabinet was custom built to fit in a specific cabin location with its unique shear, the drawers were also built for each unique cabinet. Nothing modular here!

Aft pool deck of Caribia at New York 1972 — Caribia's aft Sun Deck - at New York in 1972
Photo: Courtesy of Rob Mason

The big challenge was to locate a base cabinet in reasonable condition on one side of the pier, then go to the other side to try and locate drawers that would actually fit in the cabinet. There were many, many cabinets that probably never found drawers that would fit.

I understand that the sale was eventually stopped by US Customs. All the goods being sold, being of “foreign” manufacture, (in the UK of course), had no customs duty paid to “import” them. Both the State and the City of New York wanted their share of sales taxes on these items (no sales tax was collected on the items that I purchased).

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Of course, by the time the government officials finally took notice, virtually everything had been sold. There was really very little left on the pier, except for those mismatched cabinets and drawers and other damaged items. All of the “good stuff” had made its way off the pier.

It has been over 50 years since the sale, and it would be interesting to know where any of these items are now.

The story continues with…

If you can contribute any information, do please get in touch…

T.S.S. Caribia

A Sad Ending
Page 7

The Former Caronia - Now Universal Cruise Line's Caribia

The aftermath of a famous British cruise liner

An Art-Deco Sale Like No Other

An Enduring Mystery

A Mean Twist!

Some Interesting Challenges