This ad promoting a jazz cruise on Holland America’s Rotterdam (1959) is from an October 1974 issue of New York Magazine. Check out the onboard entertainment: Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Cannonball Adderley and more, including the great jazz critic and historian Leonard Feather. “Take a hip trip on a luxury ship!” Indeed. Nowadays, cruises are still going and are used as one of the main holidays that families take, from small ship cruises to large ship cruises, there is something for everyone to enjoy. The aesthetics may be different and the cost, but it is still great fun for families to go on.
The 1970s was a golden age for cruises in much the same way that the 1930s was a golden age for transatlantic crossings. Both eras possessed a unique type of glamour that won’t ever be repeated.
