Today only four remain. It was originally 57,600 tons of the SS France when she was launched at Saint Nazaire. It was on May 11, 1960 when Charles de Gaulle saw how his wife Yvonne crashed a magnum of champagne on the black helmet of a giant. Seconds later, it floated for the first time at the point where the waters of the Loire reach the Atlantic.
The France arrived at a time of local technical grandeur: the President of the Republic was driving a brand new black Citröen DS, the famous Tiburón. In the aeronautical world, the Caravelle stood out as the most modern jet in Europe and to cross the ocean, the Atlantic shipyards were able to build the longest passenger ship in the world: 316 meters, a record that was not broken until 2004 The ocean liner, pride and floating embassy of France was assigned to the regular Le Havre-New York line of the CGT, Compagnie Generale Transatlantique.
Those were times when passenger ships were the protagonists of the great journeys between continents, although their arrival on the market coincided with the expansion of jets, which little by little were eating up the market for the large airlines that covered routes between Europe and ports all over the world. world.
When she first sailed, the France was admired for her decoration and sailing innovations, such as being equipped with stabilizers to smooth out rough days in the North Atlantic. She was also revolutionary about air conditioning in all of her spaces. His five-day crossings were highly appreciated by his passengers, among whom those who traveled in first class stood out: members of high society and celebrities of the time, from Jackie Kennedy to Ike Eisenhower, Alain Delon, Grace Kelly or even Louis de Funès, who filmed on board one of his films playing the famous Gendarme de Saint-Tropez.
The year in which de Funès traveled with his entire team to New York was the first in which the regular line of the CGT went into losses and to diversify the business it entered an expanding market: cruises and special trips around the world... in a changing world, in which the revolution of 1968 arrived, the direct competition of Cunard with its brand new Queen Elizabeth 2 and the oil crisis of the early 1970s. All this, together with commercial aviation that was more powerful every day, fully in the waterline of this ship, which came to stop sailing due to government cuts: that prestigious line was highly subsidized.
In September 1974, after 110 years uniting France and the United States, always departing from Le Havre and with a notable bad work environment on board, including several riots, the CGT abandoned regular passenger services. The France was moored for four long years in an industrial dock in Le Havre, where the ship was much loved and a symbol of prosperity, renamed the dock of shame for that situation. After a parenthesis in which a Saudi millionaire took over the ship, although he did not move it from France, it ended up being bought by the shipping company NCL, which renamed it Norway, expanded its capacity and dedicated it to cruises in the Caribbean with Miami as home port until 2003.
Sanjay Mehta, an Indian junk dealer, was the last owner of the France as such. After a long legal adventure due to asbestos, he ended up dismantling it in Alang, in the state of Gujarat, India, one of the beaches where ships from around the world end their lives as ships, becoming loose pieces of metal. Those of the France, together with the objects inside that had not yet been looted, became collector's items and this is where Jacques Dworczak entered the equation, who took 400 pieces of the ship at very low prices to later auction them in Paris . One of the most showy was the tip of the bow of the ship, of little more than four meters, cut with a blowtorch. He paid 7,000 euros for it, and it went up for auction for 80,000. It ended up reaching 273,000 in an act that ended up being canceled due to the profile of the buyer. In a new bid, the city of Le Havre, with the support of the Ministry of Culture, paid 171,000 euros for the last and symbolic four tons of the France, exhibited next to the fishing area and the ferry terminal of the city port since 2018 as memory of other times.
