Galileo Galilei

[Indiana67]

My name is Silvia, and I was born on 16 March 1967 aboard the ship Galileo Galilei en route from Italy to Australia. The captain at the time, Rudolfo Sangulin baptised me aboard and he became my Godfather. I have the original birth certificate and baptism certificates issued to me aboard the ship. I also have a Lloyd Triestino gold medallion with the Lloyd Triestino flag on one side, and St Christopher on the other side. It came in a blue box which has the name of the jeweller inside the box. My family holds excellent clear black and white photographs of my mother after the birth with the Captain of the ship. We also have the original passenger tickets. I was astounded to find out this evening that the ship which I was born on 38 years ago, sank on 20 May 1999. I cried. Thank you to all the people who posted notes about their wonderful times aboard the ship. I never knew her, but I came into this world in the medical quarters. Anyone with information about other people born on the Galileo Galileo, please email me at zabika@bigpond.com. Thank you

[dougnewmanatsea]

You have probably seen it already but if not, do take a look at this article from my friend Peter Knego.

 

There are also some excellent photos of this ship and her sister here and another nice article with more photos here.

 

I'm still marveling at your story since I got your e-mail this morning!

[BrooklynGirl2]

That is quite an incredible story Silvia. It's amazing how a ship can evoke such emotions in us. I felt the same way when I found out the that SS Doric (Home Lines) that I met my husband on in 1981 had been sold and evenutally sunk off the coast of South Africa. In fact, it was one of the hosts of Cruise Critic that kindly informed me of this. I had no idea what had happened to her.

 

It's nice that you have those mementos and pictures. I feel like I do not have enough pictures of Doric and I'm sorry I didn't take more. When we celebrated our birthdays and Anniversary on Zenith this year I took pictures of everything so I would always have those pictures to remember her by when, eventually, she too, is no longer around.

 

Thanks for sharing your story.

[RD64]

Silvia

 

I am assuming that you still live in Australia. If you are looking for Lloyd Triestino souvenirs, I remember a nautical memorabilia shop in The Rocks of Sydney - it was still in business on my last visit in 2001. The shop sold (still sells) spoons, plates, ash trays, etc. including those of Lloyd Triestino. Don't recall the name, but will look through my scrap books.

 

Cheers RD

[keltic]

I am trying to find photos of these twins, and I wonder if anyone knows where the Lloyd Triestino historical archive?.

[RD64]

If you go to ssmaritime.com and search the site you will find excellent photos (interior and exterior) of the Galileo and Marconi. There is another web site ( I do not remember it now) that also has deck plans - although not of the ships in their original configuration. Do a Google search and you may find it. Also, postcards do appear now and then on Ebay. Cheers

[iv18-Diane]

Hi Ross - apologies for the delay - moved house - again!

 

I haven't heard back from the other Silvia born on the GG who is also living in Australia, but maybe one day she'll return to this site and see my message. I wonder if she still has her original birth certificate too? I did some research and found that if ever I lost my original birth certificate, I could never get a replacement. I am not registered anywhere, and the official Ship records have been destroyed.

 

The GG was the SS Meridien when you sailed on her in 1984. It's good to see you have great memories of this beautiful ship and it's nice to speak with someone who sailed on her. I have a lovely letter from Mr Kapetenakos who owned Chandris Cruises welcoming me aboard "at any time". I went to the US in 1995 and 1996 but didn't see the ship. She then changed ownership again and became the Sun Vista, and soon afterwards she sank in the Malacca Strait :-(((. It's funny how she sank on my wedding anniversary (20 May), because my marriage sank too!

 

See above - Doug Newman's link takes you to http://www.maritimematters.com/sun-vista.html[/url]. The first b/w postcard was the official postcard from the ship back in the 1960s - I still have an original one in my "sentimental box". Thanks Doug.

 

For anyone who was born on, or has sailed on the Galileo Galileo, please email me on: silnat@bigpond.com

 

Happy sailing!

 

Silvia

 

I sailed on her as the Meridian, in July 1995. It was my first cruise. It was sailing Rt NY-Bermuda. I kept some of the cruise program from the ship.

This site(a friend's) has a picture of the ship.

http://members.tripod.com/~PARNAMI/Meridian.html

 

Diane in Music City

[NYCruzr]

Hello,

 

I did not sail on the Galileo, but I sailed on her sister ship, the Guglielmo Marconi in 1979. I was amazing when I think back to that time because I was 17 years old and traveled with a friend of mine from school. Just us without parents of guardians of any kind. What a great time we had.

 

Sorry to hear about your birth certificate. Have you tried contacting the Italian Consulate's office? They may be able to give you some information of an office to contact in Italy. There must be a copy somewhere of the certificate issued on the ship since I believe you would have been considered having been born on Italian soil. Were you considered an Italian citizen?

 

Unfortunately, I don't have cruise plans at the moment, but do hope to have them in the near future.

 

Take care

Angelo

[Mr_V]

I've been wallowing in a bit of nostalgia of late, and tonight I did some google searches for the Galilei and came up with this (old) thread.

 

I sailed on her with my parents on a return voyage from Genoa to Cape Town in 1975. I was five years old at the time, and yet this remains one of the major formative experiences of my life.

 

I sailed on her a second time with my parents on a Mediterranean cruise in 1979, when she was operated by ICI.

 

Now, something that might interest some of you: I know I have, packed away in a very old and rickety suitcase, many, many souvenirs from especially the 1975 trip. This includes full original deck plans of the Galilei and Marconi, menus, post cards, luggage tags, original receipt for ticket, etc. etc. In addition, my parents took probably over a hundred slide transparencies during this trip, and a similar number of colour prints in 1979.

 

I also have many many more photos – mostly transparencies – of these and other liners visiting Cape Town during the 60s and 70s.

 

It's my firm intention to scan all of this material and make it available "sometime". The major problem being that it's all currently half a world away and whenever I do visit home, I don't have the time for such an extensive project. But please continue to bug me over time to make good on my promise! :)

[cruisin'since'75]

Consider this your first gentle "bug". I'd give almost anything to see these pictures, deck plans, menus, etc. I only sailed the Galileo once, but it made quite and impression. I sailed on her again once she became a Celebrity liner. I was again impressed. I just love old ships, I guess. So please, get to this project quickly.

 

Many thanks, Mr. V.

[jonad]

I also sailed on GG sister ship the Guglielmo Marconi in 1974 from Perth (Australia) to Genoa. We were two 19 year old girls and cruised for 2 months travelling East, across the Pacific Ocean, through the Panama Canal, all the way to Athens and back to Genoa. I think about 15 ports in all.

What a trip that was, 19 years old, carefree. What fun we had and so did the crew! They used to sneak us into their quarters!

We returned to Australia from Genoa, via Capetown, therefore circumnavigating the world.

We'll never forget that holiday.

Perhaps we should start a thread on the Marconi....

[graflea]

Hi Silvia,

 

I sailed on the Sun Vista for my first cruise. It happened to be exactly 1 year, 1 month, 1 week and 1 day before she sank. I'm not sure if that's creepy or just lucky. I've since done 3 cruises on the Virgo and think of the Sun Vista every time we do the Malacca Strait. It was a great ship. I read a great story on the net by a guy who was on it at the time it sank. He had a great sense of humour. I hope you manage to come across it as it's really interesting.

 

Good luck.

[nanaof2]

All the memories are coming back. My father and I migrated to Australia in 1965 on the GALILEO GALILEI boarding in Genoa and I celebrated my 19th birthday on board. It was a wonderful journey, met lots of Aussies coming home from working holidays in England. We travelled half way around the world to the unknown, with high expectations and concerns, but, it all turned out just great. It was a never to be forgotten trip, the ship was so nice, clean and as a young girl, lots to do and plenty of fun to be had.

[mariak58]

Wow, all these stories of the GG and the Marconi bring back so many memories for me too. My parents my two brothers and I sailed from Melb to Naples on the 2Aug 1968...I was 9 years old and even though I was that young it had such a huge impact on my life...One whole month to get to Naples. I think my mother aged 10 years in that month and another 10 on the trip back to Melb. I've just checked out some of the photos of GG and cant believe how much I THOUGHT I remembered and in my childs eye I thought the ship was HUUUGE but its actually quite small! I remember the pool in rough seas had huge waves. I remember the crew going on strike in Las Palmas and the passengers being bused to a restaurant somewhere up in the mountains of Las Palmas (I hope thats what I remember). The passengers were not happy for those two days. I remember on our return trip an anouncement being made by the captain that the sister ship Marconi was about to sail past us...my brothers and I were so excited because we knew that at that moment our cousins the Martino's were on their way to Italy (or Melb, I dont remember which way we were going). Anyhow, I'm being a bit nostalgic lately because I'm about to take my 13 year old on her first cruise in two weeks time on the Pacific Sun, I just hope I dont age 10 years in one week!

Also, a big hello to the two Silvia's born on the Gallileo...how wonderful is that!?

[marconi]

Hi all cruisers

Just to let you know that the Guglielmo Marconi the GG's sister ship was my favourite.

I travelled on her four times and once on the GG."Those were the days" as the old song says.

I have since been on 24 cruises but alas even though they are more classy I still remember

the great days we had on the Marconi.

Regards Frank.

[SwissMyst]

I sailed the Galileo Dec 1976 to February 1977 leaving from Genoa, struck for a week in Naples where they had to put us all up at the last minute in Partenope hotels for week while the crew spent Christmas with their families and then off to the Suez Canal, Djibouti, Mombasa, Durban, a 10 day run across the the Indian Ocean to Freemantle, another AU stop, Sydney, New Zealand, New Caledonia, Tahiti, another 10 day run across the Pacific, Acapulco, Panama Canal and I got off in Curacao.

 

The ship tourist class was full of young South African, Australians and New Zealanders who used it to come back home after spending a year in the Mother Country England, and then we picked up new groups of the same who were leaving those countries and heading off for their year in the Mother Country. All us single young ladies fell in love with the handsome Italian officers and the Asst Purser, Alessandro Talemo Lamberti stole my heart for a while.

 

I had an inside two bunk room with bath down the hall on one of the lower decks. We flirted with some of the solo men up in First Class who would hang over their upper balcony and everyone speculated about the woman of a certain age in the black bikini and long silver hair who would also drape herself over the First class balcony in full view of all the young men down in tourist class hanging out on the decks during the sea days.

 

On sea days we would sleep through breakfast, rouse ourselves for lunch in the main dining room, lay out on the deck in the sun for the afternoon, get dressed for dinner and stay up all night trying to get some of the fresh baked rolls at 3-4am when we ended our evenings in the lounge or on the promenade decks when we passed back through the dining room on our way to our economy cabins down in the depths of the ship. Never remember getting sea sick but we hit tremendous waves across the Pacific but did pick up a bit of tourista having only a single cup of coffee in Port Said.

 

Djibouti was certainly the most exotic stop and three of us from the ship were adopted by a French officer who gave us a custom tour all around this country and only drove us up to the gang way when they were doing the last call for the departure. In those days, you just walked off the ship which was docked close in and anything you wanted to see in all our stops was in easy walking distance.

 

There were tensions between the African ports and the South African passport passengers, who also often carried Irish passports for times like that. Mombasa tried to delay our disembarkation just to arouse hostility towards the South African passport holders (whites and Indians) and only finally relented to let us get off the ship because they were losing our tourist dollars too with the delay. I think the port cab drivers finally put pressure on the Mombasa custom agents to let us off.

 

The food was varied and good but we learned quickly to take what was being offered each night and not order off the menu because it would then take forver since everyone got served the dishes of the day first. And every few weeks we had a lavish buffet which now I realize was just all the left-overs dressed up in gelatin and mayonaise.

 

We celebrated the equator passings twice and the International Dateline with great and garbage strews King Neptune ceremonies. Every night was a dance in the main lounge. Occasionally there were movies but I only remember The Owl and the PussyCat, with I believe Barbara Streisand. The rest were very low rent B movies the staff said the Mafia required them to play. The chaplain tried to teach us Italian in the cinema and led us all in choruses of Santa Lucia because he said it was easier to sing Italian than to speak it. He was right.

 

I tracked with GPS markings where she went down off Penang and as I passed this spot which I could see by the dive boats now above her, I tossed the Joker from my pack of Lloyd Triestino Galileo Galelei playing cards overboard while on the Crystal Symphony, April 2008 going from Singapore to Dubai.

 

Gone but never, never ever forgotten. The details of this trip remain vivid all these years later, and on a recent cruise to Capetown I got out my old address book filled with names from that trip to look up what happened to "Peter" in Capetown, only to learn he had become an architect of some note but been murdered in his own home in a Capetown suburb a few years prior and all his possessions stripped out.

 

No police leads and it was just one of those things that happens in this beautiful and terrible land. No longer was it safe to walk the streets of Durban the way we did back in 1977 when the ship stopped there and all the South Africans friends got off, and only to pick up replacements for all of them.

 

I remain in touch with one of the other passengers who lives in Southern California and we both talk about it as if the trip were only yesterday. She as a single woman then too had as much fun as I had. Travel like that at the time we did that and the uniqueness of the world and its still remoteness can only happen once in one's life and I am thrilled it was the Galileo that showed me the world.

[silvtom]

Ok, going to bug you, I would love to see whatever you have on the beautiful ship as I was born on it!!!!

[kelsim100]

Hello everyone. I sailed on the Guglielmo Marconi in 1974 from Durban South Africa to Perth Australia. As I remember we had a great time on board.

[kellzzbellzz]

I was also on the Galileo in Feb/March 1967 as a 5 year old child. My parents and older brother migrated from England to Australia (Perth) and I believe we sailed from Genoa. I'm very interested in any information anyone might have on this journey.

 

What an awesome story of two Silvia's born on the ship!

[geduffer]

Interesting thread, as the Galileo Galilei was acquired by Chandris Fantasy Cruises and cruised as Galileo until going into refit and emerging as SS Meridian, the first ship for Celebrity Cruises. When Royal Caribbean acquired Celebrity Cruises in 1997 Meridian was sold to Sun Cruises and became SS Sun Vista, suffered an engine fire in the Straits of Malacca and sank at 1:21 AM on 5/21/99.

[Hristos]

I traveled on the Marconi with my parents and my brother in 1974 from Genoa Italy to Sydney Australia a beautiful memory that will remain with me forever what a beautiful ship, Silvia your story in amazing how you were born on the Gilileo the sister ship to the Marconi, I was also very sadden to read of the sinking of the Gilileo (Sun Vista) in the Malacca Straits near Singapore after all those years of service and all the people from around the world that traveled on her such a memorable history I am happy to have been part of that history. If anyone would like to share memories my email is ck.katlec@gmail.com

 

Chris.

[shipgeeks]

Our memories of this ship, Meridian when DH and I sailed on her, are perhaps not as dramatic as some of the above, but very special to us nonetheless.

We sailed in 1997.  Forty cruises later, we still recall it as one of the best.  One night, in an elevator lobby, we could hear live music coming from a nearby lounge. We began to dance there, danced into the lounge, and eventually out the other side.  So magical, so Fred and Ginger.

Meridian was the first ship on which we were invited to dinner at the Captain's Table.  Later that evening, courtesy of a fellow passenger who was a military chaplain, we renewed our marriage vows on an open deck.

When DH called me at work one day to say the ship had gone down, I cried.

In 2014, during conversation with our cabin steward onboard Celebrity Silhouette, we learned that he had been aboard when she sank.  

It is so wonderful to read all of your memories and impressions.

[CGTNORMANDIE]

On 7/22/2007 at 6:38 PM, Indiana1967 said:

Hi Ross - apologies for the delay - moved house - again!

 

The GG was the SS Meridien when you sailed on her in 1984. It's good to see you have great memories of this beautiful ship and it's nice to speak with someone who sailed on her.

 

For anyone who was born on, or has sailed on the Galileo Galileo, please email me on: silnat@bigpond.com

 

Happy sailing!

 

Silvia

 

Just as a matter of clarification (for you historians).  When I sailed in 1984 the ship was still named Galileo.  The addition of the foredeck cabins had already been made but the big conversion to Celebrity Meridian had not yet taken place.  I was actually present at the creation. As an an ocean liner historian I was interested to see what Chandris had in mind for the Galileo.  Little did I know that this ship would evolve into Celebrity Cruises. I was sitting in a lounge onboard Galileo when a group of Chandras executives laid out a set of plans and started planning the renovation which became Celebrity Cruises.  They were sitting at the table next to me so I felt like I was seeing something historical.  Fast forward to 2018 and the evolution becomes breath taking. 

[LittleYiaYia]

In 1996 my husband and I took our first cruise, on board the Celebrity Meridian.  After 18 years of cruising, this 10 day Ultimate Caribbean adventure remains our favorite cruise.  We cruised out of San Juan, Puerto Rico.  We still laugh when we think of our
inside cabin.  It was so small it couldn't have been over 80 square feet.  The shower was circular, so small that you actually hit your elbows on the sides when trying to soap up.  Our dinner companions invited us to view their "ocean view" cabin.  I remember having to climb up on their bed to see out the very small porthole.  I remember the wonderful shaded promenade with the comfortable deck chairs.  What a great place to sit and enjoy the view and the ocean breezes.  There were no big production shows, entertainers came on board at each port.  We had a French singer, a puppet show, a magician and a small string quartet is all I can recall.  The beautiful midnight buffets, every night, with ice sculptors and carved fruit floating in the swimming pool !

In 2000 we were aboard the Celebrity Galaxy and happened to strike up a conversation with the cruise director.  In the course of this conversation when he found that we had sailed on the Meridian,  he told us that he was aboard the Sun Vista when she sank.  What a story he had to tell.

 

I'm so glad to have found this interesting thread and to be able to share our wonderful memories of our favorite ship. 

[CGTNORMANDIE]

Hi Yia,

 

Great that you were able to catch a cruise on the Meridian.  She was the first Celebrity ship.  I never met anyone who didn’t love that ship after sailing on her.  The Chandris family did a bang-up job renovating her.  The Meridian was hugely successful and that gave birth to the succession of newly built Celebrity vessels which will forever bear that famous X on the funnel.  It was a sad day when she caught fire and sank.