The last great French liner that died as the Blue Lady
The ship broken up on the beach at Alang in 2008 had begun life in 1960 as the SS France, the last great ship of state built for the French Line and, at 316 metres, the longest passenger vessel ever constructed until the Queen Mary 2 in 2004. Norwegian Cruise Line bought her in 1979, renamed her Norway and turned her into an early Caribbean mega cruise ship. Her career ended on 25 May 2003 when boiler number 23 ruptured at the Port of Miami, sending scalding steam through the engineering spaces and crew quarters, killing eight crew members and injuring ten. Investigators traced the blast to years of fatigue cracking and neglected maintenance, and NCL later pleaded guilty to gross negligence and paid a one million dollar fine with millions more in restitution.
Declared finished, she was towed first to Germany, then to Malaysia, and finally sold for scrap with a new name, Blue Lady, painted across her bow. What followed was a long legal fight. Greenpeace listed her among the world's most toxic ships for the roughly 900 tonnes of asbestos worked into her structure, and India's Supreme Court held her offshore for weeks before allowing her to beach at Alang in 2006. Cutting began in early 2007, and by late 2008 the last of her had been reduced to scrap steel. Her bow tip was saved and returned to France, where it survives today as one of the last pieces of a liner that once carried Salvador Dali, and even the Mona Lisa, across the Atlantic in style.