Bye-Bye, Love Boat

NEW YORK —  Striding up the gangway, I knew I was boarding the original Love Boat of television fame--the Pacific Princess, that gently aging, exceedingly diminutive (at least by today’s standards) ship that had been instrumental in popularizing cruising a quarter-century ago.

On the other hand, I knew I wasn’t doing any such thing. I knew Capt. Merrill Stubing (played by Gavin MacLeod, who remains a Princess Cruises spokesman) wouldn’t be at the gangway to greet me as I boarded. Like much else on “The Love Boat,” the weekly TV series that for a decade brought the romance of cruising into the living rooms of millions of American landlubbers, this ritual bore little relation to real life. I also knew that my fellow passengers wouldn’t all be beautiful people questing for romance.

But I knew this too: The Pacific Princess was a woman with a past and an intriguing one at that. She has a shippy profile that you would never mistake for an apartment building, and--at a passenger capacity of 640 (638 on our cruise)--an intimacy and coziness that is all but lost in contemporary cruising. And even before I pulled on the midnight blue T-shirt I would purchase in the ship’s boutique, the one that read “Pacific Princess, 1972-2002, the Farewell Season,” I knew it was this summer or never to sail aboard the Love Boat. On Oct. 27, when the Pacific Princess’ lines are slipped at New York City’s Passenger Ship Terminal one last time and the ship sails for Civitavecchia, Italy, an important early chapter in the annals of cruising will close.

Even as my wife, Laurel, and I boarded on a Sunday last month in New York for a seven-day cruise to Bermuda, this ship had been promised elsewhere--sold to an Italian company for charter. Under terms of the purchase, the ship must sail under another name, with no references to her past. We wondered what we would find aboard the stalwart vessel whose longtime owner now found it obsolete. Its twin, Island Princess, which had shared the distinction of being “the original Love Boat,” was sold in 1999.

When I called to book our Bermuda cruise, the reservation agent had been upbeat but full of caveats--scripted, no doubt--to prevent complaints after the fact. “You do know that this ship has no balcony cabins?” she asked, an apology lurking in her voice. “And that the ‘Anytime Dining’ option is not available--just the traditional two seatings with assigned tables in the dining room?” I assured her that those weren’t concerns, and we settled on booking a “guarantee” at a rate of a little more than $1,000 apiece, one level above the minimum for an outside cabin. This left us eligible for an upgrade.

On board, our first impressions were favorable. Our mini-suite aft on the Promenade Deck was spacious, bright and airy, with twin beds, sofa, round coffee table with three easy chairs, credenza, vanity and a bathroom with tub. The layout and built-in furniture appeared to be original, but the curtains, upholstery and carpets seemed recently renewed. The public rooms were well appointed if decidedly modest--some might even say dowdy--by present-day cruise-ship standards (though, we were told, carpeting throughout the public areas was new). The two-deck central lobby, for instance, with the winding “Love Boat stairs,” a favorite spot for photos, is a nice design but looks dated compared with the soaring atriums in newer ships. We found ample open deck space--surfaced in teak, as decks are meant to be--with chairs oriented for leisurely contemplation of the sea.

When we gathered at our muster station, the Pacific Lounge, for our pre-sailing boat drill, Vicki Smith, one of the cruise staff and a dancer in the engaging production shows, was killing time waiting for the recorded safety announcement from the bridge. She asked who had cruised with Princess before, and about a third of us raised hands. Then another question:

“How many of you expected that this ship would be bigger?” she asked--there was that note of apology again--and a smattering of hands went up, though not ours. Its size was a major reason we were there, that and curiosity about an icon of popular culture.

Sailing is always great theater, and New York Harbor remains one of its preeminent stages. We were squeezed in at Berth 5 behind Norwegian Cruise Line’s Norwegian Sea. With a capacity of 1,518 passengers, the Sea is a midsize player in today’s cruise game--as is Royal Caribbean International’s Nordic Empress, at 2,020 passengers, which was berthed opposite us. By comparison, RCI’s Voyager of the Seas, one of the world’s largest cruise ships, can carry 3,114. Still, these ships towered over the Pacific Princess.

We were last to sail that day. The tug Catherine Turecamo nuzzled up against the ship in late afternoon. Four spine-tingling blasts on the whistle announced our departure, and no doubt set off some car alarms on 11th Avenue; then we began to ease out into the Hudson, or North River, as it is is known by mariners. We joined the parade downriver, past Navy ships and the Intrepid, the city’s resident aircraft carrier, now a museum.

From the Sun Deck we watched as a misty skyline unfolded: the Empire State Building, Chrysler’s inimitable spire, the golden cupola of the MetLife tower. Farther downtown came the still shocking, heart-sinking vacancy where the World Trade Center’s twin towers once stood. When sailing or arriving, we had always watched for the moment when the Woolworth Building’s fine Gothic tower was framed between the Trade Center’s two. Not anymore.

But it was reassuring to pass one of the Staten Island Ferry’s orange Kennedy-class boats, 1960s vessels, which I had grown up riding. Finally came Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and Lower New York Bay, in pea-soup fog.

We had cocktails that night in the Starlight Lounge, perched forward atop the bridge and swathed in white. The windows that should have overlooked the sea were drenched with condensation. Pianist Mike Rorah, whose jazzy stylings of show tunes would charm us throughout the week, had closed up shop in a huff, unwilling to have his riffs punctuated by the foghorn.

By the next morning, sun was burning through the clouds, and we staked out deck chairs with 180-degree views of the Atlantic. We read away that day at sea and most of the next, until our midafternoon arrival at St. George, the first of three Bermuda port calls.

For me, one of the great joys of cruising is things I don’t have to do. That first day, I felt no need to go to the gym or participate in either high- or low-impact aerobics. Or learn scarf tying or line dancing. Or compete in pingpong or a scavenger hunt or a brunch-time trivia contest. Or find out about the rare and beautiful gemstone tanzanite or learn why my hair always lets me down. And that was only in the morning; ahead of me was an entire afternoon of activities I could forgo.

Still, this was the Love Boat, so we felt we should mingle. Dressed up in tux and gown (there would be two formal evenings and five “smart casual” ones), we went to the obligatory Captain’s Welcome Party, which turned out to be unusually gracious and enjoyable. In his brief remarks, Capt. Christopher Rynd, a New Zealander, struck just the right note.

“This small ship has an ambience of intimacy and warmth not easily found on the larger ships of today,” he said. No apology here, and that’s not surprising, since Rynd has a long history with the Pacific Princess and the virtually identical Island Princess. The ships were acquired by Princess in 1974, and Rynd joined the Island Princess as second officer in 1977, the year “The Love Boat” first aired on television. In his career with P&O; Princess, he estimates he has spent about seven years altogether on the Pacific Princess.

Though Rynd didn’t greet every passenger at the gangway--as Capt. Stubing did in the TV show--he did shake all our hands at his welcome party; and when I spoke with him later, he told me how “The Love Boat” was regarded up in “officer country” in its first year.

“The episodes followed a certain theme, didn’t they?” he said dryly. The theme, of course, was hot romance on the wing, aided at every turn by the cruise director and others. “But generally they were pleased that the ship and the company were celebrated in that way.”

Though much footage was shot in the studio, filming was also common when the ship was in service, and passengers were used as extras.

“They would post notices,” Rynd recalled, “saying ‘If you look good in a bathing suit, contact the producer.’ ” He never appeared on the show, though he has Hollywood good looks. So do Chris Nichol, the cruise director, and Joy Casaru, the social hostess, who did make a cameo appearance in one episode. Casaru seems to be the vivacious real-life counterpart of Julie McCoy, the matchmaking cruise director who was played by Lauren Tewes in the TV show until 1984.

“I think that this little ship made cruising what it is today,” said Casaru, a native of Yorkshire, England, who not only draws little faces in her O’s but also puts long eyelashes on them. Her stint on the ships that would become the Love Boat began in 1974, when she was flown in to join the Island Princess in midcruise.

“They stopped the ship in the middle of the Panama Canal,” she remembers. “I didn’t know I’d have to climb a rope ladder, so I was wearing a dress. I wasn’t sure what was more important, my life or my vanity.” Through the years she has worked on many ships in the fleet, but none more often than the Pacific and Island Princesses, which she considers second homes.

“I was married and divorced aboard these ships, to the photographer,” she said, suggesting that “The Love Boat” may have been more realistic than its seemingly farfetched romantic plots led me to believe.

Casaru remembers fondly the celebrities she met aboard, among them Sophia Loren, June Allyson, Connie Francis and Vincent Price. Casaru loved the glamour of it all.

“Some sailings were advertised as ‘Love Boat filming cruises,’ ” she said. “They would commandeer a lounge, fill it with generators, spotlights and cameras. The extras would have to be in evening dress by 9:30 in the morning. They would film all day for a scene that might run just half a minute. It was an eye-opener for me, being a country bumpkin. Even on a bright day outside they would use all these floodlights.”

On our days at sea we rarely needed such artificial sun, but we could have used it in Bermuda, where we were beset by rain. Princess advertises its itinerary as their “Bermuda Triangle,” because it is the only company to call at all three of the island’s ports: St. George, Hamilton and West End, site of the Royal Naval Dockyards complex, with a maritime museum and an extensive shopping mall in beautifully restored stone buildings.

We entered St. George’s harbor through Town Cut, a strait so snug that we could see the whites of the costumed town crier’s eyes as he rang a bell and called out a welcome from Gates Fort, accompanied by the reports of twin cannons.

An impeccably picturesque town, St. George suffers only from a sense that it exists primarily to be visited by cruise passengers. Laurel and I took a strenuous but rewarding walk on the eastern end of the Railway Trail, a walking and cycling path maintained and well signed on much of the right-of-way of the star-crossed Bermuda Railway, which was opened in 1931 and abandoned only 18 years later.

In Hamilton we dodged raindrops to shop on Front Street, where the Pacific Princess shared berth space with Celebrity Cruises’ midsize Horizon. On Wednesday nights--when the ship overnights in Hamilton--Front Street is closed to traffic for Harbor Night. There’s usually music, and when we were there it was provided by English and Scottish regimental marching bands, stirring in sound and sight against a backdrop of the floodlighted cruise ships.

That night we chose to dine shoreside at Port o’ Call, a splendid restaurant with warm wood paneling, nautical decor and exceptional food prepared by a chef who had trained at Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill in New York City. We had a rich corn chowder and rum-laced fish broth; calamari and shrimp, deep-fried and wonderfully light; and soft-shell crabs.

We meant no disrespect to the meals aboard the Pacific Princess. The Coral Dining Room was a cheerful if mundane space, located low and central in the ship, where dining rooms almost universally were placed for stability three decades ago. We had assigned tables, without the option of the open-seating that prevails on the other Princess ships.

Dinners were consistently good, with my favorite coming on French night: escargots (snails), onion soup, duckling, hazelnut souffle.

Francesco Malfera, our madcap waiter, was one of a kind. A 20-year Pacific Princess veteran, he has clear memories of the “Love Boat” filming. “Excellent choice,” he would say, whatever we ordered. He capered, sang and would turn up sporting a mock Walkman, constructed of a napkin and a pair of coffee cups. But he was also a terrific waiter.

“Do you think we get served so promptly just because we’re near the kitchen,” asked Lori, a tablemate, “or because of Francesco’s stature there?” I was sure it was the latter.

If Francesco provided the impromptu entertainment, cruise director Nichol headlined in the three full-scale shows in the Carousel Lounge, the ship’s intimate performance space. After a dozen years as an on-board entertainer, he was last year appointed cruise director--a combination unique in the Princess fleet. Because the ship is so small, all entertainers double as cruise staff.

“I was a big fan of ‘The Love Boat’ as a kid in Liverpool [England],” Nichol said. “When I found myself aboard her, my head was in the clouds.” I expressed some skepticism about the TV show, which in 2002 seems more than a little contrived. But Nichol doesn’t see it that way.

“I know countless people who got married because of being on the ship,” he said. “And the nostalgia of this final season is incredible, with so many passengers coming back to cruise one more time on the Love Boat, bringing brochures and other memorabilia.”

I ended the voyage awash in melancholy, as I always do when I’m saying goodbye to a ship. Steaming up North River to disembark, I wondered how Casaru and Nichol would feel in October, or Capt. Rynd in July, when he turns over the Pacific Princess to Capt. Nick Carlton for the last time and heads for Australia and the Pacific Sky. Like me, I imagined: philosophical yet reverent.

“This ship has been everywhere,” Rynd told me, “from the North Cape of Norway to Cape Horn, from the Black Sea to the China Sea, from the South Pacific to the Mediterranean, and around Africa. It’s extraordinary what she’s seen--and what people have experienced aboard.”

Not a bad legacy--along with jump-starting an industry.

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Guidebook: Love Boat Cruise

Pacific Princess sailings: The ship will leave New York City for weekly “Bermuda Triangle” cruises every Sunday through Oct. 20. Fares vary. (800) PRINCESS (774-6237); www.princess.com. (Click on “Specials” to find the best buys.) On most fall sailings, outside cabins start at $648 per person (cruise only), including government fees.

On Oct. 27, the Pacific Princess will make its final sailing, a 16-night transatlantic journey from New York to Rome (Civitavecchia, Italy). Cruise-only fares, including fees, start at $1,599.

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Karl Zimmermann is a freelance writer in Norwood, N.J., whose shipboard experiences began five decades ago aboard the Ile de France.