SS Lutetia

In 2011 the previous mail contract from the French state for South American routes was in the hands of Messageries Maritimes. It was awarded instead to Compagnie de Navigation Sud-Atlantique. As a precondition for the contract and to ensure that sufficient ships were in service to provide a reliable mail service, the company was required to build four 18-knot passenger liners with a minimum length of 175 metres and provide six paquebots mixtes (passenger freighters). This would maintain a fortnightly mail service between Bordeaux and Buenos Aires. However these arrangements were not confirmed by the French Parliament until 31 December 1911.

Orders were placed, the day after parliamentary approval was achieved, with the Chantiers de l'Atlantique at St. Nazaire for the SS Lutetia (14,700 tons) and with Forges & Chantiers de la Mediterranee at La Seyne for a similar ship, the SS Gallia,[2] both to be delivered in 1913. The third ship was the SS Massilia, also to be built at La Seyne and launched in 1914, but not completed until 1920.[3]

In 1914, with the onset of the First World War, the ship was converted to act as a troopship for US forces in the Transport Force Newport News Division. In 1915 it became an armed merchant cruiser, later a hospital ship and again as troopship in 1916 transporting Russian troops to Salonika. In 1919/20 it was refitted and in 1920 returned to service.

The ship was utilised from 1920 as a running mate with the Massilia on the route Bordeaux/Vigo/Lisbon/Rio de Janeiro/Santos/Montevideo/Buenos Aires.

The career of the Lutetia was rather uneventful, except for an incident on the 7th of December 1922 when it collided with a submerged wreck in the Gironde estuary and needed to be dry-docked for repairs.

In 1927 the ship was converted from coal-burning to oil-burning.[4]

It made a total of 61 voyages to Buenos Aires between 1913 and 1931.[5]

In 1931, with the advent of the SS L'Atlantique the Lutetia was laid up and scrapped in England in 1938.[4]

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  Lutetia Pre-WW1
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  In the port of Bordeaux
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  Advertisement Pre-WW1
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  Poster
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  Lutetia - Postcard
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  Poster for the Compagnie Sud-Atlantique
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  Dining Room
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  In drydock in Southampton

• Great Passenger Ships of the World. Volumes 1 to 6. Kludas, Arnold, Published by Cambridge: Patrick Stephens -1987 (1977), ISBN 0850592658