SS America - Exploring the Alferdoss

In September 1979, the SS America (by then called the Italis) was laid up in Eleusis Bay near Piraeus in Greece where she would remain for many years.

She was taken out of service due to old age and economic reasons, by then she was just too old and uneconomical to continue sailing as well as serving as a passenger ship and carry passengers.

Whilst laid up she was sold and renamed twice, first in 1980 to Intercommerce Corporation who renamed her Noga and then in 1984 to Silver Moon Ferries who renamed her Alferdoss which meant "paradise" in Arabic.

However, she had nothing in common with her new name as that she was very badly neglected and was also found to be quite dangerous due to her age and state of neglect, in the late 1980s she almost sank because of a weak bilge pump and had to be beached in order to prevent her from sinking.

Her owners soon had no choice but to ultimately sell her for scrap, but only the lifeboats and their davits were dismantled as that the scrap dealer couldn't pay for the rest of the work to be done and had to return the ship to her owners.

By the early 90s and half a century since her completion in 1940, the former America was still afloat and was by then one of the last great ocean liners from the classic era still around, but her future seemed to be very bleak and it wouldn't be too long for her to finally be finished with once and for all.

This extraordinary footage taken from the French documentary Vie et Mort de l'America shows that despite her sad and neglected appearance, she was like a time capsule from the 1940s with much of her originality still in place and in an imaginative way allows one to go back in time and relive the experience of being on board the ship that was once the SS America.