Rotterdam (VI) Active

There are names in shipping that carry the weight of the whole fleet behind them, and Rotterdam is Holland America's most freighted name of all. Five ships before her bore it. The first Rotterdam was a 1,700-ton steamship that made the founding crossing to New York in 1872. The fifth Rotterdam, built in 1959, now sits as a museum hotel on the Maas — La Grande Dame, the last of the great transatlantic liners before the jets came.

Rotterdam VI entered service in September 1997 wearing the name as a responsibility rather than a decoration. At 61,849 gross tons, she was built with dark teak paneling, antique maps of the Dutch colonial world, oil paintings of historical vessels, and a Crow's Nest observation lounge that ran the full width of the bow. She was deliberately, consciously traditional in an era when every competitor was building ships that looked like shopping malls. Holland America had decided to be different, and she was the proof.

She sailed for twenty-three years. Bermuda in spring. Alaska in summer. The Caribbean all winter. Repositionings across the Atlantic twice a year, carrying the passengers who understood what an ocean crossing was for. Through the whole of it, the promenade deck went all the way around. Formal dinner was still a thing. The Ocean Bar still felt like a proper cocktail lounge.

Holland America sold her to Fred. Olsen in 2020. She became the Borealis and went north toward the fjords. She is still working. The sixth Rotterdam gave twenty-three good years, and then she gave the name back to the line that will carry it into whatever comes next.

— In the Wake editorial

We booked the transatlantic in April 2019 because my father kept saying we ought to cross the Atlantic by ship before we were too old to enjoy it properly. He was eighty-one that year. I was fifty-seven.

Rotterdam VI departed Southampton on a Tuesday morning in late September. My father and I stood at the stern rail and watched England disappear into the haze while other passengers settled into deck chairs with books. Seven nights, no ports, nothing between us and Fort Lauderdale but the open North Atlantic. We had not planned adequately for sea days. I had one novel. He had his reading glasses and a crossword book and what turned out to be an exceptional capacity for just sitting still and watching the water.

By day three we had a routine. Breakfast at eight, a walk on the promenade deck, the morning lecture in the main theater, lunch, an hour in his cabin while he rested, the Crow's Nest for tea at three, dinner at seven, and whatever was on after. By day four we knew our dining steward by name and had an understanding with the couple from Oregon who sat at the table beside us. The days were long and unhurried. I read the novel slowly to make it last.

He died in January 2021, sixteen months later. When I cleared out his desk I found the daily program from day five — the one listing the formal dinner menu and the miles remaining to port: 2,847. He had written on the back in his careful script: Not bad for an old man. Not bad at all.

— Thomas K.