From a journey to a voyage, the birth of Ocean cruises. The French Lines and the transformation of the Sea as a touristic destination

Over a period of three quarters of a century, this paper aims at analysing a drastic change in the use of the Ocean: from a dreaded route to a cherished destination in itself. Tourism, a predominant social phenomenon of the 20th century, as well as leisure more generally, have transformed the human societies’ relationship with the Sea along with the economic activities of shipping companies.Thanks to unreleased archives, French shipping lines companies (mostly from Compagnie Générale Transatlantique and Messageries Maritimes) offer a relevant prism on these mutations and its different steps.A necessary but often feared passage until the end of the 19th century, travels on liners became, during the first two decades of the following century, a social marker and a source of prestige. After the era of great migrations, especially transatlantic ones, the elites culturally seized this means of transport. Liners Ile-de-France and Normandie were pertinent examples.The next stage was due to the combination of societal, economic and technical phenomena: development of mass tourism, mimicry between social classes, increased safety on board, cultural reconception of the sea, etc. It has transformed the view on the oceans and its use for leisure. After the 1940s, the liner, a means of transport supplanted by aviation, was no longer used to travel from point A to point B. It quickly became the destination itself: cruises were born.In less than a century, the ocean has changed, from the passengers’ point of view, from an uncertain place of transit to the very object of the presence on board. For decades, French companies were pioneers in more than one respect in this field; a page of history that could be illustrated from the liner France (1912), nicknamed “Versailles of the Seas”, symbol of a call to a new clientele, to the dashed hopes of France (1962) and its cruises around the world and ‘sea walks’ in the West Indies, before it became Norway in 1974