By Patrick Jackson
BBC NewsShip-lovers and ecologists are battling to prevent the scrapping of a former French ocean liner in India. We look back at the (slightly surreal) glory days of the SS France.
If the ghost of Salvador Dali appears off the coast of Gujarat, he may well be on the deck of the SS France, walking his pet cheetahs.
A phantom guitar chord may hang in the air, left behind by David Bowie the day he played the staff canteen.
Or maybe a stray note of wedding music? This is the ship that "bore away thousands of lovers", in the words of French singer Michel Sardou.
See the ship's scale
Jean Coune remembers another sound: the smack of a champagne bottle smashing against the hull on a fine May day in 1960 to launch the new liner in Saint-Nazaire.
It was released by Madame de Gaulle, accompanying the French president who was "as ever, on form and delivered a forceful speech" to tens of thousands of onlookers, Mr Coune says.
Jean Coune knows a thing or two about the hull: at 83, he is the last survivor from among the engineers who built it.
Saint-Nazaire threw a party that day, adds former shipbuilder Jacques Lheritier, who still remembers the dance in the town square.
Dancing resumed on-board in January 1962 when the luxury liner made its maiden voyage, and it continued for some 13 years as the France crossed the Atlantic between Le Havre and New York.
During those years it saw many weddings, as well as hosting famous passengers preferring the majestic five-day Atlantic crossing to a plane trip.
Ocean oddity
It was quite a time, recalls Bruno Rabreau, who as a receptionist in the 1970s had dealings with Dali and his entourage including his formidable wife Gala, his friend Captain Moore - and the cheetahs, of course.
The first time Gala came to book a phone call, he remembers thinking she looked very plainly dressed, and he found it hard to believe the "old maid" was the spouse of the great surrealist artist.
"She told my chief that I was not very pleasant, then she came back and gave me five dollars and said 'I will tame you'," he says. "That's when I knew she was Madame Dali!"
Luckily for the ship, the cheetahs appear to have been tamed in advance, as Bruno recalls:
"They took those two big beasts for a walk around the ship and on the outside desks too - it was not a real panic but almost!"
Dali, as far as Bruno remembers, did not do any painting on his trips aboard the SS France but not only did David Bowie perform - he played for the crew.
Travelling as a first-class passenger, the rock star was not scheduled to play aboard the France but apparently had heard the crew were disappointed, so he turned up in the canteen with an acoustic guitar.
"We enjoyed more than 10 songs and especially Space Oddity which was the first one, and a few crew members took instruments too and played with him," Bruno says.
"It was a really, really good time. He was a very ordinary person and very friendly to us. We really enjoyed it."
'A corpse for cormorants'
In recent years, crew and passengers alike have been remembering the SS France on a French web site, Souvenirs de France, which teems with postings as poignant as they are affectionate.
Alain Rochas, also a receptionist on Le France, writes: "Oh, the strongbox room before Dinner! How many beautiful women would come for their jewels; when you are 20 years old..."
Back in 1975 there was already nostalgia for the liner, which had just been decommissioned and was in port at the quai d'oubli (the Quay of the Forgotten) at Le Havre.
Sardou's Le France touched a nerve in France as he sang: "I was a giant of a boat, I bore away thousands of lovers. I was France itself and now what remains? A corpse for the cormorants."
Four years later, the liner returned to service as the SS Norway and ended up cruising off Miami, where a boiler room explosion in 2003 killed eight crewmen, a tragedy which effectively ended its service at sea.
Now renamed the SS Blue Lady, it is the subject of a preservation battle. If the breakers do not win out, there is a proposal to convert it into a floating hotel off a Gulf State. The hull is said to be still in excellent condition.
Campaigners in the France Liner Association want to see it moored in its "its birthplace Saint-Nazaire for a third lease of life", where it could be used as a museum and conference centre.
"The SS France is part of France's heritage," says Jean Philippe Prieur, its spokesman.
"For a French person, scrapping le France is like dismantling the Tower of London for a Briton."