Paula Marantz Cohen traces the origins of the modern cruise ship to the widespread idealism of the 1950s and ’60s:
UNESCO recognized Esperanto, the universal language developed in the late 19th century, as a
legitimate language in 1954. The United Nations, founded in 1945, reached the high point of its popularity — its seeming promise — in the late 1950s and ‘60s. I was in grade school in the 1960s and my teachers spoke about the UN and Esperanto in reverential tones. Despite the Cold War — or because of it — people truly believed that the world could be changed, unified under one flag or many. Everyone was serious about the “global village”(the term coined by Marshall McLuhan in 1962).
The modern cruise industry was born during this period and, in its earliest form, had an explicit affinity with this sort of idealism. The first cruise entrepreneurs, Tod Arison and Knut Kloster, founded the Norwegian Cruise Lines in 1966, and they originally conceived of their cruise ships as floating embassies. Passengers would visit remote locales in order to learn more about other cultures and peoples; they would promote world peace. The concept fit well with the One-World Movement, the United Nations, Esperanto, and the many sociological and anthropological projects that were circulating at the same time.
The Dish 