Measuring 583ft in length, the Asama Maru was designed to accommodate 833 passengers 222 of those in first-class cabins and 330 crew.Īlthough registering a modest 17,000 gross tons, the Asama Maru was the largest motor-boat ever built in Japan.

She was delivered to her owners on 7 th October 1929 at a total construction cost of $6 million dollars. The ship was laid down on 10 th September 1927 at the Mitsubishi shipyard in Nagasaki, being launched a little over a year later on 30 th October 1928. NYK, which was headquartered in Yokohama, dominated trade between Japanese home ports and its exterior provinces, and also transhipped freight and passengers throughout the Pacific region, in competition with imperial British and American lines. The Asama Maru was the first of three modern passenger liners constructed for the Japanese shipping line Nippon Yusen Kaisha (Japan Mail Shipping) in an effort to increase its share of the high-end transpacific passenger trade. One of the forgotten ‘floating palaces’ from the golden age of transoceanic travel, the Asama Maru was to have as dramatic and eventful a career as any one of her more illustrious counterparts in the West. One might be surprised, however, to learn that the ship Mary and Doug travelled on was not an American vessel, but a Japanese one, the MS Asama Maru.

Predictably, when the world’s most famous movie couple, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks embarked on the final leg of their latest round-the-world tour at the end of 1929, a trip that had included calls at Europe, Africa and the Far East, they chose the most modern passenger liner in the world to convey them homewards across the Pacific.

Virtual sailor 7 asama maru