In 2011 the previous mail contract from the French state for South American routes was in the hands of Messageries Maritimes. It was awarded instead to Compagnie de Navigation Sud-Atlantique. As a precondition for the contract and to ensure that sufficient ships were in service to provide a reliable mail service, the company was required to build four 18-knot passenger liners with a minimum length of 175 metres and provide six paquebots mixtes. This would maintain a fortnightly mail service between Bordeaux and Buenos Aires. However these arrangements were not confirmed by the French Parliament until 31 December 1911. Orders were placed, the day after parliamentary approval was achieved, with the Chantiers de l'Atlantique at St. Nazaire for the SS Lutetia and with Forges & Chantiers de la Mediterranee at La Seyne for a similar ship, the SS Gallia, both to be delivered in 1913. The third ship was the Massilia, also to be built at La Seyne and launched in 1914, but not completed until 1920 due to the First World War. As the Massilia was completed later it had a more modern 1920s decor than its running mates, which were very pre-War in their fittings.
Career
The ship was utilised through its career as a running mate with the Lutetia on the route Bordeaux/Vigo/Lisbon/Rio de Janeiro/Santos/Montevideo/Buenos Aires. In 1927 the ship was converted from coal-burning to oil-burning. In April 1940 the ship participated as a troop transport in the Norway campaign.
Notable voyages
In 1922, Marcelo T. de Alvear, then the Argentine ambassador in France was summoned back to assume the Presidency and returned on the Massilia. The ship gained notoriety in 1928 due to its connection with the murder of Maria Féa. In this case the Italian husband strangled his wife and then despatched her body back to France in a trunk on board the Massilia. However the trunk was damaged at Santos and the body discovered. This case caused a sensation in Brazil and was called the :pt:Crime da mala |Trunk Crime. The Massilia might be called "the ship of exile" in its latter days. In 1939, on its voyage from La Rochelle, leaving 19 October 1939 arriving Buenos Aires the 5th of November 1939, the ship was painted camouflage grey to dodge German submarines which were already on the prowl. It carried on board 384 passengers fleeing Europe, of which the largest contingent were Spanish republicans who had previously taken refuge in France. The group included many artists, journalists, writers, academics and theatre figures. Amongst those on board were the writer/playwright/copyist Salvador Valverde; the journalist/writer/editor Arturo Cuadrado Moure; the lawyer/author José Ruiz del Toro; the ex-parliamentarian of the Izquierda Republicana Elpidio Villaverde; the painter/set-designer Gregorio Muñoz Montoro; the author Elena Fortún and her husband - the painter and military officerEusebio de Gorbea; the lawyer/legislator Pedro Coromines Muntanya; the sculptor Alberto López Barral; the academic Wenceslao Roces; the painter/set-designer/ceramicist Manuel Ángeles Ortiz; the academic Ramón Martínez López; the graphic artists Andrés Dameson and Mauro Cristobal Artache; the painters Ramón Hidalgo Pontones and Esteban Francés Cabrera; the film directorLuis de la Fuente; the playwrights Manuel Desco Sanz and Pascual Guillén; the journalists Antonio Salgado y Salgado, Clemente Cimorra, Mariano Perla, and Miguel A. Carreta; the engineer José Arbex Pomareta; the military pilot Juan Aboal Aboal; the film-maker José Fernández Cañizares; the actors Severino Mejuto and Ángel Giménez; the actress Maricarmen García Antón; the medical doctors Manuel Conde López and Miguel Cadenas Rubio; and the professor Carmen Santaolalla. On its return voyage, leaving Buenos Aires in mid-November 1939, it was carrying French reservists from Argentina back to France. The British warship, the Ajax, escorted the Massilia at the start of the journey to protect it from German raiders. It also played a starring role in June 1940, carrying a large number of prominent politicians, including 27 of the Vichy 80, fleeing France to North Africa after the surrender of the country to the Nazi invaders and the assumption of the Vichy government. Amongst the group were Édouard Daladier and Pierre Mendès France.
Fate
The ship served as a troop transport between North Africa and France for the Vichy Regime. It then became a naval school for Chargeurs Reunis moored in the Berre Lagoon and then as a floating hotel for German troops in Marseille. As the strategic position of the German occupiers deteriorated the ship was scuttled by the Germans on the 21st of August 1944 to block the entrance to the port. It was then scrapped after the war.
