Escal'Atlantic

44600 Saint-Nazaire, France (Bretagne)

Escal'Atlantic, the Ocean Liner Experience

On the very spot where ocean liners used to moor alongside Saint-Nazaire’s quays, inside the former submarine base, Escal’Atlantic offers you a unique experience and the discovery of the world of legendary liners. More than 1.2 million visitors have already discovered this venue which is unique in Europe.

Interactive features and hands-on devices

The self-guided tour unfolds along more than 20 different display areas which literally take you “on board” an ocean liner: you wander through entrance hall, cabins, dining room, promenade deck, but are also allowed into forbidden areas, such as the engine room or steerage, for example. You discover, at your own pace, what life on board was like and how things worked in the hidden corners of the liners.

State-of-the-art interactive features, audiovisual displays and “hands-on” devices especially designed for families make the visitor’s experience a dynamic one. For example, the best way of understanding how things work between the engine room and the bridge is to take control and operate the engine room telegraph. A big touch-screen represents a meticulous cutaway drawing of the liner Ile-de-France, and gives you loads of information about those who travelled –and worked!- on the ship. An interactive game, in the hold, gives you an opportunity to run your own shipping company around 1900, and you’ll soon find out that this was a very complex business indeed: should you privilege safety or commercial aspects, risk sailing near the icebergs or play it safe and arrive late in the harbour? You’ll have to decide!
 

When the past joins the present

Escal’Atlantic is not only about life aboard legendary ships, it also deals with other themes linked to ocean liners, such as their history and economic aspects. Did you realize that the first “world-wide web” of regular transcontinental transport or mass emigration in the 19th and early 20th century from Europe to the Americas, could never have existed without steam-driven ocean liners, regularly sailing from one continent to the other?

Its location inside Saint-Nazaire’s former submarine base is a reminder of Saint-Nazaire’s past: from 1862 up to the eve of World War 2, Saint-Nazaire had been a transatlantic harbour, with liners sailing to and from Mexico, Cuba, Panama, passengers and merchandise transiting trough Saint-Nazaire. But in 1941, the docks and maritime buildings were buried underneath the gigantic submarine bunker, built by the German army. Escal’Atlantic brought the world of ocean liners back to the very spot where transatlantic vessels used to moor for several decades. Today’s visitors return to where yesterday’s travellers would embark or disembark…
 

Original objects tell the story

Another striking feature of the “new” Escal’Atlantic is the presence of 200 ocean liner artefacts, stemming from various liners built in Saint-Nazaire between the early 1900’s and the 1960’s. While these original objects –furniture, tableware, decorative objects, luggage and other accessories- undoubtedly have artistic and/or decorative value, they are also and above all witnesses to the age of ocean travel, linking the myth of liners to the reality of intercontinental travelling.

All these objects and artefacts are part of the outstanding collection reunited by the City of Saint-Nazaire over the last 20 years or so.

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