END OF A CRUISE

An hour before this picture was taken, the confetti-speckled, 9,644-ton liner Excalibur, carrying 114 vacationers and 130 crewmen, steamed down New York Harbor, bound for a leisurely cruise to Marseille, Naples, Alexandria, Beirut, Piraeus, Leghorn and Genoa. Thirty-five minutes after leaving her Jersey City dock, the Excalibur collided with the Danish cargo ship Colombia in the Narrows below Manhattan. The liner, gashed from its deck to below the water line, was ignominiously tugged to the mud flats off Brooklyn, and its unhappy passengers wound up (via harbor tug) back in Jersey City. The Colombia got its bow bashed in, and fire broke out in its paint locker. Nobody was seriously hurt, but an investigation was started to find out how such a daylight collision could have come about. One theory: faulty steering apparatus on the freighter Columbia.

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