SHE was once the epitome of French chic and elegance - but now the grande dame of the sea is a sad shadow of the days when she was a regular sight in Southampton.

Once, the great knife-edge bow of SS France sliced through the Atlantic on her express service between Southampton and New York.

Today she is ponderously under tow as she sails towards an uncertain future.

During her time when she called at Southampton, between 1962 and 1974, she was everything a great liner should be, with stylish surroundings and sumptuous public rooms.

Her restaurants served the best of French cuisine and her passenger list was sprinkled with names of the rich and the famous.

She was taken out of service in the 1970s and, after a long lay-up, was transformed into the cruise ship SS Norway for a highly successful career in the Caribbean.

However, disaster struck in May 2003 when an explosion ripped through her boiler room in Miami.

Eventually she limped across the Atlantic to a shipyard in Bremerhaven, Germany, to await her fate.

Recently, this once beautiful liner left the yard, ignominiously towed by a Chinese tug, and slowly headed for the Far East via the Cape of Good Hope, with 40 crew members on board.

Her departure was an echo of history as, on her way out, there was a meeting of the old and new, much as when the brand new SS France passed the soon-to-be scrapped Liberte in 1961.

This time, the role of dowager was given to the former France and the role of newcomer was the brand new Pride of America cruise ship, making her way back into the yard after sea trials.

Officially, SS Norway is going to Singapore, where she is to be refitted as a floating casino and hotel ship as part of an amusement resort on the island. If the licences are not obtained, there is a possibility she will undertake slow-speed betting cruises using her remaining undamaged boilers.

However, some shipping enthusiasts are concerned the possibility may exist that Norway will be diverted during the voyage to a breaker's yard in Bangladesh.