Olivier Mendez

Olivier Mendez is a French maritime historian whose work focuses on the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT) — the legendary French shipping company — and in particular on its crowning achievement, the SS Normandie. Based in Paris, he brings a distinctly French perspective to the history of transatlantic travel, drawing on French-language archives and sources that are often inaccessible to English-speaking researchers.

His expertise on Normandie — the most celebrated ocean liner of the Art Deco era — encompasses the ship's design history, her revolutionary interiors, her record-breaking voyages, and her tragic wartime loss in New York Harbor in 1942. Mendez has authored several works on CGT and its fleet, contributing to a fuller understanding of French maritime achievement in the golden age of ocean travel.

As an HSN partner since 2011, Mendez has helped ensure that the French chapter of ocean liner history receives the scholarly attention it deserves — bringing the stories of Normandie, SS France, SS Île de France, and their fleetmates to the Network's global audience.