Maiden Voyages

by Siân Evans

  Of course, married women and their babies were not the only people clamouring to cross the Atlantic in both directions. As soon as peace was restored, the depleted shipping companies tried to resume some regular services. Stewardess Maida Nixson was employed on the Plantano, sailing between Liverpool and Halifax. Her passengers heading west on the New Year voyage of 1946 were a mixture of war brides and infants, seasoned travellers and displaced European royalty. So pressured were the merchant shipping lines in the immediate aftermath of the war that passengers would take any available ship going from one continent to another, then continue their lengthy onward journey by plane or train. On this voyage there was a contingent of Gold Coast scholars who were going to the USA to study medicine, and were prepared to make a lengthy journey by ship from Africa to Britain, then cross the Atlantic to Canada, before heading overland to their ultimate destinations in American colleges. Next to them in the two suites and adjoining cabins were five members of the Greek royal family, with a nurse and valet, all of whom were heading for Florida, but forced to take a lengthy detour on a ship to Halifax in Nova Scotia. On embarkation, the exiled King of Greece was nearly swept away by a human tsunami of brides and babies surging up the alleyway and sustained a debilitating blow on the royal backside from a passing suitcase. The voyage was notably rough, and the ship arrived in port just in time to see the majestic Queen Elizabeth, pride of the Cunard fleet, sweeping out.

  Having left bitterly cold and heavily rationed Britain behind, Maida soon found that the QE’s crew had comprehensively stripped the Halifax shops of anything desirable, and the temperature plummeted so quickly that she was forced to undertake her on-board cleaning duties while wearing her two fox furs draped over her uniform.3 There was some consolation as the Plantano docked in New York, one of Maida’s favourite cities, and a complete contrast to the ports of war-torn Europe. ‘Those incredible buildings stood sharply out against the sparkling cobalt skies of Spring, and the air was crisp and fresh. And this time, I resolved, I would see and do all those interesting things I had left undone before, Central Park, Radio City, a conducted sight-seeing tour.’4

  American-born Lady Astor was desperate to get back to the States to see her family after six long years of war, but it was impossible to get a passage, even with her wealth and connections. The only tickets available at short notice were as passengers on a rather battered Fyffe’s banana boat, the Eros. It was a modest though sturdy cargo vessel, and a far cry from the Queen Mary, the Aquitania and Nancy’s other inter-war modes of transport during the golden age of travel. Impulsive and determined as ever, Nancy booked four tickets, for herself and her husband Waldorf, his valet (Arthur Bushell, whose impersonation of Queen Mary was famed throughout servants’ halls all over Britain) and Nancy’s stoical maid, Rose. It took fourteen days to reach New York from Tilbury instead of the usual week because of the terrible weather. The ship’s cook was a bucolic character who had been unenthusiastic at seeing the Temperance campaigner’s name on the passenger list, as Nancy was the MP who had attempted to abolish rum rations for all merchant seamen. However, so effective was her charm that the entire crew lined up to sing ‘For she’s a jolly good fellow’ as the Astors disembarked in New York, their first homecoming since the start of the war. Lord and Lady Astor stayed in the luxurious Ritz Carlton, a world away from grey and gritty Britain. Waldorf gave a lunch party for the crew of the Eros, which was a great success, and the grumpy chef asked Rose out on a date, which included energetic jiving fuelled by rum and Coca-Cola.

  After the end of the hostilities there were millions of people in the wrong place, and they wanted to get home. Others wanted to escape from the countries where they had found themselves when the war ended. Some were prisoners of war, and the great ocean-going ships were put into service to repatriate them. Most of them were men, but there were also women who had been captured during the war and needed repatriation. The author’s great-aunt, Margaret Rosina Evans, had been a nurse in Singapore before it fell to the Japanese in February 1942, and for more than three years she was held as a POW in the notorious Changi Jail. Her return voyage to Britain on a passenger ship that sailed via Colombo, Port Said and Gibraltar took more than a month. Margaret finally arrived in Southampton on 17 October 1945. After being interviewed by the immigration authorities, her immediate priorities were to be reunited with her family, have her hair permed and to visit the dentist to have a number of teeth extracted, a legacy of the mistreatment meted out to the camp internees by their captors.

  There were also would-be refugees on the move, Europeans who had suffered appallingly as a result of the international conflict, and some of them were now able to take ships to the New World and a new life. Captain Sorrell was put in charge of the Cunard ship Samaria, which sailed to pick up ‘displaced persons’ from Cuxhaven and Bremen, and convey them to Canada. He described how thin and bedraggled the passengers were as they embarked, and how the crew had been instructed to show them compassion and kindness. There were severe communication problems, and not only because of the language difficulties; one elderly woman lay in her bunk day after day and refused all food. The stewardess was mystified; her charge didn’t appear to be seasick, and the doctor could find nothing physically wrong with her. It transpired after several days that the woman was desperately hungry, but had been afraid to eat because she had no money to pay for the food. No one had been able to convince her that it was free.

  During the voyage Sorrell noted that some of the refugees were starting to recover, and putting on a little weight. Just before the ship docked, two of the passengers asked to see Captain Sorrell. ‘I invited them into my cabin and there they stood, proud and shabby, carrying a beautifully carved, colourfully designed wooden box. I was told that they had made it during the voyage. It was inscribed: “To Captain of Ship Samaria from Ukrainian emigrants, Oct 21st–Nov 1st 1948”. It was one of the most moving tributes I ever received.’5

  Following the war, Queen Mary was refitted for passenger service, and with the Queen Elizabeth Cunard resumed the two-ship transatlantic passenger service for which both ships had been built. Cunard had lost nine passenger ships as a result of the war. With the return of peace the company urgently needed to review its vessels and predict coming trends in travel. The Aquitania, the last of the pre-Great War liners to survive, and which had made 580 Atlantic crossings, was nearly forty years old, and so it was finally sent to the breakers in 1950. It was the only transatlantic liner to have served in both World Wars, carrying 120,000 troops in the first conflict and 300,000 in the second. Cunard had planned to retire the Aquitania in 1940, but wartime necessity saw it pressed into service once again. Having sailed 3 million miles and carried 1.2 million passengers, the ship was remembered fondly on both sides of the Atlantic:

  No ship in modern maritime history has had a more honorable and distinguished record. She was one of the queens of the transatlantic fleet. She was, in two wars, a troopship, a ferry for war brides, and finally a ship of hope for displaced persons. But to those in New York she was something else. She was a recurrent adornment to the waterfront skyline. Her famous four stacks were there after her sister ships disappeared. She was unmistakeable, dignified, proud, often sedate, always the great lady. Those who travelled on her know of her comfort; those who watched her know of her beauty. She was a great and a proud ship.6

  During the period of post-war austerity, there was considerable demand from Britons wanting to get abroad, especially after the unprecedentedly grim and lengthy winter of 1946–7. Violet Jessop had spent the war years working in a censorship office in Holborn, checking Spanish language post and news, a job that enabled her to care for her ailing mother until the elderly lady died in 1942. When the Royal Mail’s South America service resumed in 1948, Violet couldn’t resist signing on for two more years’ service as a stewardess on the Andes sailing between Britain and Brazil. She finally retired in 1950, aged sixty-three, and moved to rural Suffolk, having spent a total of forty
-two years of her life at sea, in which she had survived one collision, two sinkings and both World Wars.

  In October 1946 the newly refurbished Queen Elizabeth made her belated maiden voyage as a passenger liner, and she carried the first four women officers ever to serve in a ship of the British merchant navy. Each one of the four ‘lady assistant pursers’ (LAPs) had been a Wren during wartime; one of them, Phyllis Davies, had made twenty wartime trips in the Queen Elizabeth as cipher officer. LAPs were involved in the berthing of passengers, making sure they were happy with their cabins, and moving them if necessary. On board the Queens’, they also provided a travel bureau, and could make hotel bookings, or arrange rail tickets for all over the States and boat trains for London or Paris. In addition, they looked after passengers’ valuables in the safe deposits. As a reflection of their new officer status, the LAPs were allowed to watch films in the cinema and to dine in the passenger restaurant, and though they could choose from the first-class menu, they were not allowed lobster or caviar, and could only order smoked salmon once each voyage.

  Despite the grip of austerity on post-war Britain, those passenger vessels that had survived the war, such as the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, were once again linking Europe and North America on a weekly basis. They were particularly popular with royalty, millionaires and Hollywood stars. Though business was booming, passenger shipping was a competitive field, so international liner companies were keen to publicise any celebrities who favoured their ships over those of a rival.

  After the war, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor frequently travelled between France and the USA on the most luxurious ships, with a peripatetic court of hangers-on and international demi-mondaines. They had titles, but no official role, beyond being in the vanguard of the so-called ‘beautiful people’, as Elsa Maxwell termed them. Elsa had always been a great collector of royalty and celebrities, and she had first met the duke in 1922, when he was Prince of Wales. However, her first encounter with Wallis was in New York in the winter of 1946, soon after the Windsors had moved into a suite above Elsa’s in the Waldorf Astoria Tower Apartments. The couple had invited her for tea:

  I didn’t know what to make of this tiny, rather ordinary woman who had climbed from a middle-class home in Baltimore to the threshold of Buckingham Palace. She has assurance and poise; her clothes were perfect. But I could detect none of the strong physical attraction she obviously held for the duke. Yet I did sense a terrific drive in the duchess, a drive comparable to the vibration you feel constantly on an ocean liner. The source or the nature of the force that made the duchess tick intrigued me more than ever.7

  The Duke and Duchess of Windsor initially favoured Cunard ships. There is perhaps some irony that the man who refused to be king chose to travel on the dual flagships of the British merchant fleet. The first was named after his mother, Queen Mary, and the second after his sister-in-law, Queen Elizabeth. Neither woman ever forgave the duke, or Wallis, for the abdication. On the Queen Mary the Windsors regularly walked the ‘measured mile’ round the deck for exercise, accompanied by their pug. The duke frequented the bridge late at night to chat with the officers and smoke when Wallis was particularly snappy with him.

  There was a travel boom in the late 1940s, and Cunard benefited. The ocean liners were financially successful and contributed greatly to Britain’s balance of trade in the late 1940s and early 1950s, because they brought in foreign income, especially dollars. By 1949 tourist berths on the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth were booked up to a year in advance, and two months in advance for first class. Celebrity passengers flocked to travel the Atlantic and were much photographed, filmed and generally fêted by the shipping companies’ PR departments, who had a symbiotic relationship with the press and media on both sides of the ocean. Readers of movie star magazines liked to know about the international travels of their idols, and Hollywood studios were anxious to plant stories about their employees’ quirks and preferences, to promote forthcoming films. By the early 1950s Cunard had twelve liners in service to meet the demand. In high summer, on peak transatlantic sailings even the older ships such as Mauretania were packed to capacity. Of course, there were other shipping companies and competition was stiff, but there were some passengers who preferred to sail on specific ships and in their favourite cabins.

  The success of passenger travel also benefited numerous land-based service industries that supplied the great ships, and many women’s jobs ashore were dependent on the Atlantic Ferry. During the 1950s, whenever the Saxonia II docked in Liverpool between crossings, it unloaded 6,400 sheets, 8,500 table napkins and 16,000 towels to be washed in the giant laundries in the port. Housekeeping tended to be women’s work too; the Caronia II would put in for its annual refurbishment every winter, and vast quantities of linen had to be cleaned, mended or replaced, along with 10,000 curtains, bedspreads and carpets, 4,000 pillows and 1,300 mattresses.

  In post-war Britain rationing was gradually lifting but the age of austerity continued. The cities of Britain had been badly bombed, especially vital seaports such as the London Docks, Liverpool and Southampton. The workforce, particularly those who had served in the armed forces overseas, were keen to take jobs that allowed them to travel. Merchant navy jobs provided them with a decent income, and working on the big ships became even more attractive as a career option for young men and women. The opportunity to leave behind the bombsites and rubble, the poorly stocked shops, the dull and restricted food and the dismal British weather for the neon-lit, brilliantly coloured, smartly dressed and culturally vibrant cities of the USA and Canada had never seemed so appealing to the restless young. The fashions, style and music of the North American continent in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and the exuberant consumer culture on show there, were catnip to many British men and women. Commercial radio stations abounded in the States, playing popular music; in Britain the sole public broadcaster was BBC Radio, whose attitude to popular music was severely conservative. Television in the States was an everyday reality rather than an expensive novelty, with diverse channels competing to win consumers’ attention. Fashions were bright and appealing, with new synthetic fabrics and glorious colours, far from the mud-coloured tweeds and muted twin-sets worn by women of all ages back in Britain.

  Crew members working on the transatlantic ships spent their spare time exploring the port cities, going to the movies, dancing, shopping. They used their pay and their tips to buy records, clothes, magazines and illustrated comics, and they often took commissions from friends and family back home who were desperate for novelty, a new dress, nylon stockings and dance music. Back home, they were known locally as the Cunard Yanks – well-dressed, affluent and snappy dancers, they were part of the burgeoning youth culture, especially in Liverpool, a city always open to new ideas, and perennially ready for a party. Jazz and black music records found their way into clubs in Liverpool and London, permeating the music scene of the 1950s.

  With the return of peace and a period of stability and regrowth, there were more opportunities for women who wanted to work at sea. Former Wrens were demobbed, and their wartime service in support of the Royal Navy made them well-suited to life afloat in the merchant navy, as they had appropriate knowledge, as well as ‘people skills’. Some former Wrens sought jobs as stewardesses or cooks on ships. Fourteen of them joined the combined cargo and passenger ship La Cordillera, signing on for a five-month round-the-world trip. Significantly, their appointment sparked a special enquiry by the National Union of Seamen, to consider the employment of women instead of men aboard ships. The women were allowed to become union members, and each earned £20 a month.

  While sea transport remained the only viable way for passengers to cross the Atlantic during the late 1940s and early 1950s, it was apparent that air travel would eventually become a practical reality for those who needed to travel, and diversification was necessary for any shipping company determined to survive. One solution was the revival of leisure cruising. As cultural historian and ve
teran cruise-ship lecturer Paul Atterbury observed, ‘The ship itself was a destination.’8 For those who could afford a ‘holiday afloat’ the ship provided all the comforts of staying in a hotel while being conveyed to exciting places, ‘and you only have to unpack once!’. The cruise ship offered swimming pools, ships, bars, restaurants, games, exercise, relaxation, libraries, evening entertainments, unlimited food and drink, with a level of service now largely unknown on shore. There was generally a carnival atmosphere too, a sense of hedonism and unbridled fun. Leisure cruising could now be marketed as an escape, a holiday afloat, an end in itself.

  Of course, cruising as a holiday, let alone as a way of life, wasn’t for everyone. Writer and war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, an inveterate traveller, constantly impatient to get to her next destination, loathed even the idea of leisure cruising: ‘It bores me to even think of such a trip, not that I mind luxury and lashings of delicious food, and starting to drink at eleven o’clock with a glass of champagne to steady the stomach. But how about the organised jollity, the awful intimacy of tablemates, the endless walking round and round because you can’t walk anywhere else, the claustrophobia?’9

  In the 1950s for many cosmopolitan travellers the advent of long-distance commercial travel by air was revolutionary. The prospect of air travel between continents had intrigued the public for decades before it became a reality, and it particularly concerned those whose business was mass transport on a global scale. As early as summer 1914, the Aquitania’s on-board newspaper reported on Monsieur Blériot, the French pioneer of aviation, and his visit to his aeroplane factory at Brooklands in England. The same paper carried an interview with Count Zeppelin, describing his plans for airships that might cross the Atlantic. Both men predicted that an Atlantic crossing by some form of aircraft, whether by aeroplane or some sort of dirigible, was likely by mid-1915. But it wasn’t until after the Second World War, with the development of jet aircraft, which greatly improved the fuel efficiency of new aeroplanes, that the range of planes was expanded so as to make commercial transatlantic flight possible. New materials developed during the war years, such as aluminium, made possible the construction of lighter, larger aircraft, capable of carrying greater numbers of passengers. In 1953 the De Havilland Comet became the first commercial jet airliner, and within two years a number of airlines such as Pan American Airlines and Air France were ordering passenger jets, such as the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8. Long-distance travel was now a practical and affordable alternative to ocean voyages, and in 1957, for the first time, more people crossed the North Atlantic by air than by sea. As a means of long-distance transportation the great ships were finally – and fatally – overtaken by long-haul aircraft.