Maiden Voyages
Page 30
A jaunt on the Jurassic,
And the doctors one might well decoy
With the Clinic or Boracic;
All politicians outward bound
Would sail by the Polemic,
And the professorial folk be found
Aboard the Academic.
The chemist’s tip would be, wait for the ship
That bears the name Synthetic.
The maid of today would sail away
On the Lipstic(k) or Cosmetic;
SS Hydraulic Drys* might find
Sufficiently symbolic,
While the Wets,* of course, would remain behind
And wait for the Alcoholic.
(White Star Line Magazine, June 1927, reproduced from the Manchester Guardian)
Cunard’s 1914 poster showing a cross-section through the Aquitania. The elite on the upper decks occupied luxurious staterooms. Second-class cabins below were compact but comfortable. Down near the waterline, third-class passengers slept in bunks and ate in functional dining rooms.
The Steerage by Alfred Stieglitz, 1907. Before the First World War, the poorest European migrants destined for America often travelled on ships notorious for their crowded and squalid lower decks.
Violet Jessop, ‘The Unsinkable Stewardess’, retrained as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse for the British Red Cross during the First World War. Surviving three maritime disasters, she worked at sea for more than four decades.
Marie Riffelmacher was fifteen years old in 1923, when she and two brothers emigrated from Hamburg to America, escaping the economic chaos of post-war Germany. The siblings’ wages enabled other family members to join them in the New World.
Arthur Davis, co-architect of the London Ritz Hotel, designed the first-class lounge on the Aquitania in a similar style, recalling aristocratic country houses. The luxurious ship was dubbed the Ritzonia.
Refreshments were served on the open deck of the Aquitania when the weather allowed. Nervous passengers preferred not to dwell on the horrors of the Titanic disaster of 1912, but ample lifeboats were carried on the deck above.
Staunch Atlanticist Lady Astor sailed to New York on the Olympic in 1922. ‘Gangplank Willies’, reporters, photographers and newsreel cameramen surrounded her before she could disembark.
Hilda James, ‘The English Comet’, was an Olympic Silver Medal winner and sporting celebrity from Liverpool, who became a professional swimming coach on Cunard liners.
Swimming became popular in the 1920s and 30s due to an increased interest in health and exercise. Chic swimwear for fashionable women was now essential, and the first-class pool on the glamorous French ship, the Normandie, daringly allowed mixed bathing.
Formal evening dress was de rigeur for first-class transatlantic passengers, and well-heeled women travelled with different costumes for dinner and dancing every night, knowing they would be in the public eye.
Between the wars, organized deck games were a popular way of passing the voyage, and the prospect of winning prizes in front of an admiring crowd often brought out competitive instincts among female passengers.
Edith Sowerbutts, on the deck of the Zeeland in 1925, wearing the uniform she assembled for the new post of conductress.
Victoria Drummond MBE, Britain’s first female seagoing marine engineer, pictured with anti-aircraft guns on HMS Chrysanthemum in March 1942.
Actress Tallulah Bankhead, and one of her many pet Pekinese, on her return voyage to New York in 1931 after eight years spent scandalising London society.
Josephine Baker from St Louis became famous in France for her extraordinary talent as a dancer and singer. Her dazzling stage and film performances captured the Zeitgeist of the interwar era.
Elsa Maxwell, self-taught party planner and impresario, followed the restless migratory habits of the international wealthy elite and established herself as their quintessential social ‘fixer’ on both sides of the Atlantic.
Scottish teenager Mary Anne MacLeod left her home on the Isle of Lewis to sail from Glasgow to New York on the Transylvania in 1930. She had high hopes and $50 in her purse, and was seeking work as a domestic servant.
Popular entertainers were in great demand in the 1920s and 30s. Internationally renowned brother- and-sister dance act, Adele and Fred Astaire, frequently travelled on the ‘Atlantic Ferry’ for theatrical engagements in Britain and America.
Thelma Furness’s affair with the Prince of Wales ended abruptly when he learned of her whirlwind romance with international playboy Aly Khan on board the Normandie.
Pampered passengers could spend their afternoons afloat in reclining teak steamer-chairs on deck, breathing in the invigor- ating ozone, with a cosy rug over the knees, while attentive deck stewards hovered with trayfuls of tea and cakes.
A Cunard White Star poster for the Queen Mary, 1936. The new flagship was designed to dwarf all other contenders on the lucrative and prestigious transatlantic route.
The first-class dining room of the Queen Mary could accommodate 800 passengers in a single sitting. The stylised wall map of the North Atlantic featured an illuminated crystal model of the ship, which moved every day to show the vessel’s progress across the ocean.
The cabin observation lounge and cocktail bar of the Queen Mary was semi-circular in shape and had a curved zinc bar, with red and chrome uplighters. It was the most overtly Art Deco public room on board, and a popular spot for aperitifs and digestifs.
Two women passengers in a cabin on the Queen Mary. Cunard’s promotional material claimed that the rooms would ‘convey the atmosphere of restfulness and comfort associated with the most dignified British country homes.’
The Queen Mary’s maiden voyage to New York, in 1936, culminated in a rapturous welcome from a flotilla of other vessels. The quayside was packed with cheering well-wishers, aeroplanes flew overhead in salute, and fire hoses played over the Hudson River, casting rainbows in the sunshine with their arcs of spray.
Marlene Dietrich appreciated the value of good publicity, and willingly posed for press photographers when travelling on ocean liners, following the advice of her friend Noël Coward: ‘Always be seen, dear, always be seen.’
Austrian-born Hedwig Kiesler embarked on the Normandie in 1937, determined to persuade a fellow passenger, the Hollywood magnate Louis B. Mayer, that she had star quality. She arrived in New York a week later as MGM’s latest signing, renamed Hedy Lamarr.
Maida Nixson reluctantly went to sea as a stewardess in 1937, and defied wartime torpedoes to escort evacuees to safety around the globe.
The War magazine reported the sinking of the British ship, The City of Benares, in 1940. Public outrage was so great that the transatlantic evacuation of children was abandoned.
Martha Gellhorn, inveterate war correspondent, was so determined to cover the D-Day landings in 1944 that she stowed away on board a hospital ship.
GI brides and their babies on the gangplank of the SS Argentina in Southampton in 1946. Operation Diaper Run reunited newly married British-born wives with their husbands in America.
Acknowledgements
So many people were very helpful in the research for this book, pooling their knowledge and offering valuable support. I would particularly like to thank the Special Collections staff at the University of Liverpool, who look after the Cunard Archives; they were great sources of advice and expertise, especially Robyn Orr, Siân Wilks and Elizabeth Williams. Roddy Murray, Founding Director of An Lanntair in Stornoway was very generous with his knowledge, and I am similarly indebted to the patience and expertise of many staff in the archives section of the Imperial War Museum, the reading rooms of the British Library, and those who maintain the Women’s Library at the London School of Economics.
Lisa Highton, Kate Craigie and Katherine Burdon at Two Roads deserve to be thanked for their vision and their patience, along with Diane Banks, Martin Redfern, Charles Spicer, and Morag Lyall. Grateful thanks are due to my family, especially Sarah Evans, David Meurig Evans and Martin Roberts. Friends who
provided insights, leads and general encouragement are too numerous to mention, but special thanks are due to Jacq Barber, Mike Calnan, Lauren Taylor, Harvey Edgington, Sarah Payne and Sarah Holloway. Steve Price and Mark Fifield provided much practical help and information, while Phillip Arnold and Philip Baldwin were amusingly informative about the culture and protocols of life on board cruise ships. Thank you all.
Picture Credits
Alamy Stock Photo: here,here above, here, here above, here below, here above left and centre, here above and below, here, here above, here above, here. Bridgeman Images: here below/photo © Tallandier. Crown Copyright/Public Domain: here centre right. Getty Images: here above, here above, here below, here above left and centre, here below. Imperial War Museum London: here above (Private Papers of Miss E.F.M. Sowerbutts. Catalogue: Documents 107), here below (A 7842a), here above (NA 11895). Library of Congress: here below (LC-B2-5708-7 P&P), here below (LC-B2-5950-11 P&P). Mirrorpix: here above. Ring Twice for the Stewardess, Maida M Nixson, John Long Ltd (London), 1954: here below left. Shutterstock.com: here below left/AP, here below/Underwood Archives. By courtesy of The University of Liverpool Library, Cunard Archive: here below left (D.785/3). Captain Stephen Gronow: v (D42/PR2/2/47/2).
Notes
Prologue
1. P.G. Wodehouse, The Girl on the Boat, George H. Doran 1922.
Introduction
1. Charles Dickens, American Notes, 1842.
2. Ibid.
3. The Times, 24 August 1859.
4. Mrs H. Coleman Davidson, What Our Daughters Can Do for Themselves: A Handbook of Women’s Employments, Smith, Elder, 1894, pp. 269–70.
5. ‘The Economic and Social Value of Immigrant Women’, Atlantic Monthly, September 1907.
Chapter 1: Floating Palaces and the ‘Unsinkable’ Violet Jessop
1. Violet Jessop, Titanic Survivor, ed. John Maxtone-Graham, Chapman & Hall 1998, p.49.
2. Ibid., p. 58.
3. Joseph Ismay, United States Senate Inquiry: Day 1 [Transcript]. Retrieved from https://www.titanicinquiry.org/ (original interview held April 19, 1912).
4. Osbert Sitwell, Great Morning, 1948, Macmillan, London p. 259.
5. Anon., The Great Cunarder RMS Aquitania, 1914.
6. Arthur Davis, RIBA interview, 1922, reproduced in Gérard Piouffre, First Class, p. 118.
Chapter 2: From the Ritz to the Armistice
1. Violet Jessop, (ed.) John Maxtone-Graham, Titanic Survivor, p. 190.
2. Country Life, 15 May 1915, p. 649.
3. Typewritten letter from Cunard Chairman A. A. Booth to Charles P. Sumner, 8 May 1915. Cunard Archives, University of Liverpool SCA.
4. Henry Eaves Papers, ‘The Cunard Steam Ship Co. Ltd, 1840-1930’, unpublished manuscript in the Cunard Archives, University of Liverpool SCA, p. 32.
5. Quoted in John P. Eaton and Charles A. Haas Ltd., Falling Star: Misadventures of White Star Line Ships. p. 177.
6. Daily Graphic, 18 June 1918.
7. Jessop, op.cit. p. 228.
8. ‘Our Ladies Corner’, Cunard Line, November 1918, p. 19.
Chapter 3: Sail Away: Post-war Migration and the Escape from Poverty
1. ‘Mothers of the Sea’, Cunard Line, April 1921, p. 134.
2. Cunard Line, November 1919, p. 29.
3. ‘Have an Ambition’, Cunard Line, August 1920, p. 82.
4. Cunard Archives, Liverpool. Accessed 19 February 2018. D.785/1 – ‘Emigrations on Tyrrhenia and Laconia’: Typewritten account of the early years of Marie Riffelmacher/Ruffelmacher, written up by her granddaughter Kathleen Stroemer Czuba.
5. Frederick A. Wallis. What about the Immigrant? The Rotarian, 1921, p. 249.
Chapter 4: The Roaring Twenties
1. Charles T. Spedding, Reminiscences of Transatlantic Travellers, T. Fisher Unwin, 1926, p. 169.
2. Basil Woon, The Frantic Atlantic: An Intimate Guide to the Well-Known Deep, Alfred A. Knopf, 1927, p. 199.
3. Violet Jessop, Titanic Survivor, p. 226.
4. Gina Kaus, Luxury Liner, Cassell, p. 210.
5. Alfred Duff Cooper, Old Men Forget: The Autobiography of Duff Cooper, Rupert Hart-Davis, p.120.
6. Christopher Sykes, Nancy: The Life of Lady Astor, Panther Books, 1979, p. 280.
7. Spedding, op.cit., p. 269.
8. Jessop, op.cit., p. 229.
9. S.E. Lasher, ‘Travel Fashions seen in the Shops’, Cunarder, May 1921, p. 43.
10. Doris Estcourt, ‘Homeward Bound’, White Star Magazine, July 1926, p. 308.
11. Humphrey Carpenter, Robert Runcie, Hodder & Stoughton, 1977, p. 55.
12. White Star Magazine, July 1930, p. 379.
Chapter 5: Edith and Her Contemporaries
1. Edith Sowerbutts, Memoirs of a British Seaman, unpublished manuscript, IWM, p. 78.
2. Ibid., p. 15.
3. White Star Magazine, October 1926, pp. 34–5.
4. Sowerbutts, op.cit., p. 99.
5. Ibid., p. 53.
6. Cunard Line, May 1921, p. 162.
7. Sowerbutts, op.cit., p. 85.
8. Ibid., p. 78.
9. Cunard Line, October 1920, p. 111.
10. Manchester Guardian, 9 March 1928.
11. Westminster Gazette, 7 November 1924.
12. ‘The Captainess’, Daily Chronicle, 12 March 1926.
13. Daily Chronicle, 26 October 1925.
14. Evening Standard, 4 November 1927.
15. White Star Magazine, September 1927, p. 10.
16. Westminster Gazette, 3 October 1927.
17. Manchester Guardian, 9 January 1929.
18. Sowerbutts, op.cit., p. 73.
19. Sowerbutts, op.cit., p. 72.
Chapter 6: For Leisure and Pleasure
1. Edith Sowerbutts, Memoirs of a British Seaman, p. 87.
2. Charles T. Spedding, Reminiscences of Transatlantic Travellers, p. 278.
3. Basil Woon, The Frantic Atlantic, pp. 144–5.
4. Stella Margetson, The Long Party: High Society in the Twenties and Thirties, Gordon Cremonesi, 1974, p. 123.
5. Richard Collier, The Rainbow People : A Gaudy World of the Very Rich and Those Who Served Them, Dodd Mead; 1st edition 1984, p. 73.
6. Woon, op.cit., p. 68
7. Elspeth Wills, Stars Aboard: Celebrities of Yesteryear Who Travelled Cunard Line During the Golden Age of Transatlantic Travel, London: Open Agency, 2003, p. 5.
8. Evelyn Waugh, ‘The Gentle Art of Being Interviewed’, Vogue, July 1948.
9. Woon, op.cit., p. 3.
Chapter 7: Depression and Determination
1. Edith Sowerbutts, Memoirs of a British Seaman, p 113.
2. Gloria Vanderbilt and Lady Thelma Furness, Double Exposure, Frederick Muller, 1959, p. 269.
3. Ibid., p. 298.
4. Ibid., p. 328.
5. Sowerbutts, op.cit., p. 120.
Chapter 8: The Slide to War
1. The Queen Mary: Greatest Ocean Liner, BBC 2, first shown 24 May 2016, STV Productions for BBC 2
2. Meghan L. McCluskey, ‘Interview with Ann Davis Thomas’, Interior Design: Student Creative Activity. Paper 1 http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/archidstuca/1 University of Nebraska, 29.11.2004.
3. Cecil Beaton, ‘Reviewing the Queen’, Vogue (US edition), 1 July 1936.
4. Edith M. Vigers, Evening Standard, 11 February 1936.
5. Henry Eaves, The Cunard Steam Ship Co Ltd., 1840–1930, unpublished manuscript, University of Liverpool SCA, p. 436.
6. ‘German Woman as Sea Captain’, Daily Telegraph, 13 April 1937.
7. Patt Morrison, ‘A Royal Mess But One Heck of a Story’, The Los Angeles Times, 17 October 1999.
8. Richard Collier, The Rainbow People, p. 169.
9. Richard Rhodes, Hedy’s Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World, Vintage Books, 2011, p. 108.
10. Sowerbutts, Memoirs of a British Seaman, p. 177.