A Century of Sea Travel

Introduction

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There Go the Ships Departure

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Great Steamers White and Gold The Ship

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A Cabin to Dance In Accommodation

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The Minimum of Activity, and the Maximum of Gossip At Sea

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Not a Very Sober Crowd but Very Amusing The Passengers

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Tea and Boiled Boots The Food

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The Strain of Relentless Whimsy Entertainment

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Thinking, Feeling, Loving Waves of Romance

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A Flick of Sunshine on a Strange Shore Scenes along the Way

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The Howl of the Wind, the Tumult of the Sea Storms, Seasickness and Disasters

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A Pint of Beer a Day Troopships

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As Human as Ourselves The Crew

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Farewell, Monsieur Traveller Arrival

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Bibliography

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Index

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Picture Credits

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Acknowledgements

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Great Steamers White and Gold

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In 1874 when Joseph Sams sailed on the Northumberland’s eight week voyage to Australia, there were more birds and animals than passengers – at least, to begin with.

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Voyage memories… so often recorded by the Box Brownie, as was this 1923 journey on the City of Paris.

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This painting by Carl Shreves of a Dutch Ruys-class liner slipping through the night evokes the romance of eastern seas.

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community afloat, dependent upon its own resources, the passenger steamship was in a sense a village at sea. In its design it divided its available space into areas for work and play, so that there were parts of the ship reserved for those who managed the vessel and parts where the rest of its population could spend their time. As in all communities, there were those who were happy to find themselves where they were, just as long as they didn’t sink, and of course there were others who grumbled about the state of things. Either way, the writings of those who commented on their experiences on passenger ships often reveal a keen eye, and their personal observations impart a sense of immediacy about what it was like to be on the ship in which they were sailing as well as highlighting those aspects of the liner that particularly interested or intrigued them.

Exploration of the ship is usually the first action of the newly arrived passenger, after he has found his berth. In 1874, Joseph Sams, a nineteen-year-old clerk, embarked in London on the Northumberland, a barque rigged steamer owned by Money Wigram, for the voyage to Australia. Not long after leaving port, he had found that his ship ‘is what they call a wet decked one, so bought a pair of top boots at Plymouth.’ This being the last English port at which the vessel would call, provisions were loaded to last the voyage into the southern hemisphere, and Sams noted that ‘We have two cows on board, several pigs, ducks, geese, poultry and sheep in abundance.

Several dogs and parrots and the forecastle

A Century of Liner Development

1866 Jumna

1874 Whampoa

1879 Orient

1884 Chusan

1890 Majestic

1891 Empress of Japan

1898 Irishman

1900 Sierra

1903 Prinzregent

1913 Empress of Russia

1914 Insulinde

1923 Franconia

1929 Rangitata

1932 Strathaird

1941 President Polk

1962 Transvaal Castle

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From Port Said to Port Sudan, huge sandstorms could be whipped up quite suddenly and turn day into night.

P T Etherton in 1898, and one that was generally expressed. Frederick Treves agreed. ‘The very loneliness of this scorched wilderness is terrible, its monotony and its lack of limit are oppressive,’ he wrote, and then described a more interesting night passage. ‘On entering the canal again it was already so dark that an electric searchlight was fixed to the ship’s prow,’ he explained. ‘This white light produced a quite extraordinary illusion. The water of the canal became the deepest

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indigo, and its banks an intense white. The ships seemed to be afloat in arctic regions and to be slowly creeping along a crack or open way between two ice floes.’

It was the statistics of the Canal that interested John Ferguson, when he passed through it in 1901. ‘The Suez Canal is about 100 miles long, and averages about twenty-five yards wide,’ he wrote.

‘There are sixteen signalling stations

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Messageries Maritimes ship passing one of the stations in the Suez Canal.

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(more or less picturesque) which control the traffic.’ And there was plenty of traffic.

‘We met the north-coming steamers in the Bitter Sea. I counted thirty ranged in a great semicircle,’ noted Caroline Kirkland, on her 1905 voyage. ‘Another forty lay in the Gulf of Suez next morning when we hove to. Here our canal tax of nearly ten thousand dollars was paid.’ She experienced a fierce sandstorm on her return the following year, and it was a 36-hour haboob that had prevented Mary Poynter

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ARRIVAL

Farewell, Monsieur Traveller

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Lucania in the North River, New York, with the Statue of Liberty, sign of hope for so many immigrants. π

† Arriving anywhere at night seems magical, and perhaps New York was more stirring

than most because of the hurdles that still lay ahead for the newcomer. ® Just so the passenger knows what to expect, shipping lines issued booklets explaining the Landing Arrangements.

Arrival back home at Liverpool – painting by Derrick Smoothy of a Blue Funnel liner returned to its home port.

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he cases are packed, the shipboard farewells are made, and the passengers prepare to walk down the gangway, to leave the liner that has been their home for days, weeks or even months: they have arrived at their port of destination. They would hope that this would be a pleasant experience. ‘The country here presented a very picturesque appearance and we had the pleasure of seeing the first village on the New Land and a very pretty one it is,’ wrote Joseph Sams on his arrival at Melbourne in 1874 on the Northumberland. ‘After dinner I was woke up about 4 with the steward crying out “Mr Sams here is Mr Whaley on a tug waiting to see you.”’ Particularly nice to have someone to meet you, but, of course, one needed to guard against too much excitement. ‘The pleasure of seeing him again was too much and to prevent illness we adjourned several times to the bar.’ After which, ‘I then wished the ship a good bye as far as inhabiting her went, and entered the great and prosperous city of Melbourne.’

However, for others, arrival at destination was fraught with anxiety, particularly for those who had no friends or relatives to greet them. R L Stevenson, on the Devonia in 1879, observed that ‘As we drew near to New York I was at first amused, and then somewhat staggered, by the cautious and the grisly tales that went around. You would have thought that we were to land upon a cannibal island. You must speak to no one in the streets, as they would not leave you till you were rooked and beaten. You must enter a hotel with military precautions; for the least you had to apprehend was to awake next morning without money or baggage;…and if the worst befell you, you would instantly and mysteriously disappear from the ranks of mankind.’ One can understand the sense of apprehension of people who had probably never left their homeland before,