A Century of Sea Travel by Christopher Deakes

Author:Christopher Deakes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Naval
ISBN: 9781783468799
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2013-12-18T16:00:00+00:00

Pamela Harvey ‘had a perfect four weeks on board the Mantua …we danced every night on deck by the light of the moon.’

Although many social changes had followed the ending of the Great War, it took time for taboos on entertainment to relax. John Hindley spent Christmas Day, 1927, on the Australian-Oriental ship Taiping heading for Hong Kong. The way he passed the day – a Sunday – was such that he clearly anticipated those back home in England would raise their eyebrows. ‘In the morning we all had a drink with the captain,’ he began. ‘At night we had a good dinner and a fancy dress dance, yours truly going as “Miss Taiping” anyway I was cool… . On a Sunday! Well, why not? This is Australia and not Europe.’ Hindley was very young and enthusiastic about shipboard events, but not everyone was. Charles Luxmoore, travelling in the same year to Brazil on the Booth liner Hildebrand to try to find Colonel Fawcett, wrote that at the Crossing-the-Line ceremony ‘Father Neptune came aboard and the crew did their best, but I’m afraid the British were most unsportsmanlike, but several Portuguese went through it properly.’ However, matters got a trifle out of hand, and ‘One man wanted to fight Neptune’s policeman – very childish, I call it.’ Perhaps, though, it was sheer frivolity. Evelyn Waugh had a view on shipboard committees, and when he travelled on the Stella Polaris from Sicily to Haifa in 1929 he wrote that ‘Deck games broke out all over the ship.’ However, he agreed to join a committee to arrange a tournament, and found that while the English were keen to administer the games with law and order, they couldn’t take them seriously when it came to playing them.

A pleasing contrast was recorded by Julian Huxley when he sailed on a Messageries ship in 1929 from Marseilles to Mombasa: ‘This is a French ship. There is none of the organised pleasure of an English boat – secretary of sports, secretary of entertainment, won’t you make up a game of shuffleboard, here’s Mrs Blank would like to play deck tennis, of course you play bridge, won’t you recite. Blessed relief!’ Which was not to say that nothing went on. Waugh travelled on a ship of the same line the following year. ‘They were still dancing when, just before dawn on October 19th 1930, the Azay le Rideau came into harbour at Djibouti.’ There had been fun on board for two days, with deck games, children’s races, tombola, a film and horse racing, auctions of desirable items such as signed photographs of dignitaries, and lots of champagne. The culmination of the voyage, on the last evening, had been a fancy-dress dinner, a concert, and a ball. Waugh returned to England the following year on a British ship, which made for an interesting contrast. The entertainment seemed to consist of playing pontoon morning and evening, boxing and singsongs. Naturally, a sports committee was organised, and the expected dissent

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