The Seafarers - The Great Liners by Melvin Maddocks

Author:Melvin Maddocks [Maddocks, Melvin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

On board the France or any other French liner, the crew and the officers were as much a part of the ambiance as the cuisine and the decor. Many of them became characters in their own right: the names of Henri Villar of the Ile de France and Roger Raulin of the Paris – French Line pursers who were known for their attentiveness – were chanted like a litany by knowledgeable travelers. Villar, for instance, kept files on regular passengers, complete with character sketches, and used the information to assemble congenial people when he made up dining table assignments. Crews included some outstanding amateur athletes, who competed in boxing, wrestling and fencing matches – providing entertainment for the passengers and engendering esprit de corps in the crew itself. French Line crewmen were “fiercely proud of their own ship,” one French Line devotee wrote, “and sure she was the best of them all.”

Among the exuberant men on these exuberant ships, none were more in evidence than the junior officers. Raoul de Beaudean, a French Line officer who served for 34 years, rising from a junior officer to captain of the Ile de France, eventually wrote a nostalgic account of what it was like to be one such young officer aboard the Flandre, plying between Le Havre and the Americas during the 1920s.

The one word to describe their attitude was esprit. They had spirit and they had fun. Beaudean told of one character among his compeers who rigged a radio to a hidden microphone. In the presence of passengers the radio would be “turned on.” With appropriate cracklings and a slow rise in volume that sounded just like a shoreside 1920s radio, the hidden “announcer” would begin to deliver the news. As the listeners marveled at how clearly they were hearing Paris in the middle of the Atlantic, the jokester would lure them along with actual news bulletins on topical subjects. As Beaudean recalled one incident: “With delight I hear a shrewish lady confide to her husband, ‘You claim to be a radio specialist, but you couldn’t get results like this at home!’” But then a report would issue from the speaker of a certain passenger’s elderly uncle being arrested for committing an outrage against public decency and morality. Only at this point would the passengers realize that they were having their legs pulled, Gallic-style.

Sometimes the playful ruses extended into shipboard duties. The purser of the Flandre had a fake telephone installed in his office. By stepping on a button under his desk he could actuate a ring – the only function the phone was capable of. He would then pick up the receiver and with a voice full of awe say: “At your command, captain. Immediately” This was a discreet device for excusing himself from a boring passenger – a purser’s occupational hazard even on the best of ships – without compromising his position as a French gentleman.

Such exuberant and youthful crewmen naturally found ways to entertain themselves off duty. One

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