Summers Chasing Ships and Seas
Fifty Years Ago
It was summer vacation from school teaching and an August cruise seemed just right. So, a fellow teacher and I booked an outside cabin (private toilet but with the shower down the corridor) on the Soviet liner Mikhail Lermontov. It was 12 nights to Boston, Gaspe, Saguenay, Quebec City and Charlottetown, then back to Boston & finally New York. It was all great fun: lots of Russian dancing, Russian music and of course Russian cooking. And yes, in fancy Italian suits and shoes, a few, rather obvious KGB (security) officers about. They smoked Marlboro cigarettes and clutched copies of Time magazine. Once back to New York, we berthed stern-to-stern (at Pier 88) with another Soviet liner, the Maxim Gorky.
Forty Years Ago
June 1985 and school and teaching sixth graders in Hoboken had just finished. I was off to Seattle and Holland America’s headquarters (for a research project) and then 7 nights to Alaska on the glorious Rotterdam. It was the beginning of a very busy, ship-filled summer.
Back home just long enough to wash my red socks and I was off to Munich and a week-long cruise (from nearby Passau) on the riverboat Danube Princess. A dream trip of castles, cathedrals and corn-colored flowers, we called in at Vienna, Budapest, smaller places like Melk and Durnstein, and also Bratislava in Czechoslovakia.
Then it was up to Hamburg (by air) for a three-week cruise on the luxurious Astor, then operated by South Africa’s Safmarine Lines. It was something of an expedition voyage – Scotland, the Shetland and Faeroe isles and then to Iceland and still remote Greenland.
Once back in Hamburg, I barely caught my breath before boarding the exquisite Vistafjord, then in Cunard hands, for two weeks around the British isles – Cobh, Southampton, London (Greenwich and seen there below), Edinburgh and places like Portree and Stornoway.
But yes, I was back home by Sept. 1st and the return to the classroom. A simpler home life, I had logged 49 days on ships that summer!
Ocean Liner Art
This brochure cover for Italian Line’s very first world cruise always caught my eye. You just wanted to be aboard! Well, only less than 100 passengers booked for the trip and sensibly it was canceled. It was after all the peak of the Depression and money as well as world cruise passengers were in short supply.
Diversity & Expansion
In an era of booming business, cruise lines are looking to new destinations. Disney is sailing to Singapore; Virgin is headed for Iceland; and MSC is doing Panama Canal cruises. Seabourn is launching a pole-to-pole expedition cruise; and Oceania‘s new Kangaroo Route will cover 80 ports in over 129 days out of Sydney.
Australian Memories
Now that Carnival has yanked the P&O name from its Australian cruise operations, it reminded us of the long and colorful history that P&O and sister company, the Orient Line, had with passenger shipping Down Under. So, we dug into the file drawers and found the brochure below detailing Orient Line cruises from Sydney back in the mid 1930s.
Dawn
After 33 years, I no longer have the view from that upper-floor terrace or the windows here at home in New Jersey.
But I still have hundreds and hundreds of photos taken on those early mornings, the mid-days, moodful evenings, those weather changes, the special occasions. And so, I will continue, on occasion, to happily share.
