Maiden Voyages Read online

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  For my sister Sarah, best friend and fellow traveller.

  Cunard Chief Officer Stephen Gronow of the Aquitania was the author’s great-great uncle. Researching his story, and that of his shipmates, male and female, led to this book.

  Dramatis Personae

  Josephine Baker (1906–75)

  African-American dancer and singer of consummate ability. Born in St Louis, Missouri, she was talent-spotted in New York and in 1925 she sailed to France to perform with other black artistes in La Revue Nègre. Josephine’s talent and personality shone in Paris, her adopted city.

  Tallulah Bankhead (1902–68)

  American-born actress of original and startling talent, whose stage career on both sides of the Atlantic gained considerable acclaim, but whose everyday behaviour was outrageous. She benefited from the symbiotic nature of British and American showbusiness and society in the 1920s.

  Victoria Drummond, MBE (1894–1978)

  Named after her godmother, Queen Victoria, she was a pioneering woman seafarer, who served as a ship’s engineer during the Second World War.

  Thelma Furness (1904–70)

  A twice-divorced American banking heiress and frequent transatlantic traveller, who often accompanied by her twin sister Gloria Vanderbilt, Thelma was the long-standing mistress of the Prince of Wales.

  Martha Gellhorn (1908–98)

  American-born writer and war correspondent with a sixty-year career and survivor of a marriage to Ernest Hemingway.

  Hilda James (1904–82)

  Olympic swimming champion from Liverpool who was employed by Cunard, first as a swimming coach and later as a social hostess.

  Violet Jessop (1887–1971)

  To support her family, naïve and unworldly Violet went to sea as a transatlantic stewardess aged twenty-one, and rapidly learned a great deal about human nature.

  Nin Kilburn

  Born into a Liverpool sea-going family, Nin lost a sister who was working on the Lusitania when it was sunk in 1915. Unable to find work as a schoolteacher in the 1930s, Nin went to sea, and achieved rapid promotion.

  Hedy Lamarr (1914–2000)

  Viennese-born actress who escaped a repressive marriage to a pro-Nazi Austrian arms dealer, and secured herself a future as a Hollywood star during a transatlantic voyage.

  Mary Anne MacLeod (1912–2000)

  The youngest child of ten born to a Scottish crofter, Mary Anne escaped her impoverished and depressed home island of Lewis by buying a one-way third-class ticket on a ship sailing to New York, seeking work as a domestic servant.

  Maida Nixson (b?–1954)

  Former journalist, writer, bank clerk and soft toy designer who became a stewardess in 1937 out of desperation and, to her surprise, loved the job. Her highly readable and enjoyable book, Ring Twice for the Stewardess, was published in the same year as her death.

  Marie Riffelmacher

  Fifteen years old in 1923, Marie was an economic migrant from Altenberg who escaped the turmoil of 1920s post-war Germany by embarking on a ship for America.

  Edith Sowerbutts (1896–1992)

  A much travelled and feisty character who enjoyed being a conductress caring for unaccompanied women and children on the North Atlantic route between 1925 and 1931. She later became a stewardess for Cunard/White Star Line.

  Prologue

  Smart and snug in heather-toned tweeds, a British-born lady passenger of middle years and independent means is settled in a teak steamer-chair on the promenade deck of an ocean liner heading west across the Atlantic. There is a whiff of healthy ozone from the sea, and fellow travellers taking the air variously saunter or speed past, competing for laps, heading to the gym or to the swimming pool. The attentive deck steward proffers a steaming mug of bouillon. So effective against seasickness, but, in order to be sure, she’ll take another Mothersill’s tablet. Just as that kind stewardess had predicted, the heaving swell of the Atlantic Ocean once they passed Ireland had proved to be a little too lively for comfort. Yesterday had crawled by in a disorientating, low-lit blur; she had spent hours wedged into her bunk, lying prone, wishing for death, while keeping an eye on the discreetly positioned vase de nuit, just in case. But this morning she had woken with the appetite of a Bootle-born coal stoker.

  She had rung the bell (twice for the stewardess; a single ring would summon the steward, which would breach etiquette), and requested a fully-laden breakfast tray of kippers, tea and toast. Her equilibrium has now been restored in every sense; standing with her feet at the ‘ten to two’ ballet position for maximum stability, her knees slightly bent, as the stewardess tactfully suggested, also seems to help.

  Bathed, dressed and ready to face the world, our heroine has ventured out onto the covered deck and secured a reclining chair. Her thoughts turn to her fellow passengers: she must trawl through the alphabetically arranged list of first-class passengers’ names left prominently in her cabin to see if she knows anyone else on board, or can spot anyone she might like to meet. ‘Society’ is superior to ‘variety’, and she is hoping to make the acquaintance of the elite also travelling in first class. In particular, she is looking out for a pleasant, well-heeled bachelor, as there is rather a dearth of those at home, just a few years after the end of the Great War. Perhaps she’ll do better in America, Land of Opportunity.

  Opportunities abound for sociable, single, wealthy, transatlantic female passengers; according to the daily newspaper printed every night on board, there is a tea dance this afternoon, with music provided by the pianist, and, after dinner, a concert, followed by dancing to the ship’s orchestra. Daytime visits to the swimming pool with tutoring from the female coach, the Turkish baths where she is pampered by the masseuse, and restorative sessions with the lady hairdresser promote a sense of wellbeing. In fact, the whole vessel seems to have been deliberately designed to appeal to lady travellers of all stripes. Reassuringly, the grand public rooms recall the better sort of country house. Every room is decked out in a different historical style, as though it had grown gradually, over the centuries, with each generation adding another wing according to the fashion of the day. Odd when you think about it, because this enormous ship was constructed by swarms of men in cloth caps, riveting together great steel plates in somewhere ‘industrial’, like Clydebank. With its Palladian-style lounge and Carolean smoking room, the ship’s interior recalls the smart new hotels now springing up in European and American capitals. No wonder some wag referred to this ship as ‘the Ritzonia’.

  Meanwhile the stewardess makes final checks of the staterooms of ‘her’ ladies before the captain’s daily inspection at 11 a.m. Scrupulously clean and neat in her grey uniform, white cap and apron, she is a ‘company widow’, whose husband died when the Lusitania was torpedoed in 1915. To provide for her two small children following the Armistice she went to sea as a ‘floating chambermaid’, leaving the boys to be brought up by their maternal grandmother. Ev
ery fortnight they have a scant forty-eight hours together, when her ship docks in Southampton, her home port. She brings them American cigarette cards for their collection, and picture postcards of the Statue of Liberty. Her wages are supplemented by the tips she often receives from grateful passengers. She has been on duty since 6.30 a.m., and will fall into her bunk in the tiny windowless cabin she shares with another stewardess around 10 p.m., with throbbing feet

  In the second-class smoking room, concentration is fierce as four American buyers play bridge. Three of them are middle-aged women; it is a career that suits entrepreneurial types with a head for commerce. Each has commissions from competing Stateside department stores or specialist boutiques, selecting European garments and accessories for the American market. They are returning from the summer shows at the Paris fashion houses with their precious purchases, samples and order books safely stowed in their cabins. Buying is a competitive business, and economic espionage is rife, so each of them will type up their orders themselves, rather than booking the ship’s stenographer to do the work for them. One of the unspoken reasons for these bridge marathons is so that they all know where their rivals are during waking hours.

  The ship’s stenographer is busy anyway, having been engaged by an eminent lady writer to take dictation in her cabin. For any young woman with an outgoing personality, shorthand and a portable typewriter provide a ticket to travel the world in these boom years just after the Great War. Today’s client is a well-known British authority on theosophy, and has been invited on a lecture tour of America; while her writings may be spiritual in tone, she is a canny businesswoman with an eye to the benefits of meeting her public and, as one of her contemporaries, P.G. Wodehouse observed, ‘She was half way across the Atlantic with a complete itinerary booked, before ninety per cent of the poets and philosophers had finished sorting out their clean collars and getting their photographs taken for the passport.’1

  In another cabin further along the second-class corridor, an apparently respectable husband and wife are discussing their tactics for compromising a wealthy Frenchman, who is travelling alone. The couple are frequent transatlantic travellers, because they are professional blackmailers. On this voyage the wife has piqued their target’s interest by convincingly playing the role of a bored and neglected beauty. She has hinted that her complaisant and lacklustre husband prefers to spend his nights afloat playing cards in the bar, and that she is lonely and available for a nocturnal dalliance. Tonight will provide an opportunity to reel him in, but first they need to divine his home address and the name of his wife. When, inevitably, the apparently outraged husband catches them in flagrante delicto, he will threaten to inform the Frenchman’s wife unless the would-be philanderer agrees to pay ‘compensation’.

  Down near the waterline, in third class, professional chaperones provide support and protection for unaccompanied women and children from far-flung parts of Europe. This morning the chaperone is organising hot seawater baths for some of her reluctant charges, a welcome opportunity for them to bathe in privacy and to wash their clothes. All the women travelling in third class are economic migrants, and the luckier ones are making the voyage with their families, neighbours or friends. Some already have a ‘stepping stone’, relatives who can help them get established on the new continent. The teenage daughter of a crofter from the Scottish island of Lewis, with older sisters already settled in New York, is eminently eligible for a visa to work as a domestic servant. Two brothers and a sister have secured employment on a farm in rural Michigan; their wages will eventually enable their hard-pressed family back home to escape the economic ruin of 1920s Germany.

  On this summer morning the oil-fired ocean liner is heading west at an impressive rate, covering 500 miles a day, steaming from the Old World to the New. These 2,500 souls from all over Europe – passengers of many classes, creeds and countries, and the ‘ship’s company’: all the crew and staff, male and female – are under the omnipotent command of the captain while they are under way. Though it is one of the largest man-made moving objects on the planet, the liner is dwarfed by the ocean, and is totally alone on a vast and open sea. Anyone standing high enough on the very top deck, and rotating 360 degrees, would see nothing more than a slightly curving panorama of completely empty horizon, a daunting prospect for the agoraphobic.

  But for the women on board the ocean liner, the great ship offers hope, opportunity, romance. Whether they are travelling for leisure or pleasure, by virtue of their celebrity or to preserve their anonymity, as matrons, migrants or millionairesses, as passengers or staff, the journey they undertake will change their lives for ever.

  Introduction: Cresting the Waves

  Remarkable as it seems nowadays, until the middle of the twentieth century the only practical way for civilians to cross the Atlantic was by embarking on some sort of ship. Three thousand miles of open ocean could not be traversed except by sailing, until technological and engineering advances made long-haul flights first possible, then comfortable and affordable for paying customers in the 1950s. Consequently, until the middle of the twentieth century, ocean liners were the only viable form of transport for international travellers between the landmasses of America and Europe.

  For more than a century before flying replaced sea travel, mid-Victorian entrepreneurs, engineers, designers and shipbuilders collaborated to create technologically advanced great ships, which were built to sail the Atlantic – a daunting stretch of water, prone to sudden storms, thick fogs and occasional icebergs. The ships were primarily designed to carry raw materials, saleable commodities and produce, and important communications such as mail on a regular and reliable basis. They were operated for the maximum profit of the privately owned shipping companies who competed for the most lucrative routes between the major ports of Europe and those of the American eastern seaboard, and as a sideline they also transported people who were prepared to face lengthy, uncomfortable and often dangerous journeys.

  Each ship had to be entirely self-sufficient while at sea, carrying its own provisions, including fuel, food and fresh water, labour, tools and expertise, as it would be out of sight of land and far from any form of assistance for weeks on end. In addition, the vessel had to be resilient enough to withstand the rough seas and adverse conditions to be found in the North Atlantic. Engineering innovations such as the steam engine and steel hull enabled the construction of ever-larger and faster ships, ramping up competition between world powers of the time, especially between Great Britain and Germany. Each sea-going nation competed to advance the interests of its own mercantile fleet, meeting the astonishing demand for transatlantic travel.

  In January 1842 Charles Dickens sailed from Liverpool to Boston on RMS Britannia with his wife Kate and her maid. He was impressed by the ship’s power and speed – revolutionary for the time – but was appalled by his cabin, which was ‘utterly impracticable, thoroughly hopeless and profoundly preposterous too … Nothing smaller for sleeping in was ever made, except coffins,’ he wrote lugubriously.

  Dickens kept a vivid account of their appalling eighteen-day journey, describing the ever-present seasickness, the tumultuous roughness of the sea, the perpetual discomfort of being cold and wet, the difficulty of dispensing remedial teaspoons of brandy as the ship heaved and plunged, and the sorry plight of the lone cow, brought along to provide fresh milk during the passage, lowing piteously in her stall up on deck. The Britannia was badly damaged by ferocious storms, one of the lifeboats was smashed to matchwood by a freak wave, and Dickens doggedly and soggily played cards hour after hour with the ship’s doctor for fifteen days.

  Once the worst of his nausea had receded, Dickens mentions, almost in passing, that a stewardess provided meals for the passengers in the communal saloon: ‘a steaming dish of baked potatoes, and another of roasted apples; and plates of pig’s faces, cold ham, salt beef; or perhaps a steaming mass of hot collops … not forgetting the roast pig, to be taken medicinally’.1 This appears to be the first men
tion of a stewardess in the literature of the era. Dickens appreciated her diplomacy and positive attitude in dealing with him and his suffering womenfolk:

  God bless the stewardess for her piously fraudulent account of January voyages! … and for her predictions of fair winds and fine weather (all wrong or I shouldn’t be half so fond of her); and for the ten thousand small fragments of genuine womanly tact [in reassuring passengers] that what seemed to the uninitiated a serious journey was, to those who were in the secret, a mere frolic, to be sung about and whistled at!2

  Dickens was sanguine about having a female crew member dispensing wisdom and good cheer. While women seafarers were not common, neither were they a complete anomaly in the first years of the Victorian era. Their occasional presence on board ships started informally, but by 1840, Union Line, Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, and Peninsular and Oriental Line (P&O) regularly employed women to sail on their ships to destinations as far away as Australia, India, South America and the West Indies. In previous centuries the only female acceptable on board the more traditional ships had been the carved figurehead on the prow, usually depicting a voluptuous bare-breasted woman, believed to bring good luck. Although mariners of all types have always referred to their ship in the feminine, as ‘she’ rather than ‘it’, paradoxically the superstitious belief persisted that it was unlucky to carry women at sea. However, by the beginning of the nineteenth century wives occasionally accompanied their husbands on naval warships. In time, whaling ships and smaller merchant vessels often carried the captain’s wife, especially for lengthy voyages. Some British women actually worked on ships, particularly those who came from seafaring families. On board they had considerable status as they were the boss’s relative, and would oversee the catering, provide nursing care, and deal with the accounts by bookkeeping, paying wages and provisioning. In the larger ships they mingled only with the senior officers and tended to stay close to the captain’s quarters, to maintain some distance from the rougher crewmen.