COMFORTS OF SEA TRAVEL

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume LVII, Issue 23, 27 March 1936, Page 6

COMFORTS OF SEA TRAVEL

TRANSFORMATION IN 90 YEARS

FIRST CUNARDER AND THE

QUEEN MARY

(From the Guardian's Special Correspondent—By Air Mail).

LONDON, February 29. Although only 96 years will separate the forthcoming maiden voyage of Britain's wonder ship, the Queen Mary—the first vessel in the world to exceed 1000 ft. in length—from the sailing of the first Cunarder to New York, the advance since 1840 in the standards, not merely of luxury, but even of comfort at sea, have been so striking as to suggest the passing of j centuries rather than of decades. The liner of a century ago could have docked in one of the public rooms of the Queen Mary, which has lifts, telephones, an electric lighting plant sufficient to meet the needs of a good-sized city. All those' refinements, together with wireless, a ship's newspaper, cinema, restaurants, sun decks, swimming pool, and shops—are taken as matters of course by the modern traveller—and not one was known even 60 years ago. When the late Lord Inchcape, then Mr Mackay, went out to India, in the 'seventies of last century, the utmost that was available to him in the way of first-class accommodation was a cabin "with seven other occupants— and two wash hand basins. One oil lamp served to light two cabins, and it was always extinguished at ten o'clock. The cabins were all below and even in the treacherous heat of the Red Sea there were neither punkahs nor fans." Describing this voyage at a later date, Lord Inchcape merely characterised the passage through the Red Sea as "pretty trying." Dickens has left on record a description of a crossing to New York in 1840 in the Britannia, one of the first four Cunarders, a paddle boat, with sails and three masts, which represented the last word in comfort and luxury of her day. We may be sure that the distinguished novelist was given the best accommodation available, his account of the equipment of his cabin being that it included "a very flat quilt, covering a very thin mattress spread like a surgical plaster on a most inaccessible shelf in an utterly impracticable, thoroughly hopeless, and profoundly preposterous box." The accommodation of the Britannia would indeed have appeared preposterous in comparison with the lowest priced cabin in the Queen Mary. Preposterous to our modern ideas were also the grandmotherly regulations of the shipowners of the 'forties which had not been entirely banished even 40 years later. Smoking was prohibited, save on deck, and when some bold innovation did go as far as to provide a smoking-room, it was carefully isolated to prevent any fumes from reaching the "ladies' boudoir." The only means of illumination was by oil lamps, which in rough weather spilled their contents into the soup and in other ways added to the discomfort of a diningsaloon that served also as drawingroom and common-room and was the only refuge for passengers disinclined either to stay on deck or to remain in their cabins. The latter were small, poky, and badly ventilated by portholes, which had to be closed in bad weather. A single oil lamp, set in a bulkhead, sufficed to light each pair of cabins, this illumination being considered good enough even in the first-class accommodation of what the travelling public had begun to call "floating hotels," a phrase that was hardly justified in fact until our own day.