SEA TRAVEL

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 105, 31 October 1934, Page 5

SEA TRAVEL

PURSER ON PEOPLES

THE OCEAN CRUISE

CONTRASTS IN RESPONSE

After sailing the seas for a good many years, meeting many different kinds of people, it was something of a shock to me to discover about a couple of years ago that the traveller about whom I know the least was my am folk —the Englishman, writes Wallace Greenslade, purser of the Olympic, in the "New York Sun." I knew the American pretty well and I had had some experience with the Australian, having served in vessels of my company which naturally brought me .'nto contact with them. But when I was in the Homeric (bless her dear old mahogany heart) and she was scheduled to carry out a series of Mediterranean cruises from England, I felt thoroughly up against, it. I didn't know the English people would respond to tho organised entertainment which we had perfected over a period of years on our transatlantic voyages and on cruises from New York, where practically 98 per cent, of our patrons were Americans... But I soon found out. If I could have gone around to each individual passenger, been introduced, shaken him by the hand and said, "1 say, old top, I'm going to sort of run the show here just a bit dontcherknow, what," it might have been different. But as this procedure was manifestly impossible, especially as we had nearly 800 passengers each time, I had no recourse but to hop on my hind legs and announce our plans for tho entertainment. PEOPLE OF SIMPLE TASTES. They looked at, me with a boiled eye which plainly said, "Who does this blighter think he is, I'd like to know." And while they rallied around, nevertheless I could see they would much rather entertain themselves, play when they felt like it, and not bo bound by a hard-and-fast schedule of events. How different is the American. Ho wants organised entertainment and plenty of it. You can't give him too much. An American who knows what he wants is unbeatable. He'll co-oper-ate with you 200 per cent.; he's always ready for a party and he's got to be on tho go all the time fixing this, arranging that, aud doing a dozen things at once. AVhen I get up and make an appeal for committees among American passengers, I am received with acclaim, and things get started almost before I am finished talking. The Englishman gets started too, but not until the following morning after he's had timo to smoke a pipe and have a whisky and soda with you. Then you find he is a pretty good skato after all. On the whole, 1 believe he is easier to entertain because his tastes are more simple, and he likes to provide his own amusement. When I suddenly switched from tha American to the Australian service some years ago, I fancied I would have difficulty in adjusting myself. I had the same misgivings more recently in taking the English cruises. But, I needn't have worried. The Australians arc an extremely adaptable lot, and one astonishing thing is their amazing hospitality. AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND, After twenty years of running in and out of American ports I had come to prido myself that I had sampled everything that hospitality had to offer, but Australia almost outdid the United States in that respect. I didn't know anyone in Australia, but a pal of mine had written some people he knew in Perth, the capital of Western Australia. They drove down to Fremantle when my ship got in, took possession of me, body and soul, although they didn't know me from a hole in the wall, and drove forty miles into the country. The same thing happened right around the coast wherever we touched port— at Adelaide. Melbourne, and Sydney. And when we got to Wellington, the New Zealanders tried to outdo the Australians. There is a strange affinity between the Australians and the American. I found them very similar in many ways. They are both a young people, of course —exuberant, enthusiastic, and full of the joy of life. But above all, a common quality they share which I have discovered, and which affects me deeply, is that they are both tolerant of English ways and manners. As the son is to his mother and to his father, so are they to the folks from the Old Country. All this didn't help me through when I found myself on a ship with an allEnglish passenger list. I almost had to learn my job all over again. Gone, was the spontaneity I had known —the boisterous "Coo-co, hello, digger," of my Antipodean pals, and the easy friendliness of the smoke-roomy I doubt whether the bar receipts varied a shilling from one day to the other—so steady is tho Englishman's drinking gait. Instead of hearty handclasps at voyage ends, it was a. straight-faced "So glad we have met you," or a "Cheerio, old fruit, trickle ur) to tahn sometime." But when Ido trickle up to town, as I often do, they are right there with the old hospitality, just the same. It was a real thrill getting to know my own countrymen so well, I assure you. it is an attempt of the Administration to work hand in hand with the banks, and to create for them opportunities of placing their idle money into sound and reasonably remunerative employment; and it is clear from the literature which I have perused that the whole banking fraternity of America are behind it. The other point is less encouraging. So far as I am able to discover, no convincing effort has as yet been made to reduce the exorbitantly high prices of construction and renovations of all kinds, which, for the past few years have boon one of tho major stumbling blocks in the path of American recovery. If costs arc still too high, this will assuredly militate against the full success of tho now scheme. Nevertheless, it is one that will be watched with keen interest and sympathy. In every country, not excluding Great Britain, there is an incalculable amount of house rebuilding and renovation waiting to be done. Is it not possible that the adoption of some such scheme, adjusted, perhaps, to suit local banking conditions and social requirements, might be instituted in this country, which does not suffer from America's great disadvantage of high building costs? If so, is not the present the time to consider it?

The. President of the Board of Trade has warned us that tho existing trade recovery at Homo may reach saturation point unless international trade revives. Is it not possible that wo have in some such experiment as this a fresh tonic, which has not yet been administered, in the sphere of internal business improvement?