LIQUOR ON THE MAIL BOATS.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVIII, Issue 1047, 31 March 1910, Page 22

LIQUOR ON THE MAIL BOATS.

IN DAYS GONE BY. INCREASED’ DEMAND FOR MINERAL WATERS AND STOUT. On the authority of no less a person than Sir Thomas Sutherland, the chairman of the P. and O. Company, a great change has taken place during recent years in the social habits of passengers by mail steamers, a change which he describes as “a movement in the direction of temperance in our tropical climates.” Addressing a meeting of shareholders in London, he delivered himself in the following interesting style:— “T need hardly tell you that we carry far more passengers than we carried ten years ago, but all will probably be greatly surprised to hear that notwithstanding the Increased number of our passengers our consumption of wine, beer, and spirits has fallen in these ten years, by 50 per cent. There are only two exceptions to that decline —one is what you would naturally expect—there is an increase in

the consumption of mineral waters, and there is an increase, wonderful to say, in the consumption of stout, a beverage very excellent in itself, but one which was totally unknown on board ship in the tropics until a very few years ago. Well, we never set ourselves out to make dividends on the sale of wine, for the great cost of distribution in some sixty vessels is one of those things that may be more easily imagined than described, and if we are able to cover our expenses in the future it is certainly the utmost, and probably more, than we shall be able to accomplish. To old travellers like myself the contrast is instructive, and I was going to say almost amusing. In the olden times, as many gentlemen whom I see here to-day will be aware, the supply of wines was gratuitous, free ad lib., being included in the passage money. Whenever in those days we came into hot weather we discarded our tea and coffee for breakfast, and took to our claret, consuming it at our different meals, or perhaps other wines, according to taste, in the way of port, sherry, Madeira, and liqueurs, and the only thing in which the company behaved shabbily was in connection with the supply of champagne, which was only given twice a week, but to which we certainly did full justice on those occasions. I have no hesitation in saying that we were most sober, steady, and moderate people in those days. But we may now, I suppose, rejoice in the change which has taken place in the habits of travellers as being of great interest to the rising generation, who will doubtless now be able to escape the paternal gout and many of the other ills that flesh is heir to.”