Ships at a
distance have every man's wish on board.
Zora Neale Hurston
When she (ships are always shes) was launched in 1929, the RMS Viceroy of India was the pride of
P&O’s fleet. The sinking of the Titanic
and then the Lusitania had hardly
made a dent in the cruise ship industry, the construction of them and the
sailing on them. Like the Titanic,
the Viceroy of India was intended to
have the last word in luxury travel, with an indoor swimming pool, banquet
halls and even a museum. The vital statistics of this ship probably interest
specialists but the detail that she was driven by two turbo alternators and the
steam powered by six boilers rated at 350 psi means little to me. It is clear
from this photo, probably taken as she was sailing through the Clyde after
leaving Glasgow, that she was an impressive symbol of the new century. The
photo is the first from a presentation album created for a cruise of the Baltic
by a group of Rotarians sometime in the mid-1930s. With a cover of faux-leather
and a gold embossed stamp of the ship, and most of the photographs 5x7 and hand
printed, it was a fairly expensive item to produce, even without the standard paraphernalia
such as menus or maps showing the route. It isn’t clear whether this one was
produced for a particular Rotarian club’s records or if the passengers could
buy it. In any case, the cruise ship album has a place in the history of
photography. Granted it isn’t always a prominent one but this is a good example
of a vanished world. It shows us the places visited and gives us glimpses of
shipboard life.
Although the Viceroy was
built specifically for the route between Britain and India (RMS meaning Royal
Mail ship), she was as well known as a cruise ship. On this cruise she carried
a group of British Rotarians. Here they are; the heart and soul of middle
England. Despite rumours, to be a Rotarian in the 1930s did not make you a
rabid anti-socialist or a freemason. On the contrary, Rotarians, as this photo
succinctly demonstrates, were rather ordinary. Of course, you had to be a solid
and respectable member of society, so anyone who believed in a socialist utopia
would be unlikely to join, and women could not officially become members until
the 1980s. The Vatican banned priests from joining Rotary in the 1950s on the
grounds it was a secret society but passed no edicts regarding laity. In the
1920s, before this photo was taken, Rotary banned recruiting from freemasons’
clubs, probably because it aspired to be secular and non-discriminatory and
associations with masons would have tarnished its reputation. This group look
like the types who’d provide schoolbooks to economically disadvantaged areas
and make donations to villages struck by natural disasters. Both are
commendable activities.
To be a cruise ship photographer can’t have been a bad job.
You got to see the world and no one asked for originality in the photos you
took. Maybe that’s why, despite the privileges, it was never considered a very
prestigious occupation. If you had real ambitions, the magazines were what
you’d set your sights on. This is the Kungsgatan in Stockholm. The towers, the
Kungstorn, were designed by Sven Wallander and when they were completed in 1925
were officially the first skyscrapers in Europe. Presumably our Rotarians
disembarked at Stockholm and went on a short tour, in which case a stop to look
down Kungsgatan would have been on the itinerary.
Here’s a group of them. It’s hard to say whether the people
at the back are part of the same cruise. No doubt that a stop in Stockholm
involved a meeting with members of the Swedish branch of Rotary. There would
have been a table laid out with teapots and cups, and possibly Danish pastries,
which oddly enough were called Viennese pastries in Denmark, because that’s
where they came from.
This is Helsinki’s Central Railway station, designed by
Eliel Saarinen and opened in 1919. It is described in some books as belonging
to the National Romantic Style, expressing ideas from Finnish folklore and
national heritage. From here it looks like a fine example of Art Deco; what we
tend to think of as typical National Romantic resembles more Victorian Gothic,
with an emphasis on turrets and spires - think of an ice castle from a Hans
Christian Andersen story. In any case, our visitors would have been impressed
by its modern style. Interesting that the caption reads ‘Helsingfors’, which
is, or was, the Swedish for Helsinki. This suggests our photographer may have
been Swedish, a small but important detail. The cruise management would have
wanted a local photographer, if only because someone who turned up fresh out of
Glasgow might not know the sights and would miss some important landmarks.
Also, the photographer could have boarded with a portfolio of previously taken
images. The captions are only on the building and street views, indicating they
may also have been published as postcards.
I'm guessing the man on the left was known to everyone as ‘the
Major’.
The tower in the background looks more National Romantic
than does Helsinki’s train station. It also looks old. It is the spire of Saint
Nicholas’ Church, originally built in the 13th century. The spire
was built in 1909, replacing a ruin that had been around since a fire in 1795. This
in effect is the essence of all national romantic movements; build something
modern intended to evoke a glorious past.
We usually associate scenes like this with more southern
areas of Europe. Not because we assume Finland doesn’t have markets but because
since World War 2 the Nordic countries have successfully promoted themselves as
contemporary: contemporary design, contemporary architecture, contemporary
ideas. Nordic is a euphemism for new and progressive. Old doesn’t get a lot of
attention. Notice again this has a caption, and is taken from a high point from
the harbour, meaning it was taken from a ship. Possibly it was the Viceroy but again, our photographer
could have taken it months earlier.
She looks a touch too young to be part of the tour group.
She also looks Scandinavian.Did the cruise elect a Rotarian queen?
This and the next two images belie the case that Rotarians
don’t know how to have fun. Of course they do. Never mind that ‘fun’ might
involve countless cups or tea and singalongs, and we feel obliged to put the
word in inverted commas, it is still defined as ‘fun’. These images are the
centrepiece of the album. We can’t be sure what they were celebrating;
obviously not the crossing of the Equator and the cruise went too far south to
cross the Arctic Circle. What I suspect is, the cruise had a very tight
schedule of activities arranged and one of them was some kind of on board
party, a celebration of all the good work the Rotarians had done.
Is he supposed to be an Arab, or a shepherd from a nativity scene?
From what we read, life on board during a cruise in the
1930s actually sounds a bit dull. Between meals, one lay back in a deck chair reading
cheap thrillers or wandered to the lido bar on the off chance there was a game
of bridge or baccarat to join in on. In the evening one dressed, had a
cocktail, ate, played more bridge then went to bed. The kind of activities that
gave some more innocuous sites sordid reputations seems missing. Of course,
this was a tour by Rotarians and we’d hardly expect much in the way of
shenanigans. Still, the presence of a spy could have spiced things up a bit.
Ahh yes …
We know we are in Scandinavia …
Interesting, but only a few years after this photo was taken
a statue to the fishwives of Copenhagen was erected near this spot, and soon
after the market closed down. Somehow the long history and tradition of the
Copenhagen fish market gets neglected but it obviously mattered enough to build
a monument to its women; a response perhaps to the more famous statue of the
little mermaid. This, I also think, doubled as a postcard.
Grundtvig’s Church in Copenhagen. Grundtvig was not a saint
but a nationalist poet, philosopher etc who also was a pastor, hence the
legitimacy of building a church in his honour. Designed by Peder Vilhelm Jensen-Klint
in 1913, it was still being finished when our visitors arrived in Copenhagen.
Though there are no apparent clues to its use, no crucifixes or statues, you
know at one that it must be a church. Notice there is no caption. Possibly the
building was still covered with scaffolding when our photographer last visited.
This would therefore have been taken on the cruise. The photos here are from an album of 36 and are placed in the order they appear.
The
Viceroy had a short, tragic life. In
1940 she was converted to a troop carrier and two years later was sunk in the
Mediterranean after a U-boat torpedoed her. Four crewmembers were killed.
Everyone was rescued but the ship lies rusting in the deep off the coast of
Algeria.
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| RMS VICEROY |
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