Deck service a​board the Queen Elizabeth, 1959

[Doc Vernon]

Cunard072.jpg

Sun May 15th At sea in the North Atlantic: Morning tea: Alice is from Stratford-on-Avon in England and remembered crossing on Cunard and in 1950s & '60s first class – on the Queen Mary, Mauretania, Carinthia & Sylvania. "The stewards and stewardesses in first class were Cunard's best," she remembered. "They were all British, some very, very British – and felt it was a great honour to work for what they felt was the greatest and most prestigious shipping company in the world. The stewards and stewardesses would help with the unpacking and later the repacking of the trunks. They'd deliver the early morning tea trays before we went down to breakfast. They'd lay out your clothes, especially for dinner. There were always fresh flowers in our cabin and the smell of freshness, a sort of immaculately tidy care. Everything seemed polished and glistening. Often, I would take some of those stateroom flowers and make a corsage for my mother."



A lady from Nottingham: "I keep family records, the history, the bits 'n pieces," she told me. "My great grandfather, who came from Liverpool, was a stoker on the old Mauretania. That was just before World War I and he did that for two or three years before buying a ticket in steerage and himself emigrating to America. He lived there, in Pittsburgh, for over twenty years. But in 1939, he felt loyal, maybe homesick even – he returned to England on another Cunard ship, the Samaria. He felt the country might be going to war. He wanted to help. He actually went back to sea, joining Cunard of all companies, soon after the war started. He joined the Carinthia. But very sadly, he was lost when that ship was sunk a year later, in 1940. So altogether, Cunard played a part of his life's story and our family history."



Faster than ever! Captain Rick Reynolds, our effusively charming Concorde commander & fellow speaker, is as passionate about aircraft as I am about ships. Because of his talks, we all but fall in love with the genius of the Concorde. "A brilliant piece of machinery & design," he dubs the now long-retired aircraft and which flew New York-London in 3 ½ hours. Cunard used, by the way, the greatest number of seats back in the 1980s and '90s. The QE2 Grill Room one-way and Concorde the other was a very popular combo (and priced from $3,000 then). It was called the "ultimate travel experience". It is, of course, an opportunity in travel now long past. But now, Rick tells me: "A new 'hypersonic' aircraft is in the works, on the drawing board, but might still be ten, even twenty years off. Concorde did Mach 2 (twice the speed of sound), but the new design would be Mach 5, maybe Mach 5 ½. It would do London-New York in just under 2 hours, London to Cape town in 4 hours and London-Sydney in 6 hours. One decision is firm: It will be all-business class and not all-first class like Concorde. Business class sells better than first and is far more profitable. Nothing else is firmly set, but it will happen one day and most likely it will be British Airways." Meanwhile, Ken Walsh, another speaker and author of a history on Air Force One, tells me that the US Air Force has been studying a supersonic design for a new presidential jet. The plan has, however, just been abandoned in favour of a new and improved 747 as the next "White House in the sky". It seems that worldwide limitations in landing supersonic aircraft, even for presidents, cast the deciding blow.