Travel
The Notion of Steerage
By JOHN ROSELLI
SMIPS just now are almost the least of the Cunard Line's worries. Yet even while they get ready to defend against Labour attacks the merger of their transatlantic air services with BOAC's, and try with Messrs. Clore and Cotton's help to exploit their celebrated shoreside assets, Sir John Brocklebank and his fellow- directors might ask themselves if the troubles afflicting their ocean-going liners are as external as they think. Their annual report blames the decline in this traffic on Berlin, the dollar gap, the fall in emigration, the switch to continental ports and to more seasonal travel. After cross- ing the Atlantic both ways, once in the Queen Mary and once in the Queen Elizabeth. I suspect that last year's fall of 7 per cent, in the numbers carried by these ships (10 per cent. over the Whole Cunard fleet) came about partly because sOrne of the missing 7 per cent. had heard from earlier passengers and decided to try the jets instead.
',.Shooting at the Queens is a bit like wanting to Pull. down Blackpool Tower—they arc such British institutions and in some ways endearing ones. I don't particularly wish to quarrel with the now period decoration, which in first- class (What I glimpsed of it) distils the quintessence 6r the Odeon, Leicester Square, and in tourist esni.inded me powerfully of the Winter Gardens at koylake. It may well be that sonic childless, fiddle-aged couples enjoy sitting amid these Vistas ofhevelled glass, chromium, blonde wood, Pictures ,of wild ducks in formation and lin47 leum of a vaguely Chinesey pattern..listening 14.a string trio ,play„'Parlez-moi d'amour'; and 1, ''wouldn't begrudge them the pleasure if. there were Somewhere else to go. In the tourist cabins a'' post-war hand has actually been at work and 1:i4-made quite a good job of discreetly con- tElporary furnishings. The crew, too --those that t I dealt with—seemed as helpful as 'they ,,,,•i'lci be, again in a rather Ealing Films fashion:CO COurteous and chatty at all times, but noticeably at their best in an emergency. My tip is that the way to get magnificent service at all times ca.
the Queens is to be seasick from the moment You -go on board.
If, however, you travel as my wife and I did, tourist class with small children and only a 11)- ild liability to seasickness, then the Queens are It,
many ways a trial. The trouble—I shall not
be. original in saying this—is mostly too much s6-vice of the wrong kind. These ships manage f-6' :4(uperirnpose on the seedy grandeur of the d=on the trade union demarcation lines of our Q),‘/r, day. , • u Thus on the first .day out whefi We /011ted to give ihe.children their bath we tried the bathroom door a number of tiines and finally rang for the stewardess. 'It's locked.' she ex- Plained- 'Locked? But wily?' 'Well, there was alt accident once. . . . But I. can't open it, I'll hive to send you up the Lady Bath Attendant.' l iiii, a.ngish pauSe until the Lady Bath Attendant ,cf4ered- Thert she' discOvered that because my = was tired t was going to give the children their bath. 'Ohl In that case ou want the -irate Bath Attendant. I'll have to send him up to you.' A further pause, and then a family trudge doWn to the deck below, where the MBA had his bathroom. It reminded me of the kind of thing Prince Albert found when he started looking into the household accounts at Windsor. Is there any reason why bathrooms on an ocean liner should be treated differently from those in an hotel? There, too, . people occasionally , have accidents or leave dirt rings, but without needing a pursuivant to unlock the door.
So. too, with services of other kinds. At the start 'of the westward 'voyage we did not think the children 'could last out the day until a 7.30 dinner-time, so we tried to find out if there was sonic means of feeding them and putting them to bed earlier. From stewardess to purser to chief tourist steward we went, and then back to purser again. There might be an earlier sitting; there might .not; sometimes there, had been; it all depended on the; length of the passengerilist. Finally light dawned on someone and we were told that the stewardess could bring us cold food in the 'cabin.' The printed information handed' Out to all passengers said nothing about this, though' it did set.ont the facilities aviailable' for Soro-ptimisis 'and explain that a ship's sur gem) wears .'three rings gold I,Ice,.Sh.aight.: with red velvet, between: ' '• Again, the..menu .at, ev..ery. ,meal stated wine was available, in carafes at 9s.: .but, the one time 'we tried to order it the wine walier4 ;: nice •fitistered young man, had clearly -never heard of a carafe. much less seeir one, and the Cottle we asked for instead did not arrive until we had finished the meal.
If all this suggests, the maiestie decline of, a. hydro oveitaken by' 'the ' Welfare State, the exiguous windblown deck-space allowed tourist passengers on both Queens suggests' notion of steerage dies hard. On the Queen Mary. theresimply no covered debk-sittate where tourist passengers may sit and look at the sea---it is wind and view, or no wind and no view; one could spend a whole voyage in one
of the three lounges and never see the sea. The
Queen Elizabeth (in‘ other ways a less relaxed ship, I thought) has a small lounge on the top deck; a bit dingy, but with a view. Shc also scores over the- Queen Mar), by having a children's playroom with a porthole, so that you need not
feel conselence-stricken at taking children to sea
and then dumping them in an airless back room. One.eould.go -on. But surely the point to make is this:' evert 'before it gets round to building a ship that acknowledges us all as members of the great middle class, willing to open bathroom doors and carry our own dinner plates in ex- change for low fires, the Cunard Line could do a Mt.' l'o -Make its existing ships both cheaper and'pldasa. ntet:. The Queen Mary is now said to'. have ,a ,good many years of life ;in, her yet. so there is' no reason, to-go on suffering,until the breakers oerher... A number of improvements could be made without immense structural changes: extend tourist class (usually full in summer) at the expenSe of first and cabin (often half-empty), perhaps abolishing cabin; allow passengers to fetch their own drinks from the bars instead of waiting for a steward to bring them; have simpler meals (who wants a choice of three meat dishes, two fish dishes and five cold dishes. none of them much more than tolerable'?'), perhaps enabling one steward to serve more than two tables. No doubt there are vested interests in superfluous jobs; but unless these ships trim themselves (and their fares) down there may 'soon be no jobs at all.
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