High camp, ships, snaps, Cunard' s Green Goddess and the future of archives

For seafaring men who liked donning glam frocks Cunard’s Caronia II was The Ideal Place To Be in the 1960s. 

Whatever their sexual, gender or relationship identity, seafarers added extrinsic pleasure to their work aboard such luxurious cruise ships.

Quirky and hilarious photos of seafarers’ extraordinary camp subculture reveal the ways men temporarily staged themselves as flashy ladies: adorable, and irrefutably right.

Fortunately such images are still readily available online. Peter Stevens’ rich Caronia website has the most – both in colour and black and white. See at Steve's site

Frisky and outrageous camp shots appear in the context of the Caronia's  huge illustrated timeline, with its parallel strands of crew life and the ship’s voyages.

Peter Stevens' take on queer Caronia life

As a mere lad, Steve, as he’s called, long before he began this website, was a commis waiter on board the Caronia 1964 into 1965. After a spell working abroad he rejoined as a first class waiter on the 1966 world cruise.

“When I left school I was so green I could have successfully hidden undetected in a cabbage patch. So, meeting effeminate men at work, and encountering their open expressions of sexual preference, came as quite a shock. I was not a little embarrassed!

“Next stage was coping with 'gay' men who were not so 'camp'. Talk about adults being totally bewildering!

“Then there was their secret language to cope with. In Polari they could, apparently, bring you down a peg or two. After a while, I treated Polari like I'd learned French, on the basis that the only point in doing so was to be able to swear back at any Frenchman, in his own language.

“If someone wants to 'clean' me, then I wanna know - exactly - what they're saying, even if I do end up a nervous wreck. Even to this day, I'd think twice before taking on any queen!

Unusual collections elsewhere too

Steve's  pictures are complemented by the Wellcome Institute’s website, which
carries a few camp Caronia pictures. See 1950s pic above:  https://wellcomecollection.org/works/yjeyjded/items

They’re part of James Gardiner’s collection, which he created for his 1996 book Who’s a Pretty Boy Then? (Serpent’s Tail, London. Sadly, it’s now out of print.)

Several LGBT+ ex-seafarers alive today have carrier bags full of visual records of their time at sea.

But seafarers were sometimes aboard a fresh vessel every trip. That means their collections reveal the gay subculture on their many different ships, including the Andes ('the Queerest Ship Afloat’).

Caronia timeline site as special resource

It’s unusual to find collections focused on just one ship. So these visual revelations of continuous life on the Caronia are precious.

And they’re extra-precious because they reveal how very high the standard of cross-dressing was. Never before have I spent so much time peering at impeccably beautiful ‘women’ and thinking ‘Surely that can’t be a bloke?’ Take, for example, waiter Lana (Allan Horsburgh) here in a photo shared by Ave Quin.

Catch 16 substantial references to LGBT life on board, including the gay scene, the crew variety shows, a mincing laundryman, a 1962 Sandringham Parade queen, and a  tongue lashing in Polari.

There’s a search option ‘LGBT’ and much rich material on the September 1965 page and the October 1960 page. You can also find gay life at:

• Crew → Assorted crew : Party Nights
• Crew → Assorted Crew : Variety Shows
• Crew → Wareham & Bergen Trophies

What’s in shot?

Professional shots of campery at sea are usually about shipboard theatricals. By contrast, the amateur shots tend to show cabin parties, frivolity in corridors, and shore excursions.  The 1960s Caronia images follow this pattern, too.

Many pictures were taken and donated by seafarers such as Roger Birch and Ave Quin. For decades Steve has also been assiduously buying Caronia images from all over the world. The result is that we can now see camp life as part of the ship’s life, not exceptionalised.

And unusually we can also see the ship’s camp culture extending – seemingly non-problematically – into life ashore.

The Caronia annually called into Bergen where football teams made up of waiters from Sandringham and Balmoral, the ship’s two restaurants, played each other on a local pitch. (Unlike aircraft carriers, cruise ships didn’t have enough deck space for matches.)

Each team had its supporters club. They planned a new theme for each year's parade through the city. The day was filled with pageant. Seafarers in crazy costumes paraded as if skirt-wearing was just innocent fun, not an exploration into gender transgression.   

July 1964. The jolly camp day that's beautifully revealed by the Caronia website is the 1964 North Cape Cruise event. The theme was Cleopatra. Not just any old Cleopatra but Cleopatra as played by Liz Taylor in the hit movie released the previous year. 

In their spare time supporters of the Sandringham Restaurant crew had made a float featuring a huge papier maché sphinx mounted on gold-painted pallets, held aloft by ‘slaves’ in togas.  Engineers' steward Denzil ‘Pagan’ Norton posed as Cleopatra. 

For Pagan it was a day of stardom. He Luckily Steve can remember it all. He was one of the poor souls in togas lugging the heavy float through the port’s cobbled streets.

Pagan saved pictures like this, below, forever.

Star shooters and camp snappers

Photos of camp theatricals at sea are relatively available because bigger passenger ships carried a ‘floatographer’, sometimes two. They were employed by agencies such as Ocean Pictures and Marine Photo Service.  

Shipping companies’ savvy public relations experts had sussed that, if happy passengers could go home and share high-quality visual proofs of fun aboard, then valuable free word-of-mouth publicity would ensue. Professional shots of fancy dress parties like this crew Hawaiian night were enjoyed.  (Pic by Ave Quin).

On and off duty, these concessionaires photographed everything that would be lucrative. Some had an anthropologist’s eye. All knew how to compose a flattering shot.

Before the age of selfies, skilled ‘floatographers’ customers included femme crew who wanted to be recorded at the apotheosis of their transformation into stars of the below-decks hedonistic world.

These many resulting professional 10”x 8” B&W shots are a fine foil to that other genre: amateurs’ colour shots. These were a low-resolution informal record, and faded all too soon.

 It’s possible that the onboard photographer also developed risqué snaps taken by gay crew, who feared they would be reported and prosecuted if they sent their photos to Boots (the usual way films were processed at the time).

SOS: Save these snaps

It’s so important that these images are kept for posterity - and restored if needs be. Steve has worked hard to make some faded colour slides viewable.

But where next? This period's general dilemma is how to ensure websites such as Steve's have a life long after he's gone. Seafarers' stories need preserving. LGBT+ stories need preserving too. Steve says:

"After 20 years of collecting and assembling a website I've realised that I've created quite an archive in its own right.

"Along the way visitors have sent me many, many instances of often heartfelt feedback. These add still further to the richness of the social history records that the site has quietly amassed.

"Then came a steady stream of growing shocks.  Several websites that I have enjoyed over the years are suddenly no more!

"Other sites are being 'rationed' as owners succumb to the inevitable process of reaching their twilight years.

"Is this the fate that will eventually befall my Caronia Timeline? At this moment the risk is very real!

"I've found that anyone and everyone will happily accept my paper archive. They would do, wouldn't they! 

"But Instead, I've found that public bodies regard making any kind of commitment to maintaining the website as a step too far.

"If almost every piece of ephemera collected brings an aspect of the ship's history to life - and if viewing images of these saves endlessly rummaging through the originals - which is the more valuable: The archive or the social history?  More on this on Wot's New on Steve's site

READING WIDER

• Paul Baker and Jo Stanley, Hello Sailor: Gay life on the ocean wave, 2003
• Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests, 1993.
• John Graves, Waterline: Images from the Golden Age of Cruising, 2004.
• Jo Stanley, section on women ship’s photographers, in From Cabin “boys” to Captains: 250 years of women at sea, 2015, pp.206-7.

Ten interesting things about working at sea in the past: BBC2's A House Through Time

BBC2's A House Through Time, broadcast 14 Sept 2021, featured ship's steward Edward Partridge Fearnley.

If you want to know more about Edward   (see pic), who lived at Grosvenor Mount in Leeds,  read on.This is my extra detail about him, to supplement the show. It builds on research done by the Twenty-Twenty team too, especially Anna Bates.

1. WHAT SORT OF PERSON WAS HE? 

The Board of Trade official  photo shows he looks fairly attractive and intelligent. He sported the fashionable Adolphe Menjou moustache. I happen to be able to analyse hand writing, so I detect that he was cultivated and steady. At that time, by contrast, stewards hit the headlines as flashy wide-boys into bigamous adventures  and swindles.

2. WHAT WAS HIS LIFE PATTERN? 

Edward was born in 1877 and became a ship's steward sometime after 1901. He did around 38 years and died at sea at 62, in 1939, with lung problems. Certainly he was a ship’s waiter by 1905, when he was 28 - quite old for a newcomer to the sea.

We don't know how or why he took to seafaring work. He worked first as an import clerk, which may have fuelled his interest in travel and connected him to someone who could give him a reference for Cunard, one of the biggest names in shipping. He'd have travelled to its Liverpool HQ to be interviewed. Certainly reliability and a good service ethos were among the required traits.  

He was employed mainly by Cunard and didn’t change ships much. (See list below). Staying with the same vessel was normal if the Chief Steward and Head Waiter wanted you on their ship. Not everyone stayed with the same shipping line, because they wanted to go to other destinations instead. Edward might well have got tired of going to New York. But if he fancied Australia or Japan he certainly didn’t act on that wish and join, say, P&O instead.  Maybe he was happy being home one week in three, and on the best-tipping route in the world – to and from New York. 

He was buried in the Cunard section of a Manhattan graveyard; possibly his family didn’t think it was worth shipping his body home, or were persuaded against it.

3. HOW DID RACE COME INTO IT? 

Being a waiter was a white job, except for the low-waged Asian stewards working for shipping lines such as British India. Edward would have got several times their basic pay, plus good tips as he was working with American passengers, who tended to be generous with the gratuities.

4. HOW DID GENDER AFFECT HIS LIFE? 

Being male meant he was privileged and mobile in this maritime world. Women were not allowed to be waiters until a handful were allowed in on Buries Marks tramp ships for a gimmick in the 1950s, then later on Union Castle liners as stewardettes in the 1960s. See YouTube: https://www.britishpathe.com/video/stewardettes. Dining rooms were the area where you had greatest access to tips, so for as long as they could men made sure they - not women  - secured those rights.

5.IS THERE AN LGBTQI+ ASPECT?  

Hotel and catering work - on land and sea - was an area where it was fairly common to employ gay and bi men, or at least men who sometimes had sex with other men. So Edward would have had queer shipmates. Maybe he even shared the same dorm as some gay stewards.

6. WHAT WERE HIS WORKING CONDITIONS IN THESE PALACES?  

As a waiter his day began at 6am and ended around 10 pm. He served breakfast, lunch, afternoon tea on alternate days, and dinner, too. When he made it to First Class waiter his job was easier: only one sitting for dinner, not two, and better baksheesh - but stuffier diners.

Edward on Orduna's crew list, 1915.

7. WHAT PART DID HE PLAY IN WW1?

Waiters sailed in war, mainly on their usual ships which had been converted to carry troops. Edward was certainly at sea in Dec 1914, Jan and Feb 1915 on the Transylvania, with 312 other crew. In 1917 a German U-boat sunk the Transylvania; Edwards seems not to have been aboard.

In In March 1915, as a First Class waiter on the Orduna to and from New York, Edward is likely to have been bringing Canadian officers (and their families) to the UK to train before going to the Somme. In war crew were expected to also learn to use the ships' guns in emergencies. So Edward might well have been as adept at targeting as he was at Silver Service, going to and fro across the Atlantic. Not many areas were mined at that stage. A German torpedo narrowly missed the Orduna in July 1915. I don't think he was aboard at that time. He died before WW2 began. Stewards lost their lives in both wars.

8. WHERE DOES CLASS FIT IN THIS PATTERN?

Edward’s Dad was a stuff merchant’s clerk in Shipley, who died when Edward was 14. So Edward went with mum and siblings to live with his maternal grandparents in Headingley, the house featured in the A House Through Time programme. (See photo of presenter David Olusoga there today). It was fairly posh, but VERY crowded. He had a genteel upbringing and reasonable education, so he'd know about how to behave with the elite passengers upon whom he waited.




9.WHAT ABOUT EDWARD'S FAMILY LIFE?

There's no typical pattern for stewards' families of that period, except that usually seafarers’ children followed in parental footsteps. Edward's dad was in textiles and Edward had no children, so he was not part of a maritime dynasty. Two of his younger sisters became teachers. Edward would have been able to put in a good word and help get them jobs as stewardesses, if they had fancied what was seen as a daring life for a genteel lady. About 50% of seafarers were married, as Edward was, although we don't know when exactly he married. Shipmates did have adulterous relationships, but more so on long-distance voyages.

10. WHAT'S A STEWARD'S HEALTH LIKE?

Was he an exception? No, only in dying on board. 24:7, Edward did not live the good life his wealthy passengers enjoyed. Most ship's stewards ate their meals on the hoof, so they had gastric problems and kept popping Rennie indigestion tablets. Many men smoked at that time, which worsened lung problems for lowly crew sleeping in poorly ventilated area.

It sounds like Edward had a serious health problem because in April-Jun 1932 he became a lift attendant on the ship - a non-arduous job, like lavatory attendant, which was a sort of grace-and-favour job allocated to loyal elderly staff who were not capable of much exertion. Then for a further six months he became a servants’ hall steward, which was light work. The fact that Cunard did not get rid of him when he became poorly indicates that he was regarded as a useful company man. It's very unusual to die in your bunk, at sea, of natural causes. Most shipping employers would have been ‘let go’ before they reached that state of ill health.

–

What ships was Edward on?

1905: Campania

1914: Transylvania

1915. Orduna

1921-33. Aquitania

1934. Scythia

1935-1939: Lancastria

Pioneering woman of the sea dies: Margaret Newcombe

Margaret Newcombe on the 'Britannic' in 1951 with colleagues Brent and Peter and another (details unknown).

Doyenne and pioneer of social directresses at sea Margaret Newcombe died on November 14.

Margaret(1922-2014) is not someone you find when you google her name. But in the world of Cunard shipping she is a legend.
Her charm earlier this year, when I interviewed her, was as remarkable and real as it must have been for the last half century. It astonished me. I'd expected her to be intimidating or a bit visibly ‘good at people.’
In fact I was disarmed and truly warmed. I'd never before experienced such genuine graciousness. And people at sea had been basking in that for over half a century.

TRACING HER JOB'S HISTORY
It was only in the interwar war that ships seeking happy (therefore repeat) customers started employing men as entertainment/cruise directors.
Before that the job had been done by Junior Assistant Pursers with microphone skills and a flair for Ents. They worked with the ad hoc sports and social committee that the passengers organised each voyage. On emigrant ships to the Antipodes in the 1950s the job had been partly done by ‘liaison officers’ employed by the receiving countries.
In the 1950s all the competition from commercial flying meant new customers had to be wooed. ‘It was necessary that shipping lines … [put] more accent upon entertaining the passengers than they had in the past,’ Margaret told interviewer Sheila Jemima of Southampton Oral History project.
Social hostesses began to work with entertainment/cruise directors (although Hilda James was a pioneer in the 1920s).

Olympic swimming star Hilda James (1904-82)in 1923 joined the 'Franconia' as Cunard's first social hostess and continued to do work rather like Margaret's for several years on other Cunard vessels. The job then seemed to disappear until the 1950s. [With appreciation for the picture to her grandson Ian McAllister who wrote her biography: http://www.lostolympics.co.uk/]

Margaret thought the job partly emerged because ’someone with sense in the office must have said “Someone must take care of the ladies, the lonely hearts. Make them happy. Introduce them.”’
A social directress managed the social hostesses, of whom there might be several depending on the ship's size and route. At a time when women officers were still rare, the idea of a senior woman organising the social life on ships was even rarer. Margaret was Cunard’s pioneer in this.

THE RIGHT WOMAN FOR THE NEW ROLE
How do you get such a job, social directress? In Margaret’s case it was partly because she was already in the purser’s bureau. It’s the department of the ship now called ‘hotel’ that deals with passenger activities. Her skills were evident.
In WW2 she’d done welfare work with women in the ATS. And as a girl she’d been used to being sociable – her father was a vicar. (In his role at the local aeronautical club he’d introduced her to that inspiring pioneering flyer Amy Johnson – and been rather put out that Amy ignored her.)

Margaret at Hull Cenotaph in 1926, where her father was conducting the service.

After the war’s end she badly longed to go to sea, as a purser. So many ex-servicewomen felt the same urge. It was the start of Wrens becoming the first women pursers, and cabin crew.
Margaret nearly didn’t get work on a ship at all. So many young women were told ‘girls don’t do that sort of work at sea.’ It was persistence, happenstance and luck that did it, as well as ability, of course. This is how Margaret too succeeded.
In 1947 she’d been employed by the electricity company in her native Hull and applied to every possible shipping company for jobs. Cunard wrote back saying ‘Dear Sir, We don’t employ ladies.’
But then a year later by chance she saw a newspaper picture of Elizabeth Sayers and three other women doing pursering work. Elizabeth Sayers (1912-c2000) had been a Wren Officer with Mountbatten in WW2 before joining Cunard in 1948 as a Lady Assistant Purser. She then became a beacon for Margaret and others.

Margaret's beacon: Elizabeth Sayers, and L to R some of Cunard's other pioneering LAPs: Margaret Morton, Phyllis Davies and Mary Marchant. (With appreciation for the picture to www.liverpool ships.org.)

‘So I wrote back to Cunard and said “Dear Sir, you do.” And within a month I was out of my [old] job and into the seagoing experience,’ says Margaret.
As a Lady Assistant Purser (LAP) she sailed mainly to New York in the 1950s. She worked in the ship’s travel bureau until ‘things were getting a bit monotonous [so] they said would I like to be social directress.
‘And so I was able to change my duties and have a new interest … I’ve gone from pen and paper to song and dance.’
By now Cunard had ‘introduced what they called the cruise director and his staff.’ She was the right-hand person of this man, and the first social directress of the Queen Mary.
And ‘for the next seventeen years that’s what I was doing on the three queens: Queen Mary until she went to Long Beach, Queen Elizabeth for one year, and the QE2.’ Margaret also went cruising on Caronia, Britannic and others.

Margaret (right, in background) on the 'Britannic' with colleagues in 1951. Note one other woman. Women pursers were usually outnumbered by at least five to one in that period. Expected to marry and leave (there was a marriage bar), they seldom got promoted, weren't sent on courses like the men and were treated as a separate category, which probably meant a lower pay scale.

ENRICHING LIVES
Nicknamed ‘Dame Margaret’ and often taken to be a member of the peerage, she enriched thousands of passengers’ voyages on many ships - and had a great time as well.
‘I was enjoying myself. I like people, I'm a bit of a show-off and I like giving passengers everything they wanted. I don’t put myself forward but I enjoy them.’
She sailed for 28 years until retiring in 1977. ‘I thought it was time I put my roots down.’
She went to live with an aunt in Torquay, but found it very hard because ‘I was so used to being amongst people, knowing them.’
After three years her aunt died. Margaret moved to a flat overlooking vast fields at Milford on Sea in Hampshire ‘because I had lot of friends here.’
Her Cunard shipmates met regularly at reunions. And they gathered for her funeral at Bournemouth Crematorium on November 28: a network of people who loved her and looked after her, particularly as her health declined in the last few years.

HER LEGACY
Since the 1990s a few women have become cruise directors, senior executives with four gold stripes. They may never have met Margaret.
But in the patchy progress of shipping lines accepting women in senior entertainment positions she’d been their crucial predecessor in showing that women really could be entrusted to cut that mustard, and be truly respect-worthy.

ENJOYING THE WORLD
I think Margaret, a modest and grounded person, would not much want to be remembered as a model for women attaining new careers at sea.
She’d prefer to be recalled as someone who made people’s voyages enjoyable – and who herself traveled delightedly round the world again and again on some of the most exciting ships in the world.

--
(Margaret was interviewed by Sheila Jemima, no date but circa 1992, and the recording (M0100)is available at Southampton City Archive. My own interview with Margaret was on 9 January 2014 and was unrecorded.Since then we spoke by phone and letter. She kindly let me copy these three photos, for my forthcoming book on the history of women working at sea.)