After six days at sea, Holland America’s Veendam is nearing land. I am on a seven-week cruise. Time to come up with a few words.
In 1844, William Makepeace Thackeray, author of Vanity Fair, took a ‘delightful Mediterranean cruise' on P&O's Lady Mary Wood.
'It was one so easy, so charming, and I think profitable - it leaves such a store of pleasant recollections for after days … that I can’t but recommend that all persons who have time and means to make a similar journey - vacation idlers to extend their travels and pursue it …’
Rereading his book on the voyage, From Cornhill to Grand Cairo, reminds me that I, too, am inclined to be a ‘vacation idler’. Content to watch the (preferably calm) ocean from a deck chair, I easily slip into a routine appealing to one prone to laziness. Give me a book, my bed made and meals prepared, and I can be worryingly happy. However, a nagging conscience says the trip must have purpose other than extra servings of the excellent shipboard crumble and custard. So retracing some of my father’s wartime journeys may provide plausible excuse for my third Mediterranean cruise since 2014.
Hoping someone out there might find my jottings of worth, I will, where possibly useful, provide links to past material on ports I’m visiting for the third, sometimes fourth, time. Those considering a similar trip, and doubtless with goals more ambitious than mine, may like what I like or not.
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At Toronto Airport, I wait for a flight to Florida. The distance is deceptive; as the crow flies, to the CN Tower is a little over 18 kilometres or 11 miles.
Beyond a freighter in Fort Lauderdale, I can see the Veendam from my hotel room.
Dear friends, Kathy & Michael, who’ve just survived two major hurricanes on their Caribbean island, kindly have come to Fort Lauderdale to wave me off. We were last together in 2016 crossing the Pacific and circling Australia.
With their customary generosity, they throw away the wallet and bring me a gift - a little Florida turtle swimming past a tiny bottle with shells. Surprisingly, they forget to remove the ‘Made in China’ label, but can't be faulted on their astonishing taste. I hope to reciprocate before long!
Bar an unexpected nighttime visit to Bermuda to disembark an injured passenger (who rejoins the ship in Lisbon) the Atlantic crossing is smooth ...
... well, relatively. Early one morning, I spot a casualty in the onboard store.
Avoiding falling flat on my face, I have binged on accounts of cruises more than a century ago. The current holiday obsession, regularly emailing envious, and possibly unappreciative, relatives and friends has its counterpart in an early 1900s voyage from the States to the Mediterranean. On that long ago cruise arose 'the post-card mania. This is the most pernicious disease that has ever seized humanity since the days of the Garden of Eden, and in no better place can it be seen at its worst than on a steamer calling at foreign ports'.
Avoiding falling flat on my face, I have binged on accounts of cruises more than a century ago. The current holiday obsession, regularly emailing envious, and possibly unappreciative, relatives and friends has its counterpart in an early 1900s voyage from the States to the Mediterranean. On that long ago cruise arose 'the post-card mania. This is the most pernicious disease that has ever seized humanity since the days of the Garden of Eden, and in no better place can it be seen at its worst than on a steamer calling at foreign ports'.
The writer noted his fellow passengers’ 'eager rush to load up with the cards necessary to let all their friends know that they had arrived at any given place on the map. This is but the first act in the drama, for stamps must be found, writing places must be secured, pencils, pens and ink must be had, together with a mailing list as long as to-day and to-morrow (sic)'.
The mania 'absorbed the victim's mind to such an extent that he thought of nothing but the licking of stamps and mailing of cards to friends—who get so many of them that they are for the most part considered a nuisance and after a hasty glance are quietly dropped in the waste-basket (sic)'.
The observations come in A Trip to the Orient by Robert Urie Jacob, published in 1907. In hopes this blog will not be dropped in an electronic wastebasket, I await tomorrow’s arrival in the Azores.
