Getting There Is Half the Fun (1950)

Cunard offers you a gay, luxurious voyage you'll never forget!

A Queen is Born

Postcard depiction of the Royal Mail Ship Queen Elizabeth

A charming little film from circa 1946 about the launch and early career of RMS Queen Elizabeth, the largest ship in the world when she was built:



I've never sailed on any ship, but I would love to have done so in the era when Britannia still ruled the waves. My father along with thousands of other G.I.'s returned from the war aboard the Queen Elizabeth, and somewhere among my things are a ship's newspaper and a metal candy tin with a cover very much like the picture at the top of this post, which my mother later used as a sewing box. Long gone, though, are the several hundred dollars he won off his buddies, playing craps all the way across the North Atlantic!

I also came across these Cunard menus and a cover - click to enlarge:

Menu cover, 1957, depicting two old English seadogs meeting in some exotic foreign port - Raleigh and Drake, perhaps?

Breakfast menu, 1950 - but who eats onion soup and cold ox tongue for breakfast?

Dinner menu, 1955 - by the way, the five-shilling bottles of wine
would be equivalent to about $8.65 today - believe it or not.
I wonder how big they were.

If you're interested, here's Part 3 of a documentary about the Cunard liners and others of the era, with some interviews of folks who were instrumental in their construction or operation - you can watch the whole 4 episodes on YouTube:

Colorful Queens

No, not what you're thinking.  A couple of short compilations about the RMS Queen Mary and her sister ship RMS Queen Elizabeth, with some great color photographs of the fabulous interiors interspersed with black and white footage of a day and time when people acted like ladies and gentlemen in public, and dressed accordingly.

I've never been on a big ship but I would have loved to sail in one of these beauties.  My dad returned from the war in the Queen Elizabeth (though she was painted battleship gray, with all her luxurious fittings replaced by miles of triple-decker bunk beds for the troops).  When I was a little kid, my mom and I used to talk about sailing to Europe on one of the great liners one day, but it never came to pass.

Yes, I know they've been reincarnated several times now, but it wouldn't be the same at this point. Some things you should do for the first time when you're young, or not at all. Oh well.  Enjoy.