Below another excerpt from my book Tales from the Great Passenger Ships, published by History Press. This book tells the story of 36 ships and often involves story of crew life, as in this example:
Before we begin the tale of the Victoria, there’s something I must confess. I’ve been feeling guilty for sixty years, so it’s time to get it off my chest. I owe a long overdue apology to the hundreds, probably thousands, who sat with puzzled faces in the movie theatre aboard the Italian MS Victoria cruise ship in the early sixties.
The only excuse I can offer is I had just began working in my newly promoted position as manager of the on-board photo unit and I was yet to reach twenty years old. Head office in London must have been unable to find anyone else. But I wanted to stun them with my organisational talents.
My new duties included acting as the movie projectionist for the ship’s beautiful movie theatre. I had not done it before, but the Italians thought that as I was a photographer, I should be able to handle the ship’s movies. They were wrong. The two jobs bear no resemblance.
The films came in giant 35mm reels and to show a movie required the operation of two massive film projectors. Each reel lasts around twenty minutes. So, an average length movie would come in six or seven reels.
To make for a seamless switch from one reel to another, the projectionist carefully watches for a small momentary flash in the top right-hand corner of the screen. This signals time to start the second projector. Standing between the two projectors, you carefully watch for a second flash and the moment you see it, with one hand you throw a leaver to close the light shutter on the first projector and simultaneously with the other hand open the light shutter of the second projector.
With the second reel now safely running, the first reel is taken off and rewound for the next showing and the third reel threaded up for the next change. Got it? Now you know how to be a movie projectionist, that is if you can find a movie projection system from the last century.
If my memory was right, the first film I had to show was Charade, starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. On ships we used to get pre-release films to ensure no passenger had seen it. It was a much-hyped murder mystery, and it certainly attracted enough passengers to fill the theatre.
To enter, everybody walked past the projection booth, and I could hear all their chattering as in they entered the theatre. Seconds before the movie started and the lights dimmed, in a blaze of tropical whites and gold braid in came the Italian captain, chief engineer, chief purser, chief steward, ship’s doctor, and a couple of other senior officers. They took up a standing position in a row at the back of the theatre. Wow. It was my first day in a new job. I’d better not mess up. But I did.
Somewhere between the second and fourth reel, I got distracted. I did the change, turned around and found a reel just sitting on the bench. To my horror I realised I’d left out the third reel. What should I do? Pop it on so it would come up in the wrong sequence or leave it out entirely and get it right the next time. I figured it was a who-done-it anyway and a little added mystery wouldn’t hurt much. So, I left it out.
As the film ended with twenty minutes of the action missing, the sea of white officers was the first out the doors. I shrunk back, but they hurried off in different directions. As the audience came wandering out, I caught snatches of conversation, “Isn’t Audrey Hepburn wonderful? ‘Yes,’ agreed another, ‘I must get my hair cut like that. Another is musing, ‘I didn’t quite get it, how did they know he was the murderer?’ ‘Really’, comes a superior voice, ‘It was obvious the whole time.’ An old man is shaking his head. ‘I think I must have dozed off for a bit’. Then I hear,’ That the trouble with these who-dun-its, you never really know who-dun-it.’
I knew who-dun-it. It was me who-dun-it.
To my horror, the next day’s ship’s program listed the same film to be shown that night as well. I was hoping for a good long break before the next screening. That night, in filed the audience, some probably for a second time trying to work out the plot. Ah well, time to get it over with, face the music and show it all.
Just as the theatre doors were to close, in a blaze of tropical whites and gold braid in came the Italian captain, chief engineer, chief purser, chief steward, ship’s doctor, and a couple of other senior officers. They took up a standing position at the back of the theatre. My stomach dropped to my socks.
I set the first two reels going and contemplated the third. If I showed it tonight, the ships officers would all realise I missed out an entire reel the previous night. I wasn’t quite sure what the penalty would be for that. Instant dismissal? Court martial? Or maybe a simple keel hauling? I took the coward’s way and decided to again not show the third reel. No one would ever know.
To make matters worse, I didn’t show the missing reel again on the last night of the cruise. Come the next cruise, the film was still on board for screening, and sure enough, in came all the ships officers. Later I learned they repeatedly watched all the film screenings to improve their English. That wretched film was on the ship for three more cruises. And I never did show that third reel.
So, to all those movie goers who must have been puzzling over the movie for decades, I apologise. Forgive me Father, for I have sinned.
Early Life
Despite all this nonsense, I formed a deep attachment to this ship. She started life as the MS Dunnottar Castle and during her long life she served as a British-built passenger liner, an armed merchant cruiser, a troop ship and several decades as a cruise ship.
The ship was named after the remains of a ruined medieval fortress built five centuries ago on a cold, bleak and rocky headland on the north-eastern coast of Scotland by a group of knicker-less Scots. Just the sort of name you would pick for a glamour ship voyaging from London’s Tilbury dock to the warm climes of South Africa.
In fairness, her owner was Britain’s famous Union Castle Line who named all their numerous ships after various castles in the United Kingdom. I guess to choose this name, they had reached the stage where they were running out of castles.
The ship was to lose something in the glamour stakes with the arrival of World War II and the government seized her, along with her sister ship, Dunvegan Castle, and made them into armed merchant cruisers with six-inch, three-inch and anti-aircraft guns and put her on convoy escort duties.
In 1942 the British Admiralty went a step further and converted her into a troop ship for her to be able to carry soldiers to North Africa and India.
With the long war finished, in 1948, Dunnottar Castle was discharged and returned to Union Castle, which promptly had her comprehensively overhauled and returned to her pre-war route. Dunvegan Castle, was not so lucky. She was sunk in the 1942 Battle of the Atlantic.
In 1958, the Incres Steamship Co bought Dunnottar Castle and spent a fortune making her into a modern cruise ship with a new raked bow and superstructure. Her funnel was replaced with a streamlined modern version. Her two masts were removed, new derricks fitted, her cabins restructured into a one class, and given a new name along with a shiny brochure extolling the virtues of Caribbean cruising from New York. She was now the SS Victoria.
I really liked working on her. Maybe because she was comparatively small, she was very warm and intimate. In the crew, everybody knew everybody. Relationships with passengers was good as we also got to know each other. Sometimes too well.
We had on board a very striking tall, professional dance couple. Most ships carried them, and they used to give dance lessons by day and two or three nights a cruise give a performance for the evening cabaret. The couple on the Victoria were married, the wife with flaming red hair and the husband tall and lean with a South American look. Their piece de resistance was the tango, a dance they performed with great heat in an almost violent way.
Every cruise, before they went on, they would work each other up into a rage at the bar, calling each other vile names while they both quickly drowned several tequilas. Fascinated by the fiery swirling of the wife’s gown, I would crouch down low on the edge of the dance floor to try and capture with my camera some of the passion of the spectacle.
One night, the wife looked at me with round eyes in the crowded bar and loudly hissed. ‘That dirty bastard went out in Porto Rico last night and he got the pox.’ There was a sudden silence in the bar. The band started up and on they came. They whirled around the floor and as she sweeps and dipped in front of me, she brought her face close to mine and snarled in fury, ‘He gave it to me!’ A few more whirls on the floor and she’s thrown down right in front of me. ‘It’s the third time he’s done it!’
Back they came. By now, those in the audience around the dance floor are sitting up straight in their chairs and leaning towards me to hear what comes next. ‘Keep away from the dirty bastard’. Round they twirl again. Thrown flat onto her back on the middle of the dance floor, she calls out to me, ‘He’ll have you next!’
Somehow or other, we all remained friends.
Playboy and the Priest
Even the Catholic priest on board was a character. He used to knock on the darkroom door one or two days a week and watch us developing our prints under the glow of a yellow safe light. He would not say much, just stand there smiling, probably praying for our photographer soles.
One day, my colleague, again another young fellow, pulled the centrefold out of a Playboy magazine and proudly taped the naked girl to the darkroom wall.
I was a bit worried about this, as I was aware of the priest’s regular visits, but I didn’t want to order my assistant to take it down. Instead, I made a little polka dot paper bikini, carefully cut it out and put it over the usual places but hinged with sellotape. When my colleague felt the need, he could take a good look and then drop the hinge bikini down for the priest’s visit.
The priest came in, spied the poster and studied it intently for a few moments. He then went up to it, lifted the hinges, took a good long look, lowered them back down again and then walked out without saying a word.
Two days later, he came back and repeated the procedure and went off with a smirk on his face, still without saying a word. This went on every day for a week. ‘Right’, I thought, and took the paper bikini right off and left her on the wall in all her glory. When the priest came in, he studied the centrefold for a good long time. We waited for his words of divine wrath. ‘Better’, he said, and walked out the door.
One last story about the Victoria. We had gone back to the Mediterranean for some service work in Italy. I spent quite a bit of time there and had developed a taste for Chianti. As I was walking back to the ship just before we were to leave Genoa for another Caribbean season, I spotted a giant novelty bottle of the stuff in a shop window. It held 15 litres and was a bargain price. Just the thing I needed for another long cruise season on the Caribbean.
I got it back to the ship in its wicker basket and proudly set it on the dressing table in my cabin. By the time the ship reached Gibraltar, I had managed to consume the entire contents of its long neck.
Alas, sailing the smooth waters of the Mediterranean is one thing, but crossing the south Atlantic is a different proposition. First day out, the huge bottle toppled over and smashed onto the fawn carpeted cabin floor.
When I came back to the cabin, I discovered a tidal wave of the stuff rolling across the carpet from one side of the cabin to the other. A couple of stewards helped me clean it up, but I have been told that fawn carpet stayed pink until the end of the ship’s days.
After that I was moved onto another ship and in 1964, she was sold to a subsidiary of the Swedish Clipper Line of Malmö, but Incres Line continued as agents for the ship. For 11 years Victoria cruised the United States to the Caribbean.
In 1975 Clipper Line sold her to Chandris Line. Her name was slightly modified to The Victoria. Chandris used her for Caribbean and European cruises until 1993.
In 1993 Louis Cruise Lines bought the ship, renamed her Princesa Victoria and used her for three-day cruises from Cyprus.
In 1997 Princesa Victoria rescued 487 passengers and 186 crew members from the fiercely burning MV Romantica. This was another former ship I had worked on when she was known as the MS Aurelia.
The Victoria was not to last much longer. In 2002, she was the longest serving passenger ship of her size in the world. The time had come to retire her. She sat at the dock for a while to see if another suitor could be found. This was without success and in 2004, the Victoria arrived in India for scrapping.
MS VICTORIA Born: 1936; Died: 2004; GRT: 15,007; Length: 540 feet;
Beam: 72 feet; Passengers: 600; Crew250; Line: Incres Line; Sister Ship: Dunvegan Castle
Reproduced from Tales of the Great Passenger Ships with the permission of History Press. (Photo: Paul Curtis)