In January 1924 Parisian-born impresario André Charlot and twenty exuberant and sociable chorus girls and actresses boarded the Aquitania at Southampton in a high state of excitement. Following a successful London run, they had been booked to take Charlot’s Musical Revue to New York, with an all-British cast. The Revue featured comic songs by Noël Coward and Ivor Novello; it relied upon ribald Cockney slang, and was peppered with London colloquialisms, but, contrary to most expectations, the show captivated American audiences. The company’s initial six-week booking on Broadway was extended for a nine-month run, eventually totalling 298 performances. Gertrude Lawrence and Beatrice Lillie were in the Revue, and the success of the show subsequently brought them international fame as actresses.
As might be expected, the voyage out on the Aquitania was a particularly lively and entertaining one for the performers and their fellow passengers. The extrovert company were all excellent dancers, and every evening they took to the floor to dance with their fellow passengers, accompanied by the scintillating sounds of the ship’s band, who probably couldn’t believe their luck. Anticipating potential difficulties, Mr Charlot had wisely engaged a female chaperone to look after the young women’s welfare and to curb their enthusiasm while on board, but despite Matron’s best efforts, one ingénue managed to conduct an illicit romance with a millionaire, and accepted his offer of marriage, so their numbers were reduced to nineteen by the time they arrived in New York.
The liveliness of all parties on board the Aquitania during this voyage might be put down to natural causes, but it may also be attributed to high spirits, particularly alcoholic ones. In the 1920s European shipping lines had one considerable advantage over their American rivals: they were able to serve alcohol on board their liners. Prohibition – the banning of the import, manufacture and sale of alcohol – had come into force throughout the United States in January 1920, and it was to have a profound effect on many aspects of American life for the next decade.
The new law did not ban the actual consumption of alcohol, so those Americans with foresight and funds simply stockpiled supplies before the Volstead Act passed into law. It was rumoured that the Yale Club in New York City had stored enough liquor in its basement to keep it supplied for fourteen years. But for those without the resources and storage space, Prohibition was a serious imposition. Illegal drinking dens, known as speakeasies, and underground nightclubs mushroomed to meet public demand. Illicit alcohol, often brewed in unlikely and probably insanitary circumstances, was available to those prepared to pay for it, even if it did mean travelling to the shadier parts of town and muttering a password to some taciturn heavies on the door to gain entry. Huge profits could be made, and so organised crime took over the liquor business. There was also corruption: at Chumley’s, one of the most popular New York speakeasies, the staff were told by the police that in the event of a raid they should usher their customers out of the exit leading on to Bedford Street, as the police would be coming in through the Pamela Court entrance. Purser Spedding of the Aquitania, a frequent visitor to New York in the 1920s, recalled the double standards that prevailed: ‘I once attended a big police dinner in New York, and there were so many of the guests over the mark that the chairman of the feast called everybody to order, and said that if the drinking did not stop, he would send for a policeman. He had a whisky and soda in hand at the time, and this sally caused much merriment amongst the blue-uniformed guests.’1
American-owned liners were legally deemed to be American territory, so no alcohol could be served on them. However, it was unclear at first if the new regulations also applied to foreign-owned ships. Until informed that they were breaking the law, the many passenger liners docked alongside the wharfs of American harbours were unprecedentedly popular with thirsty visitors who, unable to get a drink on terra firma, were going aboard for dinner, dancing and cocktails, happy to pay for a night out.
Attempts to enforce Prohibition on other nations’ vessels met firm resistance. Their protests were not solely on behalf of their passengers: on British ships there were the crew’s rum rations to consider. The provision of a wine ration was not only legal but compulsory in some Latin ships. The Italian Lines pointed out indignantly that their officers, members of the crew and third-class passengers were entitled to a daily allocation of wine of not less than 12 per cent alcohol.
Eventually all foreign-owned ships agreed to keep their liquor stores sealed while in American waters, within three miles of the mainland; that boundary was later increased to twelve miles. Despite Prohibition, American cocktail barmen marked both occasions by creating, first, the Three Mile Limit (a heady mix of white rum, grenadine, cognac and lemon juice), succeeded by an even more potent brew, the Twelve Mile Limit (as before, but with a slug of rye whiskey). Thirsty passengers would make for the bars as soon as they departed New York, and a roaring trade commenced as soon as the ship reached international waters.
Paradoxically, in the same era as America was technically dry, cocktails boomed. Ocean liners prided themselves on the ingenuity and inventiveness of their bar staff; as British-born travel writer Basil Woon observed in 1926: ‘The Atlantic has never been so wet as it has been since Prohibition started and Americans began travelling. What puzzles a ship’s bartender is the baffling number of new cocktails the Americans have invented since 1919. Americans are no longer content to stay on a drinking diet of beer or whisky. They change their drink with every round.’2
The other major consequence of Prohibition for ocean-going ships was the inevitable temptation to smuggle illicit alcohol, for personal consumption or for sale. Between 1920 and 1933, Prohibition created an insatiable market for smuggled alcohol. Criminal gangs often approached the crews of ocean liners, offering them incentives to bring in large quantities of alcohol. A bottle of whisky in Britain cost about 12s 6d – the equivalent of 62 pence – and could be sold in New York for $5 – the equivalent of £1 – representing a decent profit. Demand was huge; young Americans carried hip flasks on nights out, containing any alcoholic tipple they could acquire. It was considered smart to drink alcohol, and even smarter to be able to acquire it.
The American gangs awaiting the arrival of the big liners might try to chisel down the price; seafarers might retaliate by watering the whisky. In addition, the Prohibition agents, who were employed to enforce the law, were often corrupt; one of them was seen tottering back down the Aquitania’s gangway one evening with his bag so full of illicit booze he was attempting to bend the neck of a protruding bottle to conceal it. The captain and senior officers were expected to try to deter the practice by organising searches of the ship, but it is possible they occasionally turned a blind eye.
Violet Jessop had returned to work as a first-class stewardess with White Star Line in 1920, employed once again on the Olympic. Violet was indignant at the extraordinary lengths to which her passengers would go in order to smuggle drink ashore, especially as they often tried to involve her in their subterfuge:
We were called upon as if it were our daily task, to help, advise, and often assist passengers to conceal their ‘hooch’ as we drew near to New York. It was all so fantastic. There were members of the Four Hundred, pillars of Wall Street, senators, lawyers, debutantes, card sharps, all with their minds on the same problem as we approached the shores of the United States. Under the circumstances, it was not surprising that often our men obliged, at a price, and even our women too. One ample-bosomed stewardess found she could carry off a quart of champagne in her ‘balcony’, and no customs official, however hard-boiled, had the nerve to tap the offending bottle with his little metal mallet used for such purposes, so she got away with it. Not quite so lucky was a small syndicate of stewards who ran quite a profitable business in liquor, until one day a coffin was needed in a hurry from the storeroom and their cache was discovered.3
Naturally, the absence of alcohol on American-owned ships presented no problem for teetotallers of any nationality, but it was an important factor in some passengers’ choice of ships. Those who liked to drink were inclined to choose foreign-owned vessels, substantially reducing profits for the American companies. The strictures against the sale of alcohol on shore led directly to the invention of the ‘booze cruise’, developed to cater specifically for the determined party-goer. A brief maritime jaunt for a few days along the coastline of the North American continent to Havana or the West Indies in a foreign-owned ship provided an opportunity to party long and hard for the duration of the trip, in the company of like-minded revellers. Ostensibly this was for the purposes of tourism, but many pleasure-seeking passengers did not even disembark on reaching their supposed destination. What mattered was the opportunity for a luxurious blowout in a floating hotel with a hard liquor licence and obliging staff who would bring all manner of liquid refreshment to one’s cabin, saloon table or recliner. Convivial cabin parties could be organised with the help of stewards, who were well-tipped to provide ample folding chairs and copious refreshments. The last night of a voyage before the ship re-entered American waters tended to generate a febrile atmosphere among the passengers:
They were sailing towards the land of Prohibition, towards dry America, where no one knew how soon he would get a good drink again. So, everybody drank as much as he could and some of them more. Someone had made the statement, and it had become a belief, that all spiritous liquors would have to be poured into the ocean before the ship entered the harbour, so everybody tried his best to rob the tides of their precious booty … their weapons were the glasses in their hands and the empty bottles under the tables their trophies of victory.4
The enforcement of Prohibition in America also had unintended consequences for the transatlantic trade, providing an added incentive to travel – ostensibly to explore the world, but in fact to look for pleasure as well as business. This aspect was leaped upon by shipping companies, eager to fill their normally empty berths on the return trips to Europe, having landed the migrants who made up the bulk of their westward trade. With migrant numbers dropping due to stricter American immigration quotas, it made sense for shipping companies to upgrade their most economical accommodation, renaming it ‘tourist class’. Much of the advertising and marketing of this era now focused on the affordability and sense of adventure involved in travelling the Atlantic. As both labour and fuel were then relatively cheap, steamships (which relied heavily on both) were comparatively inexpensive. Both the pound and the dollar were very strong against the post-war European currencies, so that a few dollars would buy excellent accommodation and wonderful food in France. The new tourists, American travellers on a budget, were increasingly attracted to the prospect of exploring mainland Europe. The Hemingways were able to live lavishly in France for $5 a day. In 1922 they dined at the best hotel in Kehl in Germany for 120 marks, the equivalent of 15 cents.
Long-distance sea travel had never been more affordable. The writer Alec Waugh, elder brother of the novelist Evelyn Waugh, undertook his first round-the-world trip in 1926. He claimed that it was more cost-efficient for him to travel by ocean liner than to rent an apartment in London. Thanks to his portable typewriter, he could work as a writer as well at sea as on land, selling travel features as he went. It was also possible to travel for years by writing about it. Writers carried their offices with them, and could work in isolation in their cabin, or in matey conviviality in a saloon. As a result, shipboard life started to feature in the literature of the era. P.G. Wodehouse’s comic novel The Girl on the Boat perfectly captured the Zeitgeist, while Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is largely set on board a transatlantic liner, and helped to establish ocean crossings in her readers’ minds as the perfect environment for smart, modern young women on the make.
America and Hollywood beckoned to many British performers, entertainers and writers, keen to try their luck on the other side of the world and establish a career in the movies. Third-class cabin or tourist-class tickets were affordable for those living on frugal budgets, and it was a gamble that attracted many ambitious, creative women hoping to ‘make it big’ in the United States.
Elinor Glyn was a British-born novelist, and the younger sister of Lucy Duff-Gordon, who had survived the sinking of the Titanic. Elinor wrote romantic fiction to help support the finances of her husband, the spendthrift barrister Clayton. Elinor’s novels sold reasonably well, but it was her notorious book Three Weeks that caused a sensation on publication in 1907. The heroine was an exotic Balkan queen, wealthy and worldly, who successfully seduced a much younger British aristocrat. Although it was a work of fiction, the book was rumoured to depict Elinor’s affair with Lord Alistair Innes-Ker, younger brother of the Duke of Roxburghe, who was sixteen years her junior. In one scene in the book, the heroine lounges seductively on a tiger-skin rug, and this baroque detail piqued the interest of lusty widower George Curzon, who sent Elinor the skin of a tiger he had shot while Viceroy of India. They embarked on an affair, which lasted eight years and was the talk of London. When Elinor’s husband obliged her by dying in 1915, she nurtured hopes that Lord Curzon might marry her once she was out of mourning. They seemed as close as ever, and the following year he asked her to supervise the refurbishment of an Elizabethan house he had acquired – Montacute, in Somerset. However, while she was working on the interior of the historic house alone in December 1916, she accidentally picked up a six-day-old copy of The Times. In the Announcements column, she read of the engagement of Lord Curzon to society beauty Grace Duggan. Elinor left Montacute, never to return, and condemned her former lover as ‘so faithless, and so vile’.
Having acquired a public reputation as a passionate and promiscuous woman, in defiance of the social norms of the era, she bitterly resented the humiliation now inflicted on her by Curzon. A doggerel poem of the time ran:
Would you like to sin
With Elinor Glyn
On a tiger skin?
Or would you prefer
To err with her
On some other fur?
Elinor decided to escape hateful London society at the earliest opportunity. She was now fifty-two, recently widowed, and the object of public notoriety and scorn. However, her writing had earned her a decent living: Three Weeks had sold 2 million copies and had been translated into a number of languages. Still smarting from the end of the affair with Curzon, and confined to Britain by wartime travel restrictions, she nevertheless continued to support herself writing magazine articles and fiction, building up a considerable portfolio.
But America beckoned, and in 1919 she signed a contract with Hearst’s International Magazine Company to write stories and features for magazines such as Cosmopolitan. In 1920 she was offered a lucrative contract as a screenwriter for Famous Players-Lasky (which later became Paramount) and relocated to Hollywood. She became one of the best-known and most successful female screenwriters of the 1920s, and also produced and directed a number of movies. She was instrumental in establishing the careers of Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson. Elinor Glyn’s 1927 novel It, identifying the mysterious allure of sex appeal, was made into a successful film, and Clara Bow, the star, was known as the ‘It’ girl.
Elinor Glyn became a central figure in the English clique in Hollywood – a close friend of Charlie Chaplin, and of William Randolph Hearst and his mistress Marion Davies. She was influential as a film industry maven, advising Hollywood’s professionals – both the on-screen ‘talent’ and the producers and directors who made the movies – on etiquette and deportment. She decided to return to England in 1929, aged sixty-five, to write fiction and her autobiography. The decade she had spent in America had successfully transformed her life, providing her with the chance to escape the censure and ridicule of one society, and to reinvent herself in Hollywood.
Diana Cooper was another British woman who hoped to make her fortune in the United States. In 1923, at the age of thirty, she went to act on the New York stage, for the very simple reason that she and her husband needed the money. As Lady Diana Manners, the daughter of the Duke of Rutland, she had been expected to marry an aristocrat. Instead she had fallen in love with Alfred Duff Cooper, an ambitious young chap from the Foreign Office, who had served honourably in the Great War and had been awarded the DSO. Their combined income on marriage in 1919 was £1,100 a year. They were hardly poor, but they needed substantial funds if he was to satisfy his ultimate ambition, which was to give up his civil service post in order to go into politics. In 1922 Duff Cooper devised the ‘plan’, which was for the two of them to go to America, where Diana, already an established performer, might make a fortune as an actress. It was a gamble, but if it was successful, he would seek a seat as a Member of Parliament.
Diana was a famous society beauty, and had appeared in two silent films. She attracted the attention of Max Reinhardt, an Austrian theatre producer, who needed actresses for a new version of The Miracle, which he proposed to put on in New York and then tour round the States. The play is a morality tale about a convent of nuns living in a medieval abbey that houses a life-size statue of the Virgin and Child, and the figure is believed to have miraculous powers. The starring roles are those of a young nun yearning for her freedom, and the ‘living statue’ herself, a physically demanding part as the actress had to stand immobile for nearly an hour, holding a heavy wooden baby, before apparently coming to life. Diana Cooper mostly played the statue, but would occasionally switch to the role of the nun.
Duff Cooper accompanied Diana to New York on the Aquitania, and he recorded: ‘I enjoyed that journey as I have enjoyed all subsequent crossings of the Atlantic. We knew nobody on board, but we were sufficient to ourselves and for both of us the journey was a novelty.’5 After six days he sailed home, for the first of their many long separations. He spent Christmas 1923 in the south of France with his mother, while Diana threw herself into rehearsals.
The production opened in New York in January 1924 and was a spectacular success. Due to the increase in their income, the ‘plan’ was coming together. Duff Cooper made six transatlantic trips in ten months, before a general election was unexpectedly called in October 1924 and he was selected as the candidate for Oldham, near Manchester. He telegraphed Diana in New York urging her to sail the day after next on the Homeric. She was back within a week, and the couple successfully campaigned together. Duff Cooper was elected as an MP, Diana swiftly returned to the States, and the pair continued to commute across the Atlantic.
The Miracle was a hit for two winter seasons in New York, then it toured the States, with Diana still in the dual lead roles. This was followed by tours through central Europe, England and Scotland. The financial success of the play was vital to the couple’s long-term hopes, but their only son, John Julius Norwich, also felt that the experience broadened his mother’s horizons. For nearly seven years Diana lived in the world of Austrian-American-Jewish theatre, very different from British society, and she developed an affinity with that milieu. When the Second World War began, she sent her son to the States so that he might be safe in the event of a German invasion, and asked Dr Rudolf Kommer, Max Reinhardt’s right-hand man, to act as the little boy’s guardian.
Though emotionally devoted to his wife, Duff Cooper was notorious for his infidelities. John Julius Norwich reflected that, while the lengthy separations could have threatened their marriage, in fact they were both able to pursue their own interests for many months of each year. Diana had a fulfilling acting career, and her income enabled her husband to become a very distinguished politician. He was appointed British Ambassador in Paris immediately after the Second World War, a prestigious diplomatic role that they both greatly enjoyed.
Such Very Important Passengers were deliberately courted by competing shipping lines, in order to add cachet to their passenger lists. The glamorous Lord and Lady Mountbatten first sailed the Atlantic together on the Majestic in 1922 just after their marriage, and were allocated a sitting room, bedroom, wardroom, dressing room and bathroom, for the price of a single cabin. Their presence always generated excellent publicity for the White Star Line. The British public, who had avidly followed their on-off courtship and subsequent wedding, saw them as – in ‘Dickie’ Mountbatten’s words – ‘semi-royal’. It was only four years since the Armistice, and their nuptials were viewed favourably as a royal wedding that did not involve a German spouse, unlike the pattern before the war. The same public mood prevailed a year later when the second in line to the throne, Dickie’s cousin Prince ‘Bertie’, married a small and pretty Scottish aristocrat called Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, to general satisfaction.
During the voyage, Lady Edwina suffered from seasickness, and barely left their suite, but late at night Dickie would stroll up to the bridge for what he described as ‘a companionable yarn’ with the officers on watch. He took a great interest in the operation and navigation of the ship as he was a fully trained Royal Navy officer. When the newlywed Mountbattens arrived in New York, they were besieged by reporters keen to interview them, and ‘snappers’ wanting their photos for the papers. ‘Simply ripping to be here,’ offered Edwina gamely, in the manner of an Enid Blyton heroine. Next day they gave a press conference, then went to the cinema with Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. They dined with President Harding at the White House and attended the World Series at Madison Square Garden, where they shook hands with the baseball star Babe Ruth. After their east coast sojourn, a private railroad car took them to Hollywood, where they’d been lent the Fairbanks’ house, Pickfair. Both were passionate movie fans, and they met Charlie Chaplin, who made a short film for them as a wedding present, casting the couple in a hold-up minidrama.
Leisure and pleasure aside, there were a number of pioneering women passengers for whom crossing the Atlantic in the 1920s and 1930s was an absolute necessity for their internationalist aims and professional activities. The formidable American-born Lady Nancy Astor, who had met her husband Waldorf on a transatlantic ship, had been elected the first woman Member of Parliament to take up a seat in 1919. Her parliamentary career as MP for a constituency in Plymouth, and her parallel roles as the mother of five children and a leading society hostess kept her busy in London and at the family home, Cliveden, in the immediate aftermath of the Great War. However, when she was invited to attend the 1922 Women’s Pan-American Conference in Baltimore, Nancy took a seven-week leave of absence and set sail for New York with her husband on the Olympic on 13 April. Lady Astor did not go as an official representative of the British government, but she did go with the blessing of her political party, with a personal aim of promoting Anglo-American relations, to bring closer understanding between her adopted country and the nation where she was born.
While on board, Nancy occupied her spare time by exercising on the rowing machines in the ship’s gym, and running circuits of the deck – unorthodox behaviour for a forty-three-year-old female politician in the 1920s. One of the New York newspapers had sent a female reporter on the transatlantic voyage to interview Nancy, and to transmit her articles about Nancy by radio while en route, a daring technical innovation. By the time they disembarked in New York on 18 April, Nancy Astor was a well-known figure in the city. The Astors were besieged by a vast number of journalists, and Nancy was inundated with requests for print and radio interviews. A celebrity on both sides of the Atlantic, there was American pride that a determined Virginian had blazed a trail into the heart of the mother of parliaments.
A staunch Atlanticist, Nancy spoke frequently and passionately on the need for future co-operation between Britain and America, but she kept away from the politically sensitive issue of Prohibition, though her pro-Temperance views were well known. The Astors met President Harding and were welcomed on to the floor of the Senate. They travelled by train to Nancy’s birthplace, Danville, then headed north to Chicago and on to Ottawa, where Nancy addressed the Canadian House of Commons. There followed a busy schedule round the States, with many speaking engagements and a trip to Nancy’s family in Virginia. Nancy’s many frank statements had antagonised the Hearst press, particularly her trenchant views on the treatment of American forces’ war veterans, and she was criticised in the many papers from Maine to California belonging to William Randolph Hearst, the millionaire newspaper proprietor.. Nevertheless, the tour was a triumph.
The Astors set sail on their return journey to Britain on the Aquitania on 23 May 1922. Waldorf’s diary contains this brief last entry, and his relief is palpable: ‘Final visits of friends. Final words with reporters. Final press photos. Ship sailed at 12 noon. After lunch I slept till dinner. After dinner I slept till breakfast the next day.’6
But Waldorf’s hopes of a relaxing trip home were scuppered by his vigorous wife. By chance, her formidable recent critic William Randolph Hearst was travelling on the same ship. Hearst was not keen on the Anglo-American ‘special relationship’, and was critical of many aspects of British life, though he preferred to travel on the Aquitania rather than any American-owned vessel. It was inevitable that when Hearst and Lady Astor met on board sparks flew. Purser Spedding tactfully recalled:
Lord and Lady Astor are great favourites with the whole ship’s company on board the Aquitania, and when they are travelling the ship is theirs … to the great delight of both English and American passengers, also the stewards, who repeated to me as many of Lady Astor’s remarks as they could remember. Nancy gave William Randolph the rounds of the kitchen, telling him exactly what she thought of him; the meeting occurred on deck one bright sunny morning in the presence of Mrs Hearst and her two sons.7
Throughout her long public career Lady Astor recognised the obligation to dress smartly and appropriately on all occasions, in order to be taken seriously in what was largely a man’s world of politics. She had little intrinsic interest in clothes, but relied on the skills of her long-suffering maid Rose Harrison, who accompanied her on ocean voyages, as being on board ship was no excuse for lower sartorial standards. For women who were fashionable society figures, such as Lady Edwina Mountbatten and Lady Diana Cooper – both noted beauties – clothing and appearance were essential aspects of their public personae. For all wealthy women travelling in first class, any sea voyage required a large amount of clothing, as stylish passengers frequently changed from one outfit into another several times a day. Indeed, one appealing aspect of a transatlantic voyage for the modish was the prospect of showing off one’s wardrobe and accessories over the course of six or seven days afloat, in evening outfits for dinner and dancing, and daytime clothes for all eventualities – breakfast in bed, lunchtime parties, sports attire for the gym, tennis court or pool, or stout tweeds for a walk on deck in autumn murk. In addition, passengers on the Atlantic run were advised to bring heavy outerwear such as coats for wearing on deck.
Despite the much trumpeted health-giving properties of exercise and bracing sea breezes, canny women travellers were wary about exposing their garments to ocean weather. Black wool could develop a green tinge because of the salt in the atmosphere, and the texture of serge could pucker if damp. Fur becomes heavy when wet, and can give off a distinctly animal odour. Feathers in hats and bandeaux would lose their joie de vivre, while metallic embroidery and sequins tarnished in salty spray. Notwithstanding modern depictions of interwar heroines in evening wear glittering romantically at the ship’s rail, the truth was more prosaic. Women who cared about their wardrobes stayed firmly indoors while sailing across the North Atlantic, especially when wearing evening dress.
For those travelling in first class, smart luggage was essential. In 1920 the London firm of Waring and Gillow ran advertisements to promote their brown cowhide suitcases, using the clumsy but unsettling slogan ‘By their luggage you shall know whether they be well-born folk or not’. This phrase was guaranteed to play on passengers’ insecurities, whatever their background.
It was important to look the part while travelling, and vast quantities of luggage, from portmanteaux to hatboxes, dressing cases to hold-alls, added to the status of the traveller. Baggage contained clothes and matching accessories to wear on the voyage, as well as jewels, make-up and toiletries. Travel writers recommended Americans take one wardrobe trunk for a man and two for a woman; the second should be empty so that madame could fill it with clothes bought in Paris, or monsieur with Bond Street suits, spats and hats. Where possible, luggage should be stowed under the bunks or even in an adjacent cabin, to prevent these heavy objects being overturned and causing injuries during stormy weather. Any items ‘not wanted on voyage’ were stowed in the hold.
There was an impressive system for identifying and loading luggage of all kinds during the short turn-around time in port: every shipping line required each piece of luggage to have two labels attached, one tied on, the other stuck, detailing the passenger’s name, address, ship and date of sailing. Cabin baggage would also be labelled with the number of the cabin and a large initial denoting the passenger’s first name, so that it could be identified by the stewards. Hold luggage would be picked up by the company and delivered to the pier the day before sailing. The baggage master was in charge of sorting out the allocation of mounds of labelled luggage, despatching it to individual cabins. With porters and stewards to manage the ‘heavy lifting’, the well-heeled traveller would not see their luggage again until they arrived in their cabin.
Manoeuvring large cabin trunks aboard on embarkation was a fraught business; Violet Jessop described watching a hard-pressed steward grappling with one huge piece of luggage, mounted on a hand-barrow:
Down the long alleyway a huge wardrobe trunk on its truck moved waveringly forward. It was the kind of wardrobe trunk without which, at that period, no American woman would think of travelling. It hesitated, as passengers and friends crossed the path of its uncertain progress: now and then, around one side would peer a face – perspiring and apparently sorely tried – but equally determined to carry on.8
A number of specialist firms provided indispensable trunks to suit the need of every elegant traveller. The Parisian company of Louis Vuitton was renowned for its ingeniously designed, practical and chic luggage. Reassuringly expensive, every piece was covered in the company’s distinctive ‘monogram’ patterned canvas, featuring the founder’s initials. One popular design for sea passengers was a large desk trunk, which resembled a tall, compact chest of drawers. It took up comparatively little space in cabins, but its many compartments neatly held accessories and small items of linen.
Packing for a sea voyage was an intricate business. Of course, the wealthy passenger would not pack their own luggage before departure. That was still a specialist job for a servant, though a steward or stewardess might be pressed into service to unpack when the luggage was deposited in the cabin. ‘With expedition and with a sure hand, because her task is accomplished without anxiety, the maid can pack the trunks and bags that will be shipped across the Atlantic, for fashion is now extremely kind to the traveler.’9
Many of the better-off first-class travellers brought their own maids or valets along on the voyage specifically to care for their wardrobes and general appearance. Body servants, as they were called, were usually accommodated in special interior cabins linked to the individual passenger’s stateroom or cabin, so as to be constantly available for their employers. On the luxurious Olympic, the servants shared a special dining room for maids and valets, and exchanged gossip about their employers: ‘Mary Pickford’s maid tells Rudoph Valentino’s valet how many pairs of silk stockings Mary has, and Rudolf’s valet tells Mary’s maid about Rudolf’s favourite purple satin pyjamas.’10
The printed passenger list for a typical trip on Aquitania, leaving Southampton for New York on 25 June 1921, lists alphabetically the names of 464 people travelling in saloon class, as first class was known on this ship. Nineteen of them had brought their maids, eight had their valets, two had both a maid and a manservant in attendance, and one person was accompanied by a nurse. Second class listed 370 passengers’ names, but no servants. Those travelling without servants inevitably relied on the assistance of their cabin steward or stewardess, and tipped accordingly. The most fashionable ships catered for their passengers’ concern with their appearance by providing fine laundering aboard, and an ever increasing workforce of dressmakers, masseuses and beauty therapists were employed to improve their female passengers’ sense of wellbeing and bonhomie. Many of the women engaged by the shipping firms to pamper their female passengers originally came from quite ordinary or humble working-class backgrounds, and often grew up in port cities such as Liverpool or Southampton. The positions newly available on board the great liners ploughing across the Atlantic provided excellent opportunities for them to earn a good living, to travel the world, and to acquire a level of sophistication and worldly knowledge that would not have been available to them had they stayed on dry land.
Every liner with any pretensions to passenger comfort carried a number of female hairdressers to meet the constant demand. Between the wars, maintaining an elegant and soignée appearance while afloat was considered essential for any woman with a sense of style, but even the most chic coiffure could be turned into a frizzy mess, thanks to the damp, wind and salt spray. While the wealthiest women travelled with their own maids, who could dress the mistress’s hair every day, most would rely on the dexterity and skilled expertise of the ship’s hairdressers.
The mother of a future Archbishop of Canterbury was known as ‘Madame Edna’, a professional hairdresser who made home visits around Liverpool. Ann Benson had married a Scottish-born engineer, and they lived in Crosby with their four children. The three eldest were close in age, but the youngest, Robert, was a much later addition to the family; he described himself as an ‘autumn leaf’. Ann was always keen to travel, and Robert recalled a family friend, a Cunard steward called Bill Barnard, who would bring them gifts of exotic American chocolates and cigarettes obtained on his voyages. Ann, who was rather a volatile beauty with large brown eyes and curly auburn hair, found home life both humdrum and stifling, and suffered badly from ennui. She went to work as a freelance hairdresser on a succession of Cunard passenger ships in the early 1920s, and chose the more fashionable name ‘Nancy’ as her on-board professional persona, ‘Madame Edna’ being perhaps a little too ponderous. Nancy Runcie and her friend Peggy Levy signed up for a world cruise with Cunard in 1923. Two-year-old Robert was handed over to his great-aunt, while the rest of the family relied on their easy-going and sociable father, the capable eldest sister, Kathleen, who was fourteen, and the help of a servant. Ann’s voyage took her to San Francisco, Cairo and Yokohama. Robert’s older brother, Kenneth, who was ten at the time, remembered feeling forsaken because their mother was away for nearly five months, but the other siblings accepted that their father stayed close to home while their mother travelled overseas. Although unusual by the general standards of the 1920s, for the families of seafarers of both sexes parental absences of varying lengths were a matter of routine, even necessity. Seafaring mothers often relied on their extended families – or even neighbours – to look after their children on an informal basis while they were away at sea, sometimes for months at a time, and small but useful sums would change hands to recompense the children’s adoptive ‘aunties’.
Ann Runcie was employed on sea voyages where demand was high for lady hairdressers (as opposed to ladies’ hairdressers, who were men). She usually worked freelance at home, so could set her own rate for different services. However, if they were engaged by the shipping company, lady hairdressers were paid at the same rate as the ship’s assistant barber. This was a great improvement on the wages usually available to them ashore, and there were also tips from grateful passengers. While Ann’s earnings usefully augmented the family’s finances, it seems her contact with affluent passengers on board ship also made her extremely ambitious for her offspring. Ann had had a lacklustre education, but was a keen reader. She encouraged young Robert to study the classics at school, an unorthodox decision in Liverpool in the 1930s – because of the Depression, most families wanted their children settled in a steady job, or an apprenticeship, as soon as they could leave school. However, Ann was thrilled when Robert gained a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford. He went on to serve in the Scots Guards, renowned as a ‘smart’ regiment; she would pump him for names of his fellow officers, then go to the public library to look them up in Debrett’s. Tellingly, Robert Runcie later described himself as a ‘chameleon’, with an ability to adopt the accents of his social group wherever he found himself.11 He lost his Merseyside accent and took on the voices of his public-school friends, first at Oxford and, later, in the army, a social skill that he may have inherited from his observant, aspirational and hard-working mother.
By the mid-1920s the range of roles available to women seafarers on the ocean liners was expanding, and there were now unparalleled career opportunities for many women from less privileged backgrounds. The long-standing assumption that working women would be tolerated by their male colleagues only in ‘nurturing’ capacities, as stewardesses or nurses, was being eroded. Any shipping line enterprising enough to provide novel and amusing daytime diversions for its wealthy but occasionally bored lady passengers would be likely to improve its reputation and ensure their repeat custom.
One new role for women seafarers was that of swimming instructress. The post-war obsession with health, physical fitness and the enjoyment of sport, known as the Cult of the Body, had made it fashionable for more liberated women to swim for pleasure as well as for exercise, and the transatlantic ships had impressive heated seawater indoor pools for passengers’ use. Women and children swam at separate times from the men, so female pool supervisors and professional swimming instructresses were required to ensure their safety, and to provide lessons and demonstrations of diving and swimming techniques on request. Demand was high: Mrs Nan Palmer spent six years as swimming instructress on the Majestic, employed by White Star. She claimed that on one particularly hectic voyage she spent two whole days in the pool, except for mealtimes.12
But it was Hilda James who was the trailblazer in this field. Born in 1904, Hilda was a window cleaner’s daughter from Liverpool, and a remarkably talented swimmer. She won a silver medal for Britain at the Antwerp Olympics in 1920, aged only sixteen. There she met the American Olympic team and became friends with their manager, Charlotte Epstein, captain of the Women’s Swimming Association, based in New York. They taught her the new swimming stroke known as the American crawl, and she was subsequently unbeatable, setting five new English records and two world records in just three months in 1920. Throughout 1921 swimming records continued to fall to Hilda, who was known as the English Comet. She became a popular sporting celebrity, and her triumphs were much featured in the press, especially in Liverpool.
In 1922 the Cunard company offered to provide free passage for Hilda to travel to the United States to take part in invitation swimming races, galas and exhibitions. Hilda’s mother, Gertie James, grudgingly agreed to accompany her as chaperone. In addition, the company gave Hilda a complimentary life membership of the Cunard Club at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool, so she could practise swimming in the pool. The company was sponsoring one of the country’s top sporting personalities, someone who they regarded as a public relations asset, and a potential future employee.
Hilda, her mother, her coach Mr Howcroft and his wife Agnes, travelled by train for Southampton on 21 July 1922. They were provided with second-class cabins on the Aquitania, but were entitled to dine in the first-class Louis XVI dining room. They were invited on to the bridge, and given an escorted tour of the ship. Hilda proved to be very popular with the passengers, the captain and the crew. She gave a number of swimming demonstrations in the indoor pool, and she coached swimmers, which she enjoyed.
On arrival in New York on 28 July 1922, Hilda was amazed by the vibrancy of the city. With her American friend Charlotte (known as Eppie), she enjoyed a formal dinner at the Waldorf Astoria, went sightseeing in New York, took a trip up the fifty-seven floors of the Woolworth Building, marvelled at the Statue of Liberty, rode on the Staten Island Ferry, and visited Central Park.
Touring the north-eastern States was an education for Hilda, who was still only eighteen. The tour was intended to raise the public’s awareness of swimming as a suitable sport for women. Various clubs held galas and invitation events, and the local competition against Hilda was fierce. She broke a number of British and American records, and at Indianapolis she watched a young champion swimmer competing. A tentative friendship developed between them; his name was Johnny Weissmuller.
After returning to New York, Hilda and Agnes Howcroft were escorted by Eppie to Bloomingdale’s, the smart department store, to try on frocks, as there was to be a formal dinner-dance at Madison Square Garden to mark the end of Hilda’s tour. Hilda and Agnes enjoyed the fantasy of dressing up in evening gowns, but knew they could not afford to buy anything to wear. To their amazement Eppie presented them with dress bags containing the lovely outfits they had just tried on, and with matching shoes and handbags. The clothes had been paid for by various American swimming organisations and benefactors. Due to Hilda’s amateur status, she could accept ‘gifts in kind’, though not cash. Still reeling from their benefactors’ generosity, Hilda and Agnes were given a professional makeover. Hilda’s humble background and teenage years spent competing in swimming tournaments had not accustomed her to beauty treatments, but the results were impressive. Hilda and Johnny Weissmuller were the joint guests of honour at the dinner; Johnny danced with Hilda and gave her the medal he had won in Indianapolis the first night they had met.
Hilda escaped her chaperones to spend a romantic day at Coney Island with Johnny, and they returned to Manhattan without Hilda’s truancy being discovered. Johnny was still painfully shy, but they exchanged a kiss. Weissmuller’s swimming career was just taking off: he went on to win five Olympic gold medals, and broke nearly seventy world records. Handsome and with an impressive physique, he became a model, then an international film star, playing Tarzan, King of the Jungle, in twelve movies.
Hilda, her mother and the Howcrofts returned on the Mauretania on 5 September – they had been upgraded to first class. As before, Hilda gave swimming shows and coached her fellow passengers. At the captain’s table one evening, she was told that Cunard was planning a new type of ship for ocean cruising, that it would want swimming instructresses, but also intelligent, sociable ‘people people’; had she thought of turning professional? Hilda was tempted, but in order to compete in the 1924 Paris Olympics she needed to retain her amateur status, so she declined.
A rapturous reception back in Liverpool was hosted by the city’s Lord Mayor. By crossing the Atlantic, Hilda’s life had been transformed. She had adapted to the social mores of life afloat, and impressed her fellow passengers and the officers with her affability. Her experiences in America had shown her that a more glamorous life was possible, and she had made genuine friendships. She planned to move to New York when she was twenty-one; however, she was still three years away from living independently, and her controlling parents increasingly viewed her achievements with jaundiced eyes.
In September 1922 Hilda set another world record, for the 150 yards freestyle, and began training in earnest for the British Olympic team. She was a strong contender, and was predicted to secure three gold medals, despite her youth. But in November 1923 a huge family row erupted in the James household. Hilda’s mother Gertie, always prone to furious and irrational rages, refused to let her daughter join the British team abroad unless she could go too. The Paris Olympics were scheduled from 4 May until 27 July 1924, and the Olympic Women’s team was provided with official chaperones. Mrs James could travel with them, but she would have to do so at her own expense. Gertie felt entitled to benefit from her daughter’s sporting prowess. If she wasn’t offered a complimentary trip to Paris, she would not permit Hilda to participate.
What had started as a heated family argument escalated into an ugly and horrifying assault. Hilda’s father John had a nasty temper; goaded by his histrionic wife and stung by his daughter’s defiance, he gave Hilda a savage beating with his leather belt, leaving her unconscious. The following morning Hilda could barely stand; she dressed with great difficulty, packed a small case, and escaped to her Aunt Marjorie and Uncle Jim’s house nearby. Her relatives were appalled, and called a doctor who treated her injuries. It was three weeks before her wounds began to heal. Aunt Marjorie berated her brother, and warned him that they had informed the police of his assault, to deter any future violence.
Hilda, badly bruised and traumatised, was denied the chance of participating in the 1924 Olympics in Paris by her parents. Having produced a daughter with astonishing talent, dedication and great willpower, they had deliberately sabotaged her chances, just as she was on the brink of international success. Hilda was now counting the days till her twenty-first birthday, 27 April 1925, when she would be free to live independently. Having missed selection for the Olympics, it was no longer necessary to maintain her precious amateur status. She could turn professional, carry on swimming and make a living from her talent.
Cunard offered Hilda a job as the ‘resident professional’ at their swimming club at the Adelphi Hotel. Yet again her parents were implacably opposed to any professional career for her and refused to give their permission. Hilda didn’t risk another confrontation and possible punishment beating. This time she would use subterfuge and rely on the support of friends. She replied to Cunard, asking if the company might be prepared to employ her once she was twenty-one. Sir Percy Bates, deputy chairman, wrote back, assuring her the company would wait, and invited her to tea with him and his wife at his home, Anderton Hall.
Sir Percy explained to Hilda his plans to develop a new series of liners for leisure cruising. He wanted Hilda to travel on board as an employee and give swimming displays and lessons to the passengers. She was a celebrity, and she had proved herself to be entertaining company, sociable and resourceful. He also gave her his telephone number, ‘in case there was any more family trouble at home’. Hilda realised he probably knew about her beating, as he was a local Justice of the Peace and had good contacts with the police. Percy wanted to offer his support in a practical way, with a job on Cunard’s new cruise ship, the RMS Carinthia, which was to be operational by the summer of 1925. For Hilda this was the opportunity that changed her life.
The Carinthia was designed as Cunard’s cruise liner, running between Britain and New York, with world tours every winter, and shorter summer cruises. Percy wanted Hilda as part of his hand-picked team of senior officers. Officially she would be the swimming instructress, with regular pool and swimming duties, but also act as an entertainment hostess to the guests as required. This was a new role – Cunard needed someone to charm the passengers, helping to keep them amused. Hilda accepted, but on condition that her new job could be kept secret from her family till the very last minute in order to avoid another family row.
Hilda was discreetly put on the Cunard payroll on 1 July 1925. She was given a secret tour of the Carinthia, during which she changed into her swimming costume and posed for publicity photos on the edge of the pool. She gradually smuggled her few belongings out of the family home and stored them in the Adelphi Hotel. On the morning of the Carinthia’s maiden voyage she planned to set out for central Liverpool as though she was going to the Adelphi for a swim, leaving a letter for her father to find after the ship had sailed.
But the day before Hilda’s planned escape, there was another volcanic family row, and Hilda finally snapped. She told her mother that as she was now twenty-one years old, she was independent and that the next night she would be leaving Liverpool on the new Cunard ship the Carinthia. Gertie was inarticulate with fury, and, screaming uncontrollably, she flung a metal pan at Hilda, who dodged it. John heard the commotion and came running into the kitchen. Hilda slipped out of the door before he could stop her, and escaped to her aunt and uncle’s house once more.
The following day, Saturday, 22 August 1925, there was a traditional maiden voyage send-off from the Pier Head at Liverpool. Brass bands oompahed as passengers embarked on the Carinthia, the most modern and luxurious of Cunard’s ships. Luggage was loaded, photographers and reporters recorded the occasion, and there was a general air of anticipation and celebration.
On the packed quayside, her sister Elsie appeared, carrying the modest suitcase Hilda had left behind in her flight the night before. The two sisters hurriedly exchanged news. After Hilda’s escape, Gertie screamed so much that she made herself sick, and then sat in a chair seething for the rest of the evening. John James had hurtled out of the house in pursuit of his errant daughter. He returned eventually in a towering rage, prompting Gertie to start ranting about hell; the resulting row between the parents continued unabated throughout the night. Elsie and their two brothers had hidden in fear. The following morning, John instructed Elsie to collect together all Hilda’s remaining belongings and dispose of them. When Gertie started declaiming on her favourite theme of sin, John told her forcefully that he wished that she had left instead of Hilda, and thundered out again.
That day’s copy of the Liverpool Evening Post prominently featured the publicity photos of Hilda poised on the edge of the Carinthia’s pool, and the announcement of her appointment. Elsie knew that when the paper was delivered to the James family home in the afternoon it would lead to further drama, so she had collected Hilda’s remaining few possessions and brought them to the Pier Head, together with Hilda’s small suitcase. In addition, she gave Hilda a thick envelope and told her not to open it till safely at sea. The sisters agreed to write to each other using a go-between; Elsie wished her luck and Hilda went aboard in tears.
Hilda’s twin cabin was in the female-only crew quarters, near the medical room. She was to share with one of the hairdressers, and the luggage she had hidden at the Adelphi had already been delivered to the cabin. Their corridor was lined with twin rooms – the other female crew were cleaners, laundry staff, nurses, stewardesses and a physiotherapist, but Hilda was the first swimming instructress.
At 5.30 p.m. Captain Diggle gave the order and the Carinthia inched out of Liverpool on its maiden voyage. Onlookers and passengers cheered, brass bands played, hats were waved and an exuberant send-off was enjoyed by all. There was a salute from other craft on the Mersey, a chorus of whistles, hoots and toots, a venerable tradition for a first voyage.
Elsie returned doggedly to the festering family home, while Hilda hid in her cabin until winkled out by a new female colleague, and taken off to have supper in the crew’s dining room. Later, Hilda had a crisis of confidence. She had left behind everything familiar, and severed her links with her parents. She had no idea what the new job entailed, or whether she would be able to do it. In the envelope Elsie had given her she found a letter: her sister promised to look after their younger brothers, and there was some money, which she had saved from her small teaching salary. Lonely and exhausted, Hilda cried herself to sleep.
The following day was better. The other women on board were thrilled to discover they had a celebrity, an Olympic medal-winner, as their new workmate. Hilda was given a programme including a timetable for coaching passengers in the luxurious pool, which was designed in Roman style with marble columns, seating, a sauna and well-appointed changing rooms. There were curved staircases down from the deck above, providing a grande descente for the sporty, a witty reference to the elegant and fashionable staircase above decks in the restaurant. Hilda had a small office too, next to the pool, which offered a welcome escape from her tiny cabin. Passengers flocked to the pool with requests for personal tuition.
She was invited to dine one evening with Captain Diggle in the Adams Room, in first class. Fortunately, she had the gala dress bought for her at Bloomingdale’s in 1922, which she had smuggled out to the Adelphi prior to her escape. The seamstress insisted she must wear it, the laundrymaid pressed it for her, and the hairdresser tackled her hair. Hilda was also initiated into the mysteries of applying make-up, a novelty as she had spent most of her formative years plunging into or thrashing around in cold water. In addition, she had never tried an alcoholic drink before – like so much of her new life, her parents thought it ‘sinful’. At the captain’s table she was seated next to the ship’s senior wireless officer, Hugh McAllister, whom she had first met on her trip to New York. They were delighted to see each other again; he had known for months that Cunard intended to employ Hilda on the Carinthia, and he had signed on in the hope of meeting her once more.
The ship arrived in New York on 31 August 1925, and Hilda had five days’ shore leave. She met her old swimming pal Eppie who knew the true story behind the ‘lost Olympics’. Eppie was convinced that if Hilda had competed in Paris the previous year, the American team would not have swept the board of medals as they had.
A newly confident Hilda wrote a proposed job description for herself, as requested, and sent it to Sir Percy. She wanted to be more involved with the passengers beyond the confines of the pool, by organising deck games and devising on-board competitions to entertain them. Sir Percy agreed, gave her a new title – Cruise Hostess – and raised her salary substantially. In future she was to travel in a second-class stateroom – a vastly superior billet – and she was also provided with a set of formal uniforms, to match the male officers’ ‘whites’.
For the next four years Hilda worked as a Cruise Hostess on board Cunard’s new fleet of luxury liners, accompanying exclusive world cruises organised by American travel agents Raymond-Whitcomb. The itinerary varied, but the wealthy clientele were mostly Americans, industrialists and financiers, theatre stars and millionaires, and they would be travelling for months. Because of the strictures of Prohibition, the bars on board had to wait until the Carinthia left US territorial waters before they could open and there ensued an all-night party.
Hilda’s prime role as hostess was to entertain the passengers, to get to know them and find ways to keep them amused, for which she had to be adaptable and resourceful. There were formal evening dances, with music provided by the band, but Hilda and the gym staff also devised daytime pursuits, deck games or board games. She learned card games and developed a number of casino tricks, such as impressive card shuffles. She had bought a book of crossword puzzles in New York and had copies printed up by the on-board newspaper office. She created treasure hunts, and staged crimes that had to be detected by the passengers. She also led the swimming activities, coaching individuals, and organising water polo or water volleyball. The pool became a centre of fun and jollity. Hugh McAllister was very attentive, taking her round the wireless office and the bridge, and inviting her to the officers’ mess, which was unusual for any female crew member. She hosted an out-of-hours pool party for officers, by way of return, and unsuccessfully attempted to teach Hugh to swim.
By signing on for all available work as a cruise hostess, Hilda managed to avoid seeing her parents for a year, making a good living crossing the Atlantic and touring the world, her salary augmented by generous tips from her passengers. Her loyal siblings Elsie, Jack and Walter managed to negotiate a partial reconciliation with her parents, so, weeks later, Hilda turned up at the family home dressed in a leather coat and astride a brand-new motorcycle. Her parents were appalled, but Hilda didn’t care, and took her siblings out riding pillion. The motorbike brought her even more independence, as she could travel quickly around Liverpool whenever she was back in port. In 1926 Hilda received a ‘very strongly worded letter’ from Nancy Astor MP, who had been visiting the city and was walking along the promenade at Parkgate when Hilda thundered past. Lady Astor wrote to Hilda criticising such unladylike behaviour from a supposed role model for the younger generation. Hilda took no notice, and, tellingly, Nancy Astor – a speed enthusiast – acquired and learned to ride her own motorbike during the Second World War, when she was nearly sixty.
Hilda’s life was transformed by her new status and her confidence. Whenever she performed on land she was always billed as ‘the Cunard World Champion Swimmer Hilda James’. She completed a number of world cruises, survived hurricanes off the coast of Bermuda, and visited Hollywood, Hawaii, Cairo, Australia and the Baltic. Daringly, she would smoke the occasional cigarette, and have a beer or two while dealing the cards in the officers’ mess. On board the orchestra played the latest dance tunes, and Hilda could Charleston.
By now Hilda and Hugh were definitely a couple. Hugh was no Johnny Weissmuller; he was a poor dancer, and he had no talent for swimming. But sitting together on a trip ashore, he held her hand for the first time after six years of friendship. In 1929 Hugh proposed marriage, a development that surprised none of their acquaintances, and a celebratory engagement party was held on board the Carinthia in New York. Sir Percy accepted Hilda’s resignation when their ship returned to Liverpool. She was now to become a professional swimming instructress in Liverpool, and her sailing days were over, though Hugh continued going to sea as a wireless officer for Cunard. They married in September 1930, despite sullen resistance from Hilda’s parents, and their son Donald was born the following May.
Hilda James travelled the world first as a passenger, invited to America to compete as a talented sportswoman, and later as a seafaring professional. Working in international travel in the 1920s allowed her to see how different life could be, and provided opportunities to transcend her modest beginnings. She was helped by the generosity and goodwill of her many friends, and gained the confidence that might have eluded her if she had stayed at home, cowed by her parents. Like many women from less well-off backgrounds, sailing the Atlantic as a career transformed her life.
For many of Hilda’s female contemporaries, the great ocean liners offered career opportunities unimaginable before the Great War. Administrative roles, such as stenography, were first opened to women as a direct result of the wartime shortage of male labour; now it was possible to gain employment as a typist in the purser’s office, or to travel as a private secretary to a wealthy international passenger. Hairdressers such as Ann Runcie could change their professional names to something more aspirational, leave their children to be looked after by family members and sail away for months at a time to satisfy their wanderlust, augment the family income and raise their social aspirations by filling well-paid positions on Cunard liners. The seasoned stewardess, the ‘unsinkable’ Violet Jessop, was recruited to take to the seas again, her hard-won experience deemed invaluable in meeting the increasing demand from female passengers.
On the North Atlantic run, their clients were predominantly the women of the upper decks, the privileged and fashionable, such as Lady Mountbatten; the creative, such as Elinor Glyn. There were celebrities and performers, such as Lady Diana Cooper, who flitted across the ocean balancing her career commitments with those of her family. There were international figures intent on improving Anglo-American relations, such as Lady Astor, who were travelling at their own agency, in pursuit of their own goals, even if they did occasionally have their respective husbands ‘in tow’. After four long years of war, women of means were demonstrating an independence of action and movement, and as the golden age of transatlantic travel dawned, they required unprecedented levels of services from the on-board female workforce.