
Perhaps many of you have been on a cruise. It seems to me that I was one of the last amongst my friends to actually take up cruising, in the modern sense of the word. For I always considered that only old people went on cruises. Young people went on much more adventuresome travels, as we did. So the first cruise my husband and I took was to Alaska, to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary, just six years ago and when we were both age appropriate senior citizens.
But in actual fact, we both had travelled separately by ship many years before that.
Before I knew him, in 1957, A sailed from Sydney to Vancouver and then on to Ottawa by train where he spent two years as a post doctoral fellow, before sailing on the Cunard Line to London, England. But that's his story to tell, mine is below.
You see, when I was 24, I set sail from Sydney, Australia to travel by ship to Southampton, England via the Suez Canal. It seemed obligatory for young Australians to travel to Great Britain, to spend some time on a working holiday. It was almost a rite of passage, like leaving home. Since Sydney had a severe housing shortage for very many years after the war, young people always lived at home until they got married or they went travelling. So after I had graduated from University in 1957 and saved every penny for two years, I left home intending to travel to London to combine working and travelling in the UK and on the Continent. After that it was my plan to visit a friend who had married a Canadian and was living in Toronto, then finally return to Australia and open a pharmacy. Ah well, "the best laid schemes of mice and men are apt to go astray", from the Robbie Burns poem and rather loosely paraphrased by me.
In March of 1960, I boarded the
SS Fairsky, of the Sitmar line, to make my first voyage. Built in 1942, this ship served as an escort aircraft carrier during the Second World War and was refitted to be a passenger ship in 1957. The Sitmar line held the contract for transporting emigrants from Great Britain to Australia for the heavily government subsidized amount of 10 pounds per person but on the return journey took regular paying passengers. I can't remember how much I paid for the fare, although about 200 pounds rings a bell, however it was much cheaper than flying which was only done by very rich people in those days.
This ship, seen above, was 502 feet long, 69 feet wide, gross tonnage was 12,464, top speed 17.5 knots and had accommodation for 1461 passengers and I don't know how many crew since I can't find that information.
Compare this with the
Zaandam, the ship I just sailed on to Alaska: 780 feet long, 105.8 feet wide, gross tonnage 61,396, top speed 23 knots and accommodation for 1432 passengers and 647 crew members.
Yes folks, the
Zaandam is five times the size of the
Fairsky, with almost the same number of passengers. So a slightly different sailing experience, don't you think? Yes indeed. I shared a cabin with 3 other women; there were two sets of double bunks. I have included a link here to show you
that cabin. Although I'm pretty sure we didn't have a porthole as this one shows, but remember it as an inside cabin. Toilet and shower facilities were communal, of course.

Above you see a photo of me, at 24, in my slim days and dressed in my favourite dress at the time, and of course wearing a hat, as ladies always did at that time, for all occasions. One of the wonderful things about a ship's departure in those days was that all your friends could come down to visit the ship and when it left those on board threw streamers to those on the wharf. A band always played "
Now is the hour", a New Zealand song, originally sung to the New Zealand soldiers leaving for the First World War. You both held on to those streamers until they broke and of course everyone cried because this was a very big journey you were setting out on and who knew when you would see your loved ones again. Just reading the words below brought tears to my eyes.
Now is the hour,
when we must say goodbye
Soon you'll be sailing,
far across the sea.
While you're away,
Oh please remember me.
When you return,
you'll find me waiting here
This voyage was scheduled to last for five weeks and it took at least a week for people to gain their sea legs. Luckily I was not sea sick although more than half the passengers were in the beginning. We stopped first at Melbourne, then Adelaide and I remember by this time feeling woozy when we went ashore since we had adjusted to the motion of the ship and now felt land sick instead.
So what did we do all day on the ship of 1960? Although I was travelling on my own, I knew one person on the ship, the brother of one of my fellow pharmacy students at University. But pretty soon we had formed a group of about 10 or so and we lazed away the days between ports, sitting around the tiny pool, playing cards, eating rather ordinary meals and generally filling in time. There were very long stretches at sea, ten days between Adelaide and Colombo, Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was known at that time. To be honest, a lot of the time we were bored silly. There was no entertainment except at night, when a very hum drum band played for dancing. The quickstep and the foxtrot, the popular dances of the time, had never been mastered by me and I wasn't a drinker so basically I was just wishing for time to pass so that we could arrive. I did click with two other girls and we decided to find a flat (apartment for the North Americans) together in London on our arrival.
We made several quite interesting stops along the way. Colombo as I said, although I don't remember that too well, apart from buying a sari which I later gave away as a gift. Then at the bottom of the Suez Canal, at Suez, we disembarked and took a trip to Cairo for the day to see the Pyramids and the Sphinx at Giza and to visit the Cairo Museum, where we saw the Tutankhamen treasures, all covered with dust and scattered higgeldy piggeldy in glass cases. They were much more beautifully displayed when they toured North America, many years later, when I got to see them again in their full glory. We also got to ride extremely bad tempered camels, all of which seemed to be named Jack Straw. Finally, at Port Said, we rejoined the ship which had been wending its way up the canal in the meantime.
Our last stop before Southampton was in Naples where we left the ship to visit Pompeii for the day. This too was interesting, although probably more so today because I believe much more of the site has been excavated. One of my favourite books as a teenager was
The Last Days of Pompeii, by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, which I know is considered to be very badly written, but I loved this story of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Do you know I still have the book to this day? The most momentous thing I remember about this trip was that the guides would not let the women in the party into one of the few excavated buildings which had been a brothel. You see the frescoes were not fit for maidenly consumption. Remember it was 1960, and as usual I was mightily incensed, but to no avail.
Finally, we reached Southampton and my long voyage from Australia was at an end. To my mind, it was about two weeks too long, for I enjoyed the first three weeks and endured the last two. After that I took to flying, no matter that it cost more. I had had my fill of sailing by boat for many years to come.
In case you are interested the Fair Sky caught fire and was scrapped in 1979. But from 1942 to 1979 she had a very interesting career with at least half a dozen names changes and as well as being an aircraft carrier and a cruise ship she was waiting to be transformed into a floating hotel and casino when she caught fire.
Next time, I'll tell you about modern cruising where there is so much entertainment and so much food that it has become an entirely different experience from my first "cruise".