Cunard Yanks
Although not exclusively connected with the RMS Caronia, being a Liverpool registered ship with a fair number of crew members from that city, the term “Cunard Yanks” can be still be connected to her. So, what does the term mean?
In the early 1950s travelling from the UK, a country still very much in recovery after WWII, to New York was a little bit like time travel. With the prime leaders of any culture being fashion, style and music, the differences between the two countries was very stark. The USA was well ahead of the UK - a statement very much open to challenge today.
In the UK, even three years after official rationing had ended, the fashion industry was still stuck in the past, with fabrics like tweed still very much being the order of the day. As far as music was concerned, the only publicly broadcast radio station throughout the UK was the BBC, offering a very limited quota, mostly based upon music standards with a sprinkling of popular music thrown in.
In the USA, fashions were beginning to explore the possibilities that the new light-weight man-made fabrics brought and there was no stranglehold of just one national radio broadcaster - the range of stations there, offering everything from folk to jazz was bewildering. Recognition of the independent broadcaster in the UK was still some way off.
The chance of going to sea and the rewards that it offered, was, in a city with limited work, an opportunity not to be missed. Little more than a fortnight away from home and lives could be changed, much for the better! So, with hundreds of people joining the Cunard ships and travelling to and from the USA and Canada every week, there was bound to be a knock-on effect.
Access to fashions that would “knock them dead” back home was the one factor that visually marked out these intrepid sailors. They also brought back case loads of long-playing records, mostly of music never previously heard in the UK.
The place where this had the greatest effect was in Liverpool, where “Cunard Yank” was first coined as the descriptive phrase for these travellers. With the “Green Goddess” seen as the ship with the richest pickings, in terms of money earned in tips especially, there's no doubt that the Liverpool crew would make the most the opportunities that the Caronia offered them.
The thriving New York jazz scene, the availability of electric guitars, both supplemented by modern snappy clothes didn't go unnoticed. A new culture would inevitably be established back home, with returning seamen almost being besieged by relatives and friends, all wanting to see what booty had been brought back on that occasion.
Even in the mid-1960s you would not dare walk off that ship, or allow yourself to be associated with her, without being of very smart appearance and sporting a good suntan if coming home from a tropical cruise. Of course you also had to able to back it up by being able to show off the latest dance moves. Were we all posers back then? Of course we were!
There is one inevitable question - if these cultural influences had such an effect on Liverpool, how come there was no “Southampton scene” of world renown? The answer probably lies one major difference twixt the two ports - the “mouches” as people of the southern counties were known, were and probably still are, far more insular than their northern brethren.
Mediterranean 
