Hitherto, this page had an incomplete table of Masters of the “Green Goddess”. For a very long
while I've been wondering whether or not I would ever gain access to information to complete the picture.
Now that I'm in a position to do this, it's time to make best use of that information. Attempting to place
a chronological list of all Caronia's Masters and the voyages they commanded on one page is not feasible.
Lower down this page is a list of Captains with links
placed to relevant pages in a new Voyages Index.
The index links above take you to these new pages, which now form an adjunct to the Year Indexes
of the Timeline. They also form part of the Key Events index, joining the summaries of the ports which
Caronia visited. The remainder of this page carries known information about Caronia's Masters.
Caronia's Masters
The Caronia was a popular choice for all of its Masters, and all were well respected by their Officers and
Crew. Captain Donald Sorrell, Caronia's first Master very quickly established a reputation for looking after
the ship's company. He also started several traditions that would survive throughout her career.
One of his “temporary” decisions was to have a crew swimming pool erected on Caronia's foredeck. In fact,
rather than being temporary, it lasted the life of the ship in Cunard ownership, being rebuilt several times when
damaged by rough seas.
Captain Robert Thelwell was by far the longest serving “Green Goddess” Master. He was always heavily
involved with promoting sports for the crew, especially boxing. Only on a few occasions did he not officiate at
exhibition matches held on Caronia's aft Promenade deck.
The rotation of Masters was usually based upon each taking Caronia on a world cruise in turn. Only 'Bill'
Warwick ever did two of these consecutively. He was due to have swapped commands with John Treasure Jones.
However between them, the two Captains decided to stay with their current commands. Captain Jones continued
on the RMS Mauretania, and Captain Warwick stayed on board “My Yacht”, as he liked to call the Caronia.
Photo Ref: AQ044 - 1954 at Kobe
Captain Williams with local guests on Promenade Deck Photo: Courtesy of Ave Quin
Captain John Treasure Jones seemed fated to be the last Commander of several Cunard ships - he'd taken the RMS
Queen Mary out to her retirement in Long Beach, California, then the RMS Mauretania to the breakers in Scotland.
He also took charge of the Caronia on the short move to the drydock from Berth 101 at So'ton after her last Cunard voyage.
List of Caronia's Masters
Below is a list of Masters in chronological order of commanding the “Green Goddess”. Links in the right
hand column take you to the voyages list under that command period. Note that several Masters had been Staff
Captains earlier in Caronia's career.
Note:
The addition of Captain's decorations is complete only inasmuch as these are confirmed.
The missing ones require further research.
The original page took quite a while to compile, with information received only in a piecemeal fashion. My thanks go
to Brian Hawley for providing information on the Masters of several voyages in the early versions of this page.
Thanks also to Ave Quin, who was aboard Caronia for many years, for giving me sight of his Discharge Book. From this I
was able to compile an almost complete and definitive list beyond 1955. The gaps in Ave Quin's information have been
filled thanks to sight of former Master at Arms James Loftus’ discharge book, kindly provided by his grand-daughter
Emma Kinsella.
Another contributing resource for establishing sailing dates on this page and the Voyages Indexes has been Ancestry.com.
