There's No Escape!
Being on board a 34,000 ton liner with a total population of up to 1,300 people could be viewed as like being on a floating prison. Never is this more sharply focussed than when there is trouble or a health scare! Whilst for the most part Caronia was quite a “happy ship”, there were times when this would be severely tested.
Certainly not all of Cunard's ships could be described as “happy”! During their time in Cunard Cruising Green, there could not have been a starker difference than between the two sister ships the RMS Franconia and RMS Carmania. I was on board the Carmania and she was without doubt the most unhappy ship that I had sailed on in my brief career. Every one who'd sailed on the Franconia remarked on just how different the two ships were.
So, even though these ships were floating communities often spending several days at a time far from shore, they were never totally isolated from events happening ashore. I don't want to exaggerate the regional differences, but they certainly cannot be ignored! With Caronia being a Liverpool registered ship, there was quite a strong “Scouse” presence on board. With her many sailings from Southampton several more were from the Southern Counties of England.
Of course I can't ignore the guys from Scotland! After all Caronia was built there and although the initial crew had been hand-picked by Cunard, it's inevitable that many men would have been recruited from the Glasgow area. Clearly, as the cutting [Left] illustrates, the first trip to the USA in this month would have been a very testing time!
We need to try and recall the kind of fear and, dare I say it, bigotry of the times. This was 40 years before the current enlightenment and change of attitude toward killer diseases like AIDS. An outbreak of smallpox in Glasgow would have brought every kind of regional difference to the fore on board and for many people it would have been a case of keeping your head down.
Of course, there would be people on board who “loved having a bundle” and within the confines of a ship, they could make it feel very small indeed!
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