Preparing for a Cruise
Days spent at New York would always be exceptionally busy, especially when preparing the ship for a lengthy cruise. For the Chef, preparation would have begun months before with the final food orders being placed weeks before Caronia had even departed from UK shores.
Many folk will have probably heard the term before, but have you ever seen what a real “Shipping Order” looks like? As you read through its contents, try and envisage how and where all that provender is going to be stowed for the duration. Just where and how do you stow half-a-ton of garden peas?
Being the Chef on board ship was much more than dreaming-up mouth-watering menus! Remember, each day the food has to be prepared as if there was a farmer's market just down the road, or that food deliveries were frequent and to the door.
Quite apart from the mountains of food to stow and bars to stock, every square inch of the ship would be cleaned and polished, using good old-fashioned wax and elbow grease! (No aerosols in those days!) The moment that you step aboard as a passenger, you'll notice just how everything gleams!
Probably the greatest time was taken in buffing the miles and miles of alleyways covered in very hard-wearing lino. 2 teams of 4 working two polishing machines each would start at the forward end of an assigned deck. The race down each side of the central divide was on. The competition was not confined to a single deck.
However, there was no short-cutting, as there was also some pride in your results at stake. The 2nd Steward assigned to supervision of this activity had to sign the work off before we were stood down. Make no mistake, he'd report to the Chief Steward; so there was no hiding of anything from him!
Cleaning of staterooms also involved polishing the quite massive brass knobs that held the deadlights over the portholes. The quickest and easiest way was to dunk these in an ice bucket half-filled with flat Coca-Cola. It brought them up a treat! We would often ruminate: goodness knows what it did to your “insides?”
The floors of both restaurants would also be polished and all the table silver burnished. Despite all this activity, there was also an allocation of days or shifts off to go and explore the excitements of New York.
Sterling Cruise
with slide show
