Page 89 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

hotel side of the ship, which overlapped the role of the Chief Purser. He was, in
essence, awaiting the death or retirement of other captains, but in the meantime
had a pretty cushy job … provided that he liked glad-handing the passengers and
dealing with disciplinary problems (for which he had the assistance of masters-
at-arms, usually retired policemen). Not being trained to do such things, few
senior officers relished that interim, but apparently necessary, step to ascend to
becoming Captain of a major passenger ship.

Once provisioned and with the whole crew aboard, on July 5th, I began to
realise how different was this world from that of my recent past. The ship moved
to the passenger berth (frankly, like most passenger berths in UK, including
the Queens’ special pier at Southampton, a pretty decrepit structure) and I was
ascribed the job of standing guard at the Tourist gangway, presumably to greet
those boarding, not an onerous task and rendering some substantial advantages; I
got to see that our passengers were by no means all old and grumpy. In fact, some
were quite the opposite.

The first day of cruising was as expected. Although it was July, the Bay of Biscay
was, as usual, unpleasantly choppy (though not troublesome, Arcadia having
been only the second of the company’s ships to be fitted with stabilisers, and these
proved to be a big advance in dampening what could be a very uncomfortable
motion), and, typically for the Bay, it poured all day. Nevertheless, the major
routine of the late morning was boat drill, an exercise made mandatory by the
Board of Trade. It is to be recalled that the idea of improving lifeboat capacity
and utility first achieved public notice after the 1912 sinking of Titanic, which
was fitted with an insufficient number of lifeboats to accommodate all aboard,
but which were in any event so difficult to launch that a listing ship in poor
weather (which, of course, would usually be the norm) was unlikely to be able to
safely get all of its occupants safely into lifeboats. Even then, improvements were
limited and regulations ill-thought; while the crew were obliged to practice boat-
drill, passengers were not so instructed. In 1915 Lusitania (the largest passenger
ship then afloat) was torpedoed off the Irish coast. While it happened in bright
daylight hours and conditions were good, listing was rapid and the ropes, sheaves
and davits proved to be so cumbersome that only a few lifeboats were usable. It
is recorded that during a prior lifeboat drill, an alert passenger asked a seaman in
charge of the readying of a lifeboat, “It’s all right drilling your crew, but why don’t
you drill your passengers?” to which the response was to tell the captain, advice
not followed. Presumably it was felt that passengers should not be disturbed from
their amiable routines (reported in ‘Dead Wake’ by Erik Larson). From 1915
things improved, though no seaman would favour abandoning ship in conditions
other than clear days and calm seas (more normal conditions being the foggy
night when Stockholm sliced into Andrea Doria).

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