Page 35 - ATA

Now And Then: Eighty Years On, I Retrace

My Grandparents’ Long-Ago Voyage To The

Caribbean

In 1936, my grandmother sat on the veranda of

Hotel Americano in Curacao, looking across the Santa Anna Bay channel at the picturesque Dutch-
style waterfront shimmering in its pretty pastel colours, and watching the pontoon bridge swing
open to admit vessels to the island’s giant lagoon.
Eighty years on, I sit in the same spot, pondering the cruise experience that brought my predecessors

to this beautiful Caribbean island: a seven-week round-trip voyage from S outhampton around the
West Indies aboard SS Duchess of Richmond, a ship built in 1928 for the Canadian Pacific Steamship
Company.

I grew up with two old photographs taken in a grand salon aboard that ocean liner, romantic images
of my grandparents and my father Tony, then aged eight, posing in the costumes they had packed for
two fancy-dress balls that book-ended their odyssey.