Pier pressure…
At first glance the announcement that the Thai Marine Department is proposing large-scale international cruise ship port in Pattaya, a project with price tag of more than 7.4 billion baht, seemed as impracticable as it was unlikely.
However, research into the current state of the cruise market reveals that by 2035 the largest cruising market by far will be out of China and Asia generating more than 10 million cruise passengers annually from China alone. So the idea does, at a pinch, seem to fit with the resort’s marketing strategy.
The drawback must be the fact that Pattaya has little to offer in the way cultural/historic interest, unless you include louche bars and massage parlours in the equation! Most cruise passengers are surely more inclined to want to visit Bangkok, just a little too far for a comfortable day trip, remember cruise vessels usually depart again early evening. The company wants passengers back on board spending their money in the ship’s bars and restaurants etc, not ashore!
One more rather alarming item emerged from my somewhat unscientific research.
Construction of China’s first domestic large cruise liner, delayed by the Covid pandemic, has just completed. The Adora Magic City will ply international routes in East Asia and Southeast Asia from Shanghai. The 135,500-tonne vessel will have up to 5,246 passengers in 2,125 cabins. To the Scribbler this sounds like some kind of maritime nightmare! Would Pattaya really be able to absorb that number in a day?
Maritime memories…
The research put me in a reminiscent mood taking me back six decades to my own youthful years at sea. Not ‘before the mast’ but in the somewhat more prosaic role as ship’s photographer and lucky to experience life aboard the ocean going liners in their final few years. They were not the over-large floating apartment blocks of today but proper ships designed for speed and to cut safely through the fiercest storm the seven seas could throw at them to arrive in New York, Southampton, Le Havre, Hamburg, Sydney or Cape Town on schedule. One wonders how the likes of the aforementioned Adora Magic City would cope in a real Atlantic winter storm!
The sight of a graceful ocean liner slicing through the waves was a sight to behold. Travellers embarked on journeys that promised not only a destination but also an unforgettable voyage, storms and rough seas were accepted as part of the experience. They were more than just ships – they were symbols of an era when travel itself was an art form, a time when passengers dressed for dinner (except on the first night of the voyage) to dine on fine food prepared by top chefs.
Air travel offering speed and affordable fares eventually dimmed the allure of the liners and led to their decline. At first the decline was gradual until the mid-1970s when Gulf wars and the resulting huge surge in fuel costs delivered the coup de grace. One by one, these magnificent vessels were retired from service and scrapped, although Cunard does still operate the occasional Atlantic line crossing with Queen Mary 2, a modern vessel built to be a liner as well as a cruise ship. However, nostalgia lingers in the hearts of those lucky ‘old salts’ who had the luck to know and love them.
Running away to sea…
Picture London’s old Liverpool Street station on a grey, drab, drizzling and foggy day 62 years ago. A young man not yet 20 boards a grotty British Railways train for Colchester. That young fellow was the Scribbler on the run from a junior and very boring Civil Service job taking the first step on a journey into a thrilling new world.
The Essex town was home to an unusual photographic business, on the one hand recording the endless cycle of events in the lives of Colchester’s citizens – weddings, babies etc. Its other business was rather more exciting. Since the early 1920s Marine Photo had been operating photo businesses aboard a number of the then still plentiful liners – P&O, Orient Line, Canadian Pacific and major client the Swedish American Line. I was on my way for an interview with the firm’s proprietors the brothers Ken and ‘Bunce’ Morris. I can only remember one question from that interview.
“Where did you go to school?”
“A boarding school in the Midlands.”
“Good that means you’re not going to get homesick!”.
In a daze I returned to London with instructions to meet up at Tilbury in early January to board the Swedish Lloyd ferry for the two night crossing to Gothenburg there to join the Swedish American Line’s elegant MS Kungsholm bound for New York and the start of her 1962 three month around the world cruise. Heady stuff for a callow Yorkshire lad.
Snapping at the waterline…
Gothenburg at first light, the graceful and gleaming white Kungsholm, her funnels bearing SAL’s blue and gold crest, in her home port. It was a stunning sight that I have never forgotten. Before the cruise we would make the regular line crossing to New York. It was mid-January and the North Atlantic would bear its teeth with three days and nights of violent pitching and rolling, port hole ‘dead lights’ firmly in place, access to open decks declared off limits. Every now and then an extra mighty wave would lift the screws half out of the water with a violent shudder. Kungsholm took it all in her stride to dock at Pier 97 at the advertised time.
Here MS Kungsholm was fitted out and provisioned for the cruise while we were free to explore New York – more heady stuff for the Yorkshire youth!
With passengers embarked our work began. While at sea mornings spent taking orders for photos taken the night before, afternoons in the darkroom printing those orders then into evening dress (white tuxedo when the crew went into ‘whites’) for another round of snapping. On the days in port I would accompany trips ashore – exotic sightseeing! Memorably in Bangkok when Kungsholm anchored in the Chao Phraya estuary, a couple of rice barges were brought alongside.
During the night they would be furnished and carpeted with magnificent buffet breakfasts at the ready. The ship’s orchestra and passengers plus the ship’s photographer embarked to set sail up the river as dawn broke with the rising sun bathing the temples in a golden glow accompanied by carefully chosen music. Another unforgettable moment. I had to pinch myself, not dreaming I am here and being paid for it! All I had to do was keep my Rollieflex at the ready for passenger picture requests.
Before we left New York new cruise crew were required to attend a pep talk by the purser. One item sticks in the memory. ‘How to deflect unwelcome sexual advances by passengers without giving offence’. Of course, he added, if the advance is welcome you are free to accept, “But remember the Swedish American Line accepts no responsibility for any consequence!” He then informed us that when the vessel was in port a free package containing a couple of condoms and two ‘before & after’ medicinal unction would be available at the top of the crew gangway!
After those never to be forgotten months and back in the UK I was posted to the Orient Line’s SS Orsova on short two and three week Mediterranean cruises, then to P&O’s SS Himalaya for a long voyage around the Pacific. Cruising in a somewhat different league Swedish America! But that’s another story for another time.
