RMS Caronia Timeline

The Gay Scene

(Preface) I need to preface my remarks here because of the massive changes in both the law and in attitudes toward this minority group. The legislation making homosexuality legal in the UK, at least for consenting adults 21 yrs of age or older, was actually passed either during November or December of 1965. The topic is placed here because no Timeline pages exist for either of these months, because Caronia was in Belfast undergoing a major re-fit.

Twenty-one was still the age of majority in the UK in those days, and you needed to be 21 to buy alcohol in a public place in the USA (This latter I believe still applies in some States). I've put this preface in because I want to describe things as they were, which may upset the “politically correct” lobby. Controversial!! Moi?

On most of the larger liners there was the usual group of gay men. There was a joke about there being so many queers on board the Queen Mary that she _had_ to leave port backwards! Notice that this was the QM, the Lizzie, as the Queen Elizabeth was known, would never have featured in such a quip. The irony being that, of the two, it was the “Mary” that was the more well-loved ship, so this would always have been meant endearingly.

To me, as a teenager who then thought that anyone over 30 was old, and over 50 was positively ancient, the queers fell into two camps (no pun intended). There were the “young gay guys” and the “old queens”. As in all walks of life, there were people who were “the salt of the earth”, and others who weren't.

Some of these guys, both young and old, were really quirky characters! My main recollection is of a guy we all called “the cleaner girl” - if you were to meet him in the working alleyway when he'd had a bevvy or two, he'd come up to you with an evil look in his eye, point at you with an angrily wagged finger and say - “I'm gonna cuhleeeeeeeen you!!”, at which point you'd just fall about laughing...

Generally speaking there was a tacit ambivalence toward “the queers” on board. The term was rarely used kindly. I'd always wondered why, because I'd always been treated with respect. Certainly, at no time did I ever feel threatened.

The ship would have been a much duller place without some of these guys. All the best crew parties were in “the queer cabins”. Whilst at sea we would all be working anything up to 12 hours a day, over three split shifts, which made it feel like you were working 18 hours a day.

So there was clearly a culture that if we're going to work hard, then we'll play hard too. The only time we'd get any proper sleep was between 2pm and 6pm, and if we were lucky, during the corresponding hours of the morning. From that, you will gather that the afternoon tea watch was not a popular task to be allocated to!

The gay guys were adored by the passengers! One feature of Caronia was her popularity with passengers, some of whom found her almost as cheap to live on as it was to rent an apartment on Fifth Avenue, New York. These “resident” passengers would cheerfully “adopt” their room stewards, some of whom had also made Caronia their home for many years. With the massive “dollar power” of these passengers behind them, some of these stewards were almost like tin gods, and definitely a force to be reckoned with! Not all of them were gay, but many probably were.

I'll allude to this a bit more elsewhere, but there's only one place that the term “Oliver's Court” came from. There was also some competition between the passengers as to who could throw the most lavish of parties. On the face of it, these passenger parties were arranged by the Purser's office. Well, they may have been involved in preparing the bill afterwards.

The real driving force behind these affairs were guys who were given carte-blanche to indulge their wildest fantasies and with no expense spared! The parties were invariably themed, so guess who'd be consulted on what to wear? The stewards would even have a say in which passengers were placed on the guest list.

All told, the competition for the best theme would be as much between the stewards as between the passengers. Given the very wide boundaries, hours and hours would be spent on decorating suites, staterooms or even public rooms, and guess who'd be the unofficial judges advising the host/hostess about whom to award the prizes to? Oh, and it wasn't the Purser's department who assigned the stewards to assist with serving drinks and canapés at these affairs either. Like I said, the ship would have been a much duller place without the imagination and flair of these guys!

When it came to any form of entertainment the gay guys were in their element, and it paid to keep a low profile! I didn't, so I got collared to do a Kenneth Horne sketch from the popular Round the Horne radio show. In those days it was broadcast every Sunday on the BBC Home Service after Family Favourites, possibly one of the most listened-to shows of the day.

Well, the “...and this is my friend Sandy” shows included some hilarious sketches, so I'd recorded some of these whilst ashore, and used to play them quite regularly in the cabin as a wind-up. However, it backfired, because I found myself hi-jacked to go on stage in Caronia's theatre, appearing in one of these sketches for two crew shows and two passenger shows during one of the “hate weeks” on the 1966 Great World Cruise.

Very few of the stewards (or commis waiters for that matter) escaped from the restaurants during the North Cape cruise for the annual extravaganza that was put on in Bergen for the “Wareham and Bergen Cup”. Every year there was a different theme, and the competition between the two restaurants was by no means limited to the football field!

When the legislation legalising homosexuality in the UK was passed late in 1965, I was working on the Windsor Castle as an Assistant Officers Steward during the 10 weeks that Caronia was in refit at Belfast. I'd got to know the gay guys on the adjacent station quite well, because of a pair of rather silly passengers who thought that none of us Englishmen would understand their almost continuous bickering, among themselves and in French, about the quality of service and the food, but that's another story.

I remember asking these guys about the new legislation, thinking that they'd probably be pleased. Imagine my surprise when one chap said “Oh no! They've taken all the fun out of it now!!” Clearly there's no pleasing everybody...

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