Caronia's Regular Cruise Passengers
The header to October 1956 covers one of the best known of Caronia's regular residents, Miss Clara Louise Macbeth. She was by no means the only person who made the “Green Goddess” their home regularly as a fare payer, however.
George Peterson writes…
03 Dec 2006
Enjoyed your writings about Miss Macbeth whom I knew all too well over the period I was on board.
In fact my first meeting was when I was asked to repair something in her cabin and her steward warned me that she would keep me there all day chatting, and I would find it difficult to get away. How right he was, I was there for ages but the steward realised this, came to my rescue and got me away.
I often wonder about other long term passengers who used the Caronia as their home, like Miss Jones, Itsy-Bitsy and Georgie Girl. I can still see Georgie Girl in my minds eye, a petite lady in a white sequinned evening gown, diamond necklace, earrings and bangles.
Itsy-Bitsy loved to give parties and always loved to have young men around her as did Georgie Girl, and we in the engineers department were often invited to them.
Just some memories that came back while reading your article today.
Prominent Women
George has only touched the tip of the iceberg when mentioning names of regular passengers. As I have worked through the processes of passenger list transcription, access to existing entries has been a tremendous help, especially in identifying ladies. Most of the prominent and regular cruise travellers were women.
Another regular was Mrs. Irene Vedovell. Her name appears in no less than 11 cruise paxlists, mostly Great World Cruises, though she also sampled the North Cape Cruise. The convention then being to list married female passengers under their husband's first name.
George Peterson mentions “Itsy Bitsy”. Within Cunard paxlists she was listed as Mrs. E.C. Oliver, whereas on the immigration manifests she was shown as Genevieve Oliver, often with little or no indication of her marital status.
A Firm Favourite
There have been some wild claims of passengers “living aboard” Caronia for several years at a time. While that may be partially true for key cruises, very few if any were on board when the ship was doing the mail runs across the Atlantic or a sunshine cruise to the Caribbean. No-one would be living aboard during lengthy annual lay-ups either.
Having said all that, despite, or maybe because of, her status as a floating palace, it's clear that many people considered the ship a firm favourite as their own “home from home”. It's true to say that it wasn't just her Captains who considered the Caronia as their own “private yacht”!
If you can contribute any information, do please get in touch…
