A Year With An Inauspicious Start
The vagaries of world events affecting the planning of a liner's itinerary for a 3 month cruise would really hit home with Cunard at the start of 1952. With much unrest in Egypt and the Middle-East, including anti-British street rioting in Cairo, many last-minute cancellation of bookings for the headline Africa-India Cruise aboard the “Green Goddess” were received.
Even the cruise itself would have its own dramas, with the “Green Goddess” giving the British armed-forces then stationed along the Suez Canal, a security scare, as she suddenly ran aground! Once again, the unwanted sail features of Caronia's large funnel was probably to blame.
Just days later, still at the mercy of high winds, Caronia broke her aft moorings in Haifa. She spent the remainder of her time there at anchor. The call to Haifa had itself been a diversion, in place of a call to Alexandria in Egypt, seat of the current unrest.
A European Cruise Introduced
This year would see the introduction of the first of Caronia's Spring Cruises, with a couple of calls to Mediterranean ports and the remainder to North European ports, this “European Spring Cruise” was the forerunner of what was to become the “Spring Mediterranean Cruise”, once calls in that area had been dropped from the Great World Cruise itinerary.
T.R. Schoonover's 1952 Day-to-Day Index
Index
