CUNARD CIRCUMNAVIGATION CENTENARY-- R.M.S. LACONIA 1922-1923

 

The untold want by life and land ne'er granted, 

Now, voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

The Untold Want, Walt Whitman

When R.M.S. Laconia cleared Pier 54 North River, New York, at noon on 21 November 1922 she was embarking on a voyage which remains among the most notable in the 183-year history of Cunard. It was remarkable firstly for being a cruise, only the second by a Cunarder (the first having been made by the first Laconia a decade earlier) for the line that invented The Atlantic Ferry. If Cunard were a tad tardy dipping their toes in the carefree cruise trade, and indeed Laconia was operating under charter to American Express Co., they managed to set more "firsts" and garner probably more worldwide press attention for a single voyage (save those aborted ones of Titanic and Lusitania) in the history of steam navigation. Laconia was setting off to emulate what Magellan first accomplished 400 years previously: to circumnavigate the world, and thanks to the  Panama Canal, be the first passenger ship to do so.  

Laconia set records throughout the epic 140-day, 30,000-mile voyage as the largest ship to call at many of her 24 ports as well as the biggest yet to pass through the eight-year-old Panama Canal. In Havana and Hilo, Shanghai and Singapore, Bombay and Batavia, Laconia's arrival and her passengers were headline news, ushering in a new chapter in worldwide travel and tourism and creating the sometimes not flattering image of the "American Tourist Invasion" that the Roaring Twenties spawned. The voyage inspired several books, articles and published letters as well as comprehensive diaries and photo albums by her passengers which give us, a century later, a unique accounting of a voyage not just around the world, but of a long lost era of travel that it helped define.

Off Around the World... R.M.S. Laconia sails from New York, 21 November 1922. 

Laconia in the Culebra Cut, Panama Canal as painted by Charles Turner. 

The Hamburg-American liner Cleveland, chartered by Frank C. Clark, sails today for a double cruise around the world. She will be the first liner that ever has undertaken so great a voyage. 

New York Sun, 16 October 1909

The first full circumnavigation world cruise by a passenger liner, Cunard's Laconia in November 1922, was the culmination of the initial three decades of the development of cruising as well as first great endeavour of the new travel division of American Express. Its success ushered in not only a true Golden Age of luxury cruising in the interwar era, but transformed Cunard into what they remain uniquely a century later: the only company offering a dedicated trans-Atlantic service and a global cruise programme. 

The early cruising pioneers included Orient Line (Britain), HAPAG (Germany and the U.S.) and Frank C. Clark (U.S.)... not Cunard.

Cruising evolved from point to point steamship travel more than it was "invented" and was the inspiration of only a few lines and travel companies. On what is considered the first liner cruise,  Orient Line dispatched Garonne on 20 February 1889 from Tilbury to Lisbon, Gibraltar, Algiers, Palermo, Naples, Livorno, Genoa, Nice, Malaga and Cadiz.  Chimborazo followed in June to Norway. 

Much of the pioneering in cruising was by the Germans whose sudden and soon dominant presence in global passenger shipping at the turn of the century reflected the overall emergence of Imperial Germany as a world power. Hamburg-American Line (HAPAG), which undertook their first cruise from Germany in 1891, were the first to operate a long cruise from the United States to the Mediterranean. This was undertaken by Furst Bismarck from New York on 1 February 1894, the 64-day cruise advertised as "the realization of the pleasure traveler's most fanciful dream." 

The first American cruise agency, Frank C. Clark, dispatched the chartered liner Friesland to the Mediterranean on 6 Jnuary 1895.  Clark became a leader in the field, offering an annual 60-day cruise using chartered ships including, in 1902, Celtic, then the world's largest steamer. Clark pioneered, too, the concept of comprehensive, all-inclusive shore excursions and longer overland tours in conjunction with the cruise, guest lecturers and added entertainment aboard. 

Absence in all this were Cunard, at low ebb in the last two decades of the 19th century,  eclipsed by both White Star Line and the German lines. With the dawn of the New Century, Cunard staged a remarkable revival, starting with the commissioning of their largest ships to date: the 14,000-grt Ivernia and Saxonia for the Boston run, with berths for 164 First, 200 Second and 1,600 Third Class as well as tremendous cargo space. What they lacked in speed, they exceeded in profitability and were among the most successful Cunarders ever, beginning a new era of building vessels to suit specific routes and markets.  

The words "Cunard" and "cruise" were first mentioned in the same breath after the inauguration of the Adriatic/Mediterranan service to New York.  

Although Cunard established their first service to the Mediterranean within of a dozen years of that to North America, it was purely a cargo operation.  Booming immigration to America from Central Europe, the Balkans and the Mediterranean prompted Cunard securing in 1903  a contract to carry Hungarian immigrants to New York from the then Austrian ports of Trieste and Fiume (Rijeka) in what is now Croatia, via Palermo, Naples and Gibraltar westbound and Gibraltar, Genoa, Naples and Trieste eastbound. 

Intended for immigrants, this new service also introduced Cunard to destination-driven, seasonal tourist traffic owing to the variety of attractive Mediterranean ports and a growing market arising from the late Victorian and Edwardian fascination with the ancient wonders (and weather) of Italy, Adriatic and Egypt.  Here was a route that could offer alternate employment for ships off the North Atlantic in winter and enable Cunard to sell roundtrips to First Class passengers as "cruises."  

Advertisement for Cunard's expanded winter Mediterranean service with Carmania and Caronia. 

So it was that Cunard's newest ship, Caronia, was dispatched from New York on 9 January 1906 on the first of two voyages to Trieste, Fiume and Naples.  Cunard had a brand new ship with superior saloon accommodation for those wishing a respite from winter weather and drawn to ports with touristic appeal like Madeira, Algiers, Villefranche and later Monaco which were added to the route and, most significantly, Alexandria in 1908. This coincided with the new Egyptian Mail Steamship Co., which built  Cairo and Heliopolis in 1907 for an express Marseilles-Alexandria service, going spectacularly bankrupt and Cunard were quick to pick up and develop the winter Egypt traffic left behind. 

The new Laconia was the first Cunarder to make a proper, one-class cruise in 1913, under charter to American cruising pioneer Frank C. Clark. 

Seventy years after they invented the practical and reliable North Atlantic "ferry," Cunard were now introducing other elements: pleasure and destination. Before long, they would design and build ships that could cater to them both.  So it was that Franconia and Laconia were built in 1911-12, the first "dual purpose" Cunarders being designed to run from Liverpool to Boston in summer and from the Mediterranean to New York in winter as well as be available for cruising.  At the time, Cunard had neither the interest or expertise to operate their own cruises so that when Laconia became the very first of the line's ship to operate a proper one-class cruise (from New York to the Mediterranean in February 1913), it was under charter to Frank C. Clark.  

It was Frank C. Clark who would also organise the first Round the World Cruises. Although circumnavigating the world had inspired intrepid sailors since Magellan, its appeal to modern day travellers on a practical basis dates from the development of regular global steamship service and trans-continental railways in the mid 19th-century.  If Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days (1873) was written as a fantasy, it was, in fact, possible by the end of the century, to accomplish in 52 days using connecting ship and rail scheduled services. Further popularising the idea was America's "Great White Fleet" world cruise of the U.S. Navy's battle fleet in 1907. 

Advertisement for HAPAG's planned first world cruise, destined not to operate. Credit: New York Sun, 4 April 1904.

Hamburg American Line would have operated the first world cruise and indeed aboard the first purpose built cruise ship as announced in October 1903 for Prinzessin Victoria. She would sail from New York to San Francisco on 15 September 1904 eastward via the Mediterranean, through Suez, to India, Singapore, Manila, Hong Kong, China, Japan, Hawaii, ending at San Francisco four and a half months and 24 ports later. Then, she would retrace her course, westbound, all the way back to New York.  Of course, this was a decade before the completion of the Panama Canal, so avoiding the long way around Cape Horn, these were not complete circumnavigations and the trans-continental segment accomplished instead by rail. In any event, HAPAG's epic plans were foiled first by the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War and then by the grounding and loss of the Prinzessin Victoria off Kingston, Jamaica, on a cruise in December 1906.

Brochure for the first world cruise by the HAPAG liner Cleveland under charter to Frank C. Clark. 

Dusting off the German plans, it was Frank C. Clark who would accomplish them, spurred by the huge interest aroused by the Great White Fleet world cruise of the U.S. Navy's battle fleet in 1907-08. In April 1908 Clark announced the charter of  the White Star Line's Arabic for two world cruises, again one from New York to San Francisco beginning in October 1909, and another in the reverse direction from San Francisco in February 1910, both described, with some understatement, as "the greatest excursion of the kind ever attempted."  Surprisingly, charter of Arabic was cancelled by White Star in late May 1909 and Clark managed to find a better replacement, the nearly new HAPAG intermediate liner Cleveland, thus accomplishing the Germans' original plans with a German vessel and American management. 

Paramount to the success of these first two cruises was the extensive and meticulously planned shore programme with some 12 days in Japan and extended stays in Hong Kong, India and Egypt with overland tours, Nile cruise options etc. all on a scale never attempted and for the sell-out passenger list of some 650. When Cleveland sailed from New York on 16 October 1909, she was embarking on an epic voyage indeed and one that was accomplished to worldwide acclaim and passenger satisfaction and the subject of at least three books.  The world cruise was now an accomplished fact and henceforth became the "once in a lifetime voyage".  

HAPAG's Cleveland sails from San Francisco on her second world cruise, February 1910. 

Hamburg-American Line operated four more similar cruises with Cleveland in late 1911/early 1912 and again in late 1912/early 1913. 

Had Europe not plunged much of the world into its first global war, the big event of August 1914 would have been the opening of what was the single greatest engineering accomplishment of the century other than landing men on the Moon: the Panama Canal.  Indeed, the epic construction project was in itself a major cruise destination at the time and the canal would, of course, enable the practical evolution of the single vessel world cruise into a true circumnavigation.  

Poster advertising the proposed first true circumnavigation by HAPAG's Cleveland in January 1915. Credit: Swann Galleries. 

Once again HAPAG meant to be first and in anticipation of the completion of the Panama Canal, announced in 1913 the first circumnavigation cruises by Cincinnati and Cleveland from New York on 16 and 31 January 1915, each taking 135 days.  Of course, these would not operate owing to the war and the  promise of the Panama Canal would, too, have to wait until peace to be fully realised.

Although the present European travel is limited, the fact that American Express company is the only international neutral agency is an important consideration in deciding us to embark this undertaking at this time.

The war had rearranged considerably the popular byways of American tourists and is directing their attention to new fields.

American Express Co. press release 1 December 1915

 

Yet, 1915 would see the final player in the Great Laconia World Cruise of 1922 come to the fore when the already wide ranging American Express Co. (which dated from 1850) establish their American Express Travel division in October.  It was an unlikely time to start a global travel enterprise in the middle of a world war but one that America was resolutely neutral in and soon to be profiting by, creating an sizeable demand for leisure travel where it was still possible.  

From the onset, cruising played an important part with American Express, the company promoting the United Fruit Co. "banana boats" to the West Indies, the s.s Bermudian to that island  and coastal and lake cruises by Canadian National, etc. There was also the time and opportunity to plan for an expected peacetime boom in overseas travel and emulate the successes and proven arrangements of Frank C. Clark (which had largely shut down for the duration of the war, especially after the U.S. entered the war in April 1917).   American Express Travel was destined for a meteoric rise in a bold and brash manner that was, well, American through and through. 

Equally American was what came to be known as "The Roaring Twenties" in that the decade was not nearly as cheery or prosperous for most Britons and Europeans.  The wealth created in the United States during the First World War was astonishing and broadly shared through most of society with a massive increase in the size and buying power of the middle class and the creation, almost overnight, of the modern consumer society, mass marketing and the image of the American Dream in the new and almost entirely American-based film industry in Hollywood, USA: flivvers, flappers, frenzy and foreign travel as Americans discovered a world they suddenly seemed to dominate. Indeed, far from being "isolationist," America was even more globally connected commercially and culturally between the wars than Britain. "The Business of America is Business" famously said President Calvin Coolidge presiding over a decade of growth and prosperity like none other before or since. 

That the brand new American Express Travel Co. would quickly establish themselves with a series of never before attempted cruise endeavours seemed to summon up the age which, like the company, was just beginning. This was a travel agency in a hurry and even before most lines, including Cunard, had fully restored their normal liner services, "Amex" entered the cruise trade.  Unlike Clarks before the war, they initially did so not by full ship charters but rather blocking the entire "saloon" (First and Second Class) of liners engaged on their normal but "cruise-like" routes, paramount among these being Cunard's only just resumed New York-Mediterranean run.  Indeed, American Express did more to establish Cunard in the cruise trade than the line itself. 

First advertisement for American Express Travel's first Mediterranean cruise using Caronia from New York 15 January 1921. Credit: Montreal Gazette, 23 November 1920. 

The war tragically claimed both Franconia and Laconia, but Pannonia resumed Cunard's Mediterranean run in 1920 and Carmania and Caronia added to the route in the following winter, as before the war.  American Express almost immediately reserved all of Caronia's saloon accommodation for her first roundtrip from New York on 15 January 1921, which was first advertised on 23 November 1920 as a 49-day Mediterranean Cruise, "the first in seven years" which called at Madeira, Gibraltar, Algiers, Monaco, Naples (four days), Alexandria (seven days), Athens, Naples and back to New York.  

American Express provided a full cruise staff and inclusive and comprehensive tours at each port. However, unlike the pre-war Clark's cruises, this was neither a full ship charter or a cruise per se in that Caronia still carried Third Class passengers, cargo and mails on what was a regular liner run with extra ports built in on the eastbound crossing while the Naples to New York westbound crossing was direct for the immigrant traffic. As such, it was carry over of Cunard's pre-war "cruises" on the route but with a cruise staff, inclusive shore trips and one-class saloon accommodation. Caronia carried 241 customers for the cruise as well as 606 Third Class passengers eastbound and 813 westbound. 

Credit: Detroit Free Press, 1 January 1922.

So popular was this first foray, that American Express chartered the saloon accommodation for Carmania's 11 February 1922 New York-Mediterranean voyage which included Adriatic ports as well and gave a 61-day itinerary of great touristic appeal. Already competition was heating up at the onset of a veritable "cruise boom" among Americans and Thos. Cook chartered the saloon accommodation of Caronia, departing 29 January.  The "score" was Caronia (Cook's) 341 passengers vs. Carmania (Amex) 385 passengers, both again also carrying Third Class passengers. Then, too, Frank C. Clark was back in a big way and the first to resume full ship charters, the first long Mediterranean cruise in Canadian Pacific's Empress of Scotland on 4 February sold out (835 passengers) so quickly that Empress of France was hastily chartered for a second departure seven days later, with 780.  Raymond & Whitcomb of Boston (founded 1879) had 652 customers for their first Mediterranean cruise in United States Lines' George Washington departing 14 February. 

Any further cruise development of Cunard's (and Anchor Line's) Mediterranean to New York routes was effectively ended with the passage of severe immigration restrictions by the United States which specially limited arrivals from the Mediterranean and Balkan countries and this, plus virile competition  by Italian-flag lines on the route, resulted in the British lines withdrawing entirely after 1923. 

But broader horizons beckoned for American Express, Cunard and cruising. 

Just as the cruise trade began to flourish, the 400th anniversary of Magellan's first circumnavigation of the world was in the offing in 1923.  It and the accomplished fact of the Panama Canal, was an irresistible call to both traveller and companies vying to offer the first modern cruise by a single vessel right around the world, eight years after HAPAG first planned it.  Fittingly, the company that had first offered world cruises, Frank C. Clark Co., was the first to announce theirs on 3 February 1922 employing the chartered Empress of France  from New York on 23 January 1923. 

This was followed by the announcement on 5 March 1922 of not one, but two, round the world cruises, by Raymond & Whitcomb, by the chartered Resolute (United American Lines) from New York on 6 January 1923 and the brand new Volendam (Holland America Line) on 16 January. 

The first advertisement for American Express' Round the World Cruise with the chartered Cunarder Laconia for November 1922. Credit: New York Tribune, 12 March 1922. 

The American Express Travel Department announces a cruise around the world, sailing from New York on twenty-first of November, 1922.

The ship chosen is the largest ever announced for a cruise around the world-- the luxurious new, oil-burning Cunarder, Laconia, 21,000 tons.

Then, scooping them all, American Express first advertised on 12 March 1922, "A Cruise Around the World… 30,000 Wonder Miles on land and sea. Four happy months the world is yours-- on the luxurious world cruise of the American Express Company on the palatial New S.S. Laconia (Cunard Line), sailing from New York on November 25th, 1922."

In keeping with the times and the development of "marketing" in the United States in the 1920s, American Express commissioned a lavish advertising "campaign" for the world cruise in magazines and newspapers.

So it was that American Express and Cunard pipped their rivals to the gate by two months and would indeed be the very first to offer a true single ship cruise right around the world.  Moreover, they would be accomplishing it in one of the newest ships in the world, indeed one still not yet completed in the builder's yard at the time of the announcement.  She was a new generation Cunarder, too, one of the first three intermediate vessels that transitioned the line to more tourist oriented crossings as well as cruising. And for four months in late 1922-23, she would be the most talked about passenger ship in the world she was circumnavigating. 

Walter Thomas painting of the newest Cunarder, Laconia, and the last of three Scythia-class intermediates that would prove linchpins in Cunard's inter-war years in both crossing and cruising. 

The Laconia was selected for this cruise because she is so handsomely fitted up, with large roomy cabins, many decks, several lounge room and conveniences for passengers to entertain and be entertained on a cruise lasting so many months and in varying climates.

Honolulu Advertiser, 17 December 1922.

The mere fact that we chose the Laconia, a Cunard liner, speaks for the effort of the express company to give the finest steamer service afloat.

Dr. C.L. Babcock, American Express Manager

In the pantheon of  legendary liners that have flown the golden lion houseflag of Cunard-- Britannia, Lusitania, Mauretania, Aquitania, Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, Caronia and Queen Elizabeth 2-- among the many, Laconia doesn't rate a mention.  Regardless of her noteworthy world cruise, she was, after all, an "intermediate" liner among the largest and fastest ships in the world. Indeed, Laconia was but one of three identical sisters and among the dozen vessels Cunard commissioned between 1921-25, and but part of a remarkable total of 19 newbuildings including those for the associated Anchor-Donaldson lines. With their single funnels, twin masts and handsome if not rakish lines, they all managed to vaguely look alike to the casual observer. However unsung, they were among the most successful and popular of all Cunarders and uniquely figured in the development of the line's cruise trade between the wars.  

Some like Scythia, Samaria, Franconia, Ascania, Cameronia and Letitia went on to remarkably long and successful careers, others like Caledonia and California had war-shortened lives whilst three-- Athenia, Lancastria and Laconia herself-- would be among the most infamous and tragic liner losses of the Second World War. 

Very early brochure cover for Cunard's new five-strong "20,000-ton" class ships. What was to have been named Servia would, instead, be christened Carinthia. Together, they were the first Cunarders to be employed in both crossing and cruising roles. 

However prolific and pedestrian they may seem today, the Cunard intermediates-- led by Scythia, Samaria and Laconia-- were then considered the "liners of the future," boldly eschewing the very recordbreaking "monster" liners that Cunard had perfected just before the war and carried on after it with their "Big Three" of Aquitania, Berengaria and Mauretania.  Yet, with their erstwhile German rivals out of the picture for the foreseeable future, Cunard conceived post-war ships combining good passenger and cargo capacity with modest speed (16 knots) and oil burning; their economy and efficiency mirrored in their plain, single funnelled profiles completely at odds with the stately Aquitania, the imposing Berengaria and the rakish Mauretania.  They also incorported elements of the pre-war Franconia and Laconia which were the very first Cunarders designed and built with some cruising in mind, although in fact only Laconia was so employed... once... before the war that claimed them both.

Like that ultimate Cunarder... R.M.S. Aquitania of 1914, Scythia, Samaria and Laconia were designed by naval architect Leonard Peskett, O.B.E. (1861-1924) who had practically invented the modern Cunarder from Campania/Lucania onwards and their First Class and Second Class public rooms were decorated by Mewes & Davis, London, so their claim to be "Aquitanias in miniature" was not entirely without merit.  Their passenger accommodation, public rooms and amenities were far in advance of previous "intermediates" and their sustained popularity (Scythia proving the longest serving Cunarder until Queen Elizabeth 2) was well earned.  Unsung and largely forgotten today, they were in many ways exemplary Cunarders and among the most successful ever built by the company. 

Early rendering of the new Laconia. Credit: The Shipbuilder.

With so many ships to build, Cunard parcelled out contracts to Scottish and English yards and the lead trio of "20,000 tonners" were all built by different firms: Scythia by Vickers, Barrow; Samaria by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead; and Laconia by Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson, Newcastle.  All three were constructed under the most trying circumstances-- rampant post-war inflation, material shortages, labour problems and perilous times for trans-Atlantic passenger and cargo trade amid American immigration restrictions, high tariffs and currency imbalances curtailing trade-- so that just getting them completed was an accomplishment in itself.

Laconia, which like most of the post-war fleet, took her name from the handsome Laconia of 1912, sunk in 1917, was laid down in early summer 1919 as yard no. 1125 at the Wallsend yards of Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson which had build her predecessor and sister Franconia and, of course, the storied Mauretania. By heritage alone, Laconia was destined to be a great Cunarder, but hers was a prolonged and problematic birth and then some.

Laconia on the ways at Wallsend where she seemed content to sit out three launching attempts. Credit: Shipbuilding & Shipping Record, 14 April 1921.

Initial good progress on no. 1125's hull had her launching set for 27 November 1920 when the first of an seemingly endless series of pitfalls developed.  On the 22nd, fire broke out aboard the new French liner Meduana alongside Swan Hunter's fitting out basin just adjacent to the slipway occupied by Laconia, the ship eventually heeling over against the pier, and blocking the ways.  With no other recourse, the Cunarder's launch had to be postponed until the Meduana could be righted and the slipway cleared.  

Laconia's launch was rescheduled for 23 March 1921, the day after Swan Hunter launched the Cunard intermediate Ausonia.  This, too, had to be scrubbed when the 24th offered up strong westerly winds and it was considered imprudent to launch her.  Apparently having sat so long on the ways, when a second attempt was made on the following day in favourable conditions, Laconia was content to stay put and refused to budge despite 45 minutes coaxing by the launch crew and the efforts of four tugs to pull her off the ways.  The ship's godmother, Mrs. A.D. Mearns, wife of the General Manager of Cunard Line, had to be content with smashing the bottle of wine over the inert prow of the recalcitrant  hull and name her Laconia.  

It speaks volumes for the skill of our naval architects and shipbuilding that the unsuccessful launch is the exception rather the rule. The new Cunard liner Laconia is certainly the exception, and it would be difficult to mention off-hand another vessel the launching of which has been attended by so much misfortune. The Laconia was successfully launched on April 9, at the yard of Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson Limited, at Wallsend, after three previous disappointments, and of those three unsuccessful attempts it is only fair to say that only  one really represents a failure on the part of shipyard staff.

Shipbuilding & Shipping Record, 21 April 1921.

After three aborted attempts, Laconia's launching on 9 April 1921 was news indeed. Note she was sent down the ways even with her lifeboats fitted and missing only her funnel and masts. 

After some of launching blocks were replaced, Laconia's was finally successfully sent down the ways on 9 April 1921. Then, fitting out and completion of her interiors was halted by a crippling joiners strike. It soon became apparent her planned maiden voyage from Liverpool on 19 April 1922 would have to be postponed. With no end of the strike in sight, Cunard announced on the 13th announced they were dispatching Laconia to Rotterdam for completion by N.V. Wilton Engineering & Slipway, Co.. 

Some thousands of unemployed shipyard workers, idle through the wages dispute, watched her departure, a grim spectacle these hard times, there being three weeks' full employment in the ship in the finishing trades.

Shipbuilding & Shipping Record, 27 April 1922.

Credit: Shipbuilding & Shipping Record, 27 April 1922.

Under the tow of the famous Dutch seagoing tug, Zwarte Zee, Laconia looking otherwise complete, but riding high out the water, left Wallsend on 21 April 1922.  The Dutch made quick and efficient work finishing Laconia's splendid interiors to the highest standards and she arrived at Southampton on 21 May. Although intended for Cunard's Liverpool-based services to New York or Boston, she would make her maiden voyage direct from the Hampshire port.

Laconia sailing from Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York. Credit: world war two film inspector.com

Sailing from Southampton on 25 May 1922, Laconia numbered among her light list of 30 First Class passengers, musical comedy star Irene Franklin,  78 Second and 117 Third Class.  As the third of three sister ships, the new Cunarder rated minor press attention upon arrival at New York on 4 June.  

Laconia's maiden eastbound crossing was destined for her homeport of Liverpool and when she sailed on the 8th, she had 147 First, 199 Second and 146 Third Class passengers aboard. When she arrived at Liverpool, the Liverpool Echo reported that it "marked the termination of her very successful maiden voyage. All the passengers were charmed with her appointments and her behaviour at sea. Among the passengers was Mr. A.J. Davis, of a well-known firm of London architects who was particularly enthusiastic about the Laconia's smoking room, which is an adaption of the Mermaid Inn at Rye."

'Say, is this Paris?' This was the first question asked by one of a party of young ladies from the Southern States of America who arrived at Liverpool today by the Cunard liner Laconia from New York. They have come over for a tour of the British Isles and several European countries as a means of completing their education.

Liverpool Echo, 17 June 1922.

Finally at her homeport of Liverpool after starting her maiden voyage from Southampton, Laconia at the Prince's Landing Stage. Credit: Merseyside Maritime Museum. 

Laconia in the Mersey. Credit: Merseyside Maritime Museum. 

Laconia's second voyage and her first from her homeport of Liverpool, took on the role of a rescue ship. Her sister ship Samaria, which sailed from Liverpool on 14 June 1922 for Boston, suffered a machinery mishap when the reduction gearing on her starboard turbine broke down when 1,100 miles into her voyage and had to put about using her port engine and screw only, returning to the Mersey at noon on the 22nd. She anchored off the Bar and transferred her 400 passengers and baggage  in a blinding rainstorm by tender to Laconia which had already embarked her passengers at the Landing Stage, the whole affair taking some five hours.  

To accommodate Samaria's passengers, Laconia was diverted to call at Boston first before proceeding to New York.  After a total of 18 days at sea, her Boston-bound passenger finally arrived on 3 July: 89 First, 175 Second and 257 Third and she proceeded to New York with 31 First, 126 Second and 239 Third.  Laconia's eastbound crossing beginning on 6 July had 914 passengers. For the balance of the season, Laconia remained on the Liverpool-Queenstown-New York run. 

Introducing a new profile for Cunarders, Laconia and her sisters Scythia and Samaria, were business-like and purposeful rather than imposing or rakish, their single funnels denoting modern oil-burning rather than coal. Credit: Chris Howell via www.tynebuiltships.co.uk

Laconia sails from Liverpool, dressed overall and possibly on her maiden voyage from the port in June 1922. Credit: eBay auction photo. 

Broadside profile of the new Laconia. Credit: eBay auction photo. 

As Laconia was all but an identical sister ship to the lead ship of the class, Scythia, the reader is referred to a previous monograph on her for a comprehensive description, technical  and machinery details and general arrangement plans which are applicable to Laconia:

https://wantedonthevoyage.blogspot.com/2020/10/cunards-old-reliable-rms-scythia.html

Measuring 19,695 grt, 625 ft. length (overall) and with a beam of 74 ft., Laconia was, in fact, the largest British-built liner completed in 1922.  She, like her sisters, was powered by two sets of double-reduction geared turbines (these were the first Atlantic liners so fitted) with six oil-burning boilers working at 220 psi and driving twin screws.  The 12,500 shp gave her a 16-knot service speed and this element, more than anything else, forever defined these ships as "intermediates" quite apart from Cunard's premier "Fastest Ocean Service in the World" maintained by the Blue Riband champion Mauretania, Aquitania and Berengaria.  

'The Ships of the Future': with their modern oil-burning boilers, double-reduction geared turbines taking up far less earning space, the Laconia of 1922 compared to her 1912 predecessor by the incomparable G.H. Davis for The Sphere, 5 August 1922. 

Credit: Victoria Daily Times, 4 April 1922.

Accommodating 343 First, 347 Second and as many as 1,698 Third Class and an astounding 337,500 cu. ft. (bale) and 42,530 cu. ft. (reefer) cargo space in seven holds, the earning potential of Laconia and her sisters was as immense in potential as it was largely unrealised in the rapidly changing circumstances of the inter-war era with its immigration restrictions and depressed cargo rates.  Yet, by virtue of their size, superior saloon accommodation and economical operation, the Scythia trio soon proved their worth and versatility in Cunard's newfound tourist and cruise trade spawned by America's "Roaring Twenties" and a veritable explosion in overseas holiday travel.  

R.M.S. LACONIA  General Arrangement & Deck Plans

from  Marine Engineer & Shipping Age November 1921

courtesy William T. Tilley

(LEFT CLICK on image to view full size scan)

Profile & Rigging Plan

Boat Deck

"A" Deck

"B" Deck

"C" Deck

"D" Deck

"E" Deck

In a few words the Laconia will be a miniature Aquitania, for everything conducive to comfort will be found in her accommodation... No passenger liner yet in commission can claim to possess all the features and numerous modern marine architectural improvements which are incorporated in the new Cunard liner Laconia, which sailed from Southampton yesterday on her maiden voyage to. New York, and will return from that port to Liverpool to enter the Cunard Line's Liverpool  to Boston service. 

Liverpool Journal of Commerce, 26 May 1922.

Like the peerless Aquitania, Scythia, Samaria and Laconia (and the later, improved Franconia and Carinthia) were decorated by the pre-eminent London architects Mewes & Davis with Arthur J. Davis (1878-1951) responsible for the whole of their First and Second Class interiors. With the French architect Charles Mewès (1858-1914), the pair practically defined the Age of Edwardian Elegance with their groundbreaking Ritz Hotel in London, the Royal Automobile Club and their ocean liner interiors including HAPAG's Imperator, Vaterland and Bismarck in addition to Aquitania.  It was perhaps fitting that Mewès died just days in to the Great War that ended the era he so exemplified. 

Arthur J. Davis in 1912. Credit: wikimedia commons.

Yet, Arthur Davis managed to gracefully carry over his "Aquitania Touch" with the new Cunard intermediates, indeed eschewing the plainer yet more unified Georgian motif (Messrs. Willink & Thicknesse) of the pre-war Franconia and Laconia for a final flourish of sumptuous interiors that pillaged every decorative theme and era from Elizabethan and Tudor to Adam and Regency and somehow coexisting with the single-funnel utilitarian profiles of "Ships of the Future."  

Newly minted American tourists on their first trip "over there" got a introduction into Old World styles on the boat over without even noticing and if staying at The Ritz, recognised the friezes, fireplaces, bedsteads and the tea tables.  Indeed, Davis was proud enough of his designs for the new ships that they figured prominently in a major monograph, The Decoration of Ocean Liners, read before the Royal Institute of British Architects on 20 February 1922 and published in their journal with original renderings of Laconia's First Class interiors. Whilst the interiors of Scythia and Samaria were all but identical, Davis devised new schemes for Laconia's First Class drawing room/library, lounge and smoking room and Second Class smoking room.

Rendering of Laconia's First Class writing room/library. Credit: Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 25 February 1922.

Rendering of Laconia's First Class smoking room. Credit: Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 25 February 1922.

Accommodating 343 First Class and 347 Second Class on the North Atlantic, American Express operated Laconia as single class, effectively combining both and with capacity restricted to fewer than 450 passengers, ensuring that only the best Second Class cabins were used and in many cases, double cabins were sold as singles.  Both First and Second Class dining saloons were used and as they had been designed to be similar decoratively to facilitate such combining on cruises, it was an altogether satisfactory arrangement which permitted a single-sitting for all meals.  

First Class drawing room & library. Credit: Historic England.

First Class drawing room & library. Credit: Historic England.

First Class drawing room alcove. Credit: Historic England.

The drawing and writing room also A deck, marks a unique feature in the decorations of a modern liner by the purity of its Adam design, which is reminiscent of the best work of the two brothers in the Adelphi neighbourhood of London. A feature  also is the large amount of book accommodation arranged in fitments and not as separate pieces of furniture. The finely modellled plaster decoration will repay a closer examination. The planning of the room has been so arranged as to provide two fine semi-retiring portions for quiet reading. Each are provided with a handsome fireplace, to be surmounted by a painting of classical antiquities copied from Pannini. The centre portion of the room is devoted to writing accommodation. The furniture has been specially designed in the same spirit as the well-known Adam models, and the colour scheme represents the modern trend with its leaning to the bizarre. Flame coloured and blue curtains, with furniture coverings in flame colour and black and blue with a handsome thick piled carpet in keeping with the colour scheme complete the decorative atmosphere. The windows, of which there are a number, are of an unusually wide and dignified type and looking towards the forward elevation of the room, passengers have an excellent seascape view.

First Class garden lounge. Credit: Historic England.

First Class garden lounge set for afternoon tea. Credit: Historic England.

New features are continually being introduced into the modern liners which all tend to increase the comfort of the passenger. One of these is the garden lounge. In the saloon passenger accommodation will be found two garden lounges. One of these is situated on the port and one on the starboard side of the "A" or upper promenade deck. Here passengers will be able to enjoy the sun and the sea air amidst surroundings typical of the an old English garden, fitted with many comfortable rest-inviting wickers chairs. Cold winds and rain will not interfere with the comfort of those who seek the tranquility of these garden lounges, for they are enclosed on the outside of the vessel with sliding doors and windows. Then there is a verandah café for the use of the second-class passenger.

First Class promenade deck foyer.  Credit: Historic England.

The main staircase forms itself into an imposing central hall with approaches to the salon drawing and writing room, lounge and smoking room. This grouping of the public rooms should prove of great convenience to passengers.

First Class lounge. Credit: Historic England.

First Class lounge. Credit: Historic England. 

First Class lounge fireplace. Credit: Historic England.

First Class lounge side alcove. Credit: Historic England.

The lounge on 'A' deck is decorated in the period when the simplicity of the Queen Anne style began to change into the more luxurious times. The fireplace, flanked by china cupboards, is also typical of this period. In addition to the usual coach top roof further height to the room is gained by a circular dome springing above. This is handsomely decorated and enhanced by a painting copied from a contemporary artist. The plum-coloured carpet forms the basis of the colour scheme and is re-echoed by the draperies of the windows which are in a similar coloured damask. Models of the furniture have been selected from the best examples between 1680 and 1715, and include bulbous turned walnut and the later lacquer and gilt type. All of the coverings are of wine-coloured velvet or petit point tapestry. Over the fireplace an also over the console table in the opposite end prominence has been given to two handsome decorative paintings copied from contemporary artists.

First Class smoking room. Credit: Historic England.

In the smoking room the effect of a room of an old English Inn, pannelled in oak, has been striven for. An unusual feature is the large inglenook running one-third of the width of the room. This is executed in typical brick and tile work of a mellow red with tremendous wrought iron fire dogs and back. There are also two winged fixed settees. The mantlepiece is set out in old piece of pewter, Delft ware, Toby jugs, flagons and pistols and the conventional churchwarden find their place in this very old fashioned corner of a twentieth century passenger liner. Another point worthy of notice is that the windows of this room are of the casemen type with the typical diamond pattern leaded lights. The furniture used ranges between the crude homely type which might have been made by the village carpenter, and the crimson and gold upholstered Knole chair of the type which founds it way into the country from Italy about the time of Henry VIII. A number of carved oak stools complete the old world picture. The floor is covered with red rublino tiles laid in the usual diaper pattern.

First Class dining saloon. Credit: Historic England. 

The dining saloon for the use of saloon passengers and situated on E deck, extends the full width of the ship with a length of 64 feet. The long tables of the past have given way to the small tables, which are now so popular among travellers and at which two, four and six people can sit. There are a number of small sideboards situated in convenient places with a large oval buffet in the centre from which cold dishes can be served. The scheme of decoration chosen is an interesting one. By means of white panels, running the full height of the room, and treated in Wedgewood tints a sense of space is obtained. A number of Pergolesi painted panels have been introduced among them to hold the interest, and the wall surface is broken up by marble pilasters. The electric lift which connects the various decks opens into the dining saloon. The room also has a open well which is surrounded by a wrought iron balustrade. Here will be the orchestra. The oval back arm chairs have been covered in a silk woven to a design which enclose the Pergolesi decorations of the walls. 

First Class covered and enclosed promenade B Deck. Credit: Historic England. 

First Class gymnasium. Credit: Historic England. 

First Class suite bedroom. Credit: Historic England.

First Class suite sitting room. 

First Class cabin B-22. Credit: Historic England. 

First Class cabin C-78. Credit: Historic England. 

First Class cabin C-72. Credit: Historic England. 

The first-class staterooms situated on the promenade and bridge decks are fitted up in a particularly pleasing manner. Those on the promenade deck have wooden bedsteads for two people with a Pullman berth which, if necessary, can be made to accommodate a third person. The furniture of these rooms is of carved mahogany. The whole of the first class staterooms are fitted with the necessary toilet arrangements and hot and cold water arrangements. There are also private suites comprising sitting rooms, bedrooms, baths and vestibules.

With almost the same number of berths (347 vs. 343) as First Class, Second Class was traditionally located aft. Here, the cabins were smaller, mostly two- and four-berths, and although they had washbasins and running water,  only cold water was provided.  

On the world cruise, only the better cabins on E Deck were sold owing to this and usually the two-berth cabins let as singles.  The finish of the public rooms was similar to that in First but much plainer and although open on the cruise, most passengers gravitated to the more spacious and luxurious First Class rooms.  The dining saloon was aft of that for First, separated by the galley, and although this had larger tables with the traditional bolted to the deck swivel chairs, was still a pleasant space with an open central well as in First.  By using it and the First Class dining saloon, (217 seats and 199 seats respectfully) the combined 516 seats provided a single sitting for all meals. 

In that part of the ship devoted to second-class passengers, the comfort of the traveller has received the fullest attention. In the matter of public rooms the second-class passengers have a dining saloon, lounge and smoking room. In the dining saloon, small tables for four and six people replace usual long tables, while the stately sideboard gives way to a number of small service tables. These developments, only placed comparatively recently within the reach of saloon passengers, cannot fail to add to the pleasures of the voyage. The drawing room is furnished in plain mahogany. The cane-backed chairs and settees are covered in moquette and corded velvet, and the carpet is in keeping with the general scheme of decoration.

Second Class dining saloon. Credit: Historic England. 

Whereas the smoking room is the sanctum saneforum of the men, the lady passengers in second class will find a haven of rest in the drawing room. In this room, they can read or write, have their afternoon tea, and can be joined by the men folk. The whole scheme of decoration is delicate though simple in style, the furnishing being carried out chiefly in plain mahogany.

Taunton Courier, 31 May 1922.

Second Class lounge. Credit: Historic England. 

The smoking room is a replica, from the point of view of decorations, but on a smaller scale, of the saloon smoking room, with a half-timbered freize above the upholstered settees.

Second Class smoking room. Credit: Historic England. 

Reference has already been made to second class veranda café. This overlooks the stern of the vessel, thus giving the passengers an uninterrupted and sheltered view of the sea. 

Second Class veranda. Credit: Historic England. 

Second Class promenade deck. Credit: Historic England. 

The same care has been expended in the furnishing of the second-class staterooms. Running water is provided, and the rooms accommodate chiefly two, three or four persons. They are spacious, well-lighted, and ventilated, and fitted, as are those in the first-class, with all the necessary toilet requisites.

 

Taunton Courier, 31 May 1922.

Second Class cabin C-96. Credit: Historic England. 

A brand new Laconia alongside Liverpool's Landing Stage, 1922, with the Cunard tender Skirmisher. Credit: shipnostalgia.com, member Cobbydale

So this was the ship-- brand new, well-fitted and handsomely decorated, modern in her engineering and machinery, staunch in her seakeeping qualities-- that would undertake the first circumnavigation of the world by a passenger liner.  Next were the ports, the planning and the people to make the voyage a reality and... a success. 

One might almost imagine that this voyage of the beautiful Cunarder had been arranged by the American Express Travel Department, who are the agents for trip, in order to arouse the envy of those less fortunate people living in the ports at which the Laconia called, for the more than four hundred passengers on board are making the trip under the most pleasant conditions, attended by comforts which are not even encountered even in some of the most luxurious hotels. 

The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 30 January 1923

An epic enterprise-- to sail right around the world, on a wide-ranging itinerary with a range of ports to show the variety of lands, peoples, cultures that help form the global community, in comfort, safety and style-- is not achieved without the essentials of a stout vessel, an experienced captain and crew, "All of One Company," as Sir Walter Raleigh said, abetted by a resourceful cruise staff, thousands of arrangements, conveyances, attractions, transportation, shoreside meals and accommodation set into place long before the ship clears her slip, and lastly, a varied but congenial list of passengers, each traveller contributing to the unique community of a ship at sea.  All are "Wanted on Voyage" as the cabin trunk stickers asserted and all embarked upon the ocean highways one hundred years ago aboard R.M.S. Laconia as she set off to navigate around the world. 

In planning such a cruise it is of prime importance to avoid the seasons of extreme heat in the tropical and sub-tropical climes, where nearly the entire time is spent. The plan outlined on the following pages is nicely calculated to bring the travel to such land when they are at their best, and when their tropical loveliness is twice welcome-- for its own sake and as an escape from dreary winter left behind.

American Express brochure.

Announced in March and sailing in November, Laconia's world cruise displayed the American  "Get Up & Go" credo yet was both meticulously planned and generally well executed.  As such, it also borrowed heavily from the pre-war Clark and HAPAG itineraries with the novel trans-Canal transit replacing the trans-continental rail segment in between.  Moreover, it used most of the same ports where even in 1909, with some challenges, almost twice as many passengers had been accommodated on tours etc. ashore. 

Butterfly profection map of the world showing Laconia's route. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

The itinerary took Laconia from New York to Havana, through the Panama Canal, San Francisco, Hilo, Honolulu, Yokohama, Kobe, Darien, Tsing-Tau, Shanghai, Keelung, Hong Kong, Manila, Batavia, Singapore, Rangoon, Calcutta, Colombo, Bombay, Port Sudan, Port Tewfik, Alexandria, Naples, Monaco and Gibraltar. At least a whole a day was afforded each port with two days in San Francisco, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Batavia and Colombo, three days in Kobe, Calcutta and Naples, four days in Alexandria, five days in Yokohama and Bombay. Christmas Day was  to be celebrated in mid Pacific between Honolulu and Yokohama and the New Year rung in at Yokohama. 

R.M.S. Laconia

American Express Co. Around the World Cruise

21 November 1922-30 March 1923

130 days, 29,020 miles, 1,103 hours in ports

New York sail 21 November 1922

Havana call 25 November 1922

Panama Canal transit/call 29 November 1922

San Francisco call 9-10 December 1922

Hilo call 15 December 1922

Honolulu call 16-17 December 1922

Yokohama call 28 December 1922-2 January 1923

Kobe call 3-6 January 1923

Port Arthur call 9 January 1923

Tsingtao call 10-11 January 1923

Shanghai call 12 January 1923

Keelung call 15 January 1923

Hong Kong call 17-19 January 1923

Manila call 21-22 January 1923

Tanjung Priok call 27-28 January 1923

Singapore, 30 January 1923

Rangoon call 2-3 February 1923

Calcutta 6-10 February 1923

Colombo 14-16 February 1923

Bombay 19-24 February 1923

Port Sudan 3 March 1923

Suez Canal transit 5-6 March 1923

Alexandria 7-11 March 1923

Naples 14-18 March 1923

Monaco 18 March 1923

Gibraltar 21 March 1923

New York arr 30 March 1923

Routed westbound (as were all of the initial world cruises), the itinerary aimed to avoid the monsoon season in Southeast Asia and India and the intense summer heat of Egypt in exchange for a winter crossing of the Pacific (somewhat mitigated by routing south via Hawaii) and winter in Japan, Korea and China. 

To the contemporary traveller, some of the ports are unfamiliar both in name and quaint or obscure in interest today, Port Arthur being an example and recalling it was only 17 years previously it was the scene of one of the important wars of the early 20th century that helped transform Japan into a major Pacific power. Indeed, ports like Keelung (Formosa) and Port Arthur (China) were then part of the wider Japanese Empire at the time.  

The world that Laconia sailed around was indeed of Empires... American (Hawaii, Philippines), Japanese (Formosa and Port Arthur, China),  British (Malaya, Burma, India, Egypt) and Dutch (Batavia).  The "post-war" world was not quite peaceful, and Laconia would call at a China torn between the rising Nationalist Party under  Sun Yat-sen and Guangxi militarists and during the call at Hong Kong, her party was unable to visit Canton which had just fallen to the rebels.  Shanghai still had its international "cantonment" centered on The Bund, the imposing western facaded modern city and Hong Kong, of course, was still a British colony.  When Laconia called at Naples near the end of her epic voyage, it was an Italy just months into Fascist rule.

Japan, India and Egypt were the crown jewels of the Laconia cruise as they had been for Cleveland before the war and American Express copied most of the extensive overland excursions by rail that Clark originally planned.  These included an optional overland Asia tour beginning from Yokohama to include Japan, Mongolia and Peking before rejoining Laconia at Yokohama as well as overland tours of India from Calcutta to Bombay and Sudan and Egypt with a Nile cruise, etc.   

Yet, by some remarkable timing, the biggest attraction was Egypt, Laconia being one of the first ships to arrive there after the headline grabbing news of Howard Carter's discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun the Valley of the Kings, across the Nile from Luxor, in February 1922.  Indeed, winter 1922 witnessed an Egypt Mania in America as great as that which captivated Victorian England and Egypt became the "it" destination of the 1920s with a veritable armada of cruse ships from New York bound for Alexandria.  It was truly the beginning of mass cruising although on a scale, length and quality unassociated with mass anything. 

Alexandria, of course, will be the port of call for all the boats on Mediterranean cruises, but the several round-the-world cruises will give Suez and Port Said, guardians of their respective ends of the Canal, a look at the giant liners. Let us glance at a list containing some of the “ wonder-ships ” which are to convey the winter visitors to our doors. Five fine Cunarders, the  Mauritania,  Caronia,  Scythia,  Laconia, and  Samaria; the White Star  Homeric and Adriatic; the Red Star  Lapland ; the  Empress of France, the  Empress of Scotland; the  Rotterdam, the  Resolute, and the  Volendam; all these, and others, will drop anchor off the shores of Egypt for a brief while, then to hurry back to the steam lanes of the. Atlantic and Pacific, to tell their less fortunate sisters of their season in the Land of the Pharaohs.

The Sphinx, 25 November 1922

Credit: Evening Public Ledger, 21 April 1922.

On 21 April 1922, American Express followed up on their announcement of the Laconia World Cruise with another coup: the charter of Mauretania for a Mediterranean cruise from New York on 10 February 1923.  This was the crown jewel of that remarkable Mediterranean-bound armada of winter 1923 and the first time what was surely the most famous liner of her age and fastest ship in the world had gone on a cruise.  That and the announcement at the same time that Thos. Cook were chartering Laconia's sister ship, Samaria, for their first world cruise, from New York 20 January 1923 but routed eastbound, suddenly put Cunard Line in the cruising trade in a big way, with no fewer than five of their ships so engaged that winter. 

Credit: Victoria Daily Times, 22 April 1922.

The announcement of Laconia's world cruise aroused immediate interest in all of the ports on her itinerary for she would be in many not only the largest ship yet to arrive in them, but in the vanguard of the "American tourist invasion" foreign papers had "warned" of.  Even so, "The Laconians" as they came to be known, were afforded the courtesy and hospitality of being rare and honoured in most of the places visited"VIP" treatment. Not since the Cleveland cruises would so many passengers, almost all Americans, visit many of these places.  Some like Honolulu now found themselves suddenly on the world cruise itinerary circuit in a big way with the prospect of thousands of new visitors spending hundreds of thousands ashore.  As events, proved "The Laconians" outshopped and outspent any single group of tourists in each of the ports and some newspapers kept a running tally of the outlays. 

Then there were the logistical challenges of sending a ship of Laconia's size into many of these places. She may have been an "intermediate" liner on the North Atlantic but many ports of call had never accommodated a ship of her size and draught.  As it was, Laconia could berth alongside in but a handful of places along her route and even at major ports like Shanghai, Calcutta and Rangoon, had to anchor at the mouths of the rivers which led to them so in fact she called at Woosung, Diamond Harbour and Hastings at those places and her passengers had to embark on substantial river steamers to get them into town, miles up river.  Everything from steamers to barges, launches and motorboats were employed to get her passengers ashore and back aboard, often in trying and in the case of Keelung, dangerous conditions. 

Once ashore, hundreds of passengers had to be transported on their various tours and excursions, all being accomplished long before the availability of large motorcoaches.  In most places, every available local taxi and automobile, often numbering 70-85, had to be requisitioned and the parties setting off in three, four or six staggered "waves."  It was, however, the heyday of the railway and in such places as India, Sudan and Egypt, quite splendid chartered trains with sleeping carriages, full dining cars etc. were employed and the pride and joy of their respective companies.  

There was also fueling and provisioning.  Laconia and her sisters were among the first new oil-burning liners of their day so the availability of adequate oil bunkers had to secured along her route especially in India where coal-fired liners predominated. This, too, was before the days of ships having desalinization plants capable of providing for extensive domestic use so the ship always had to take on considerable quantities of fresh water en route.

Laconia's larder for the world cruise. 

Ports there were aplenty but of the 140 days, 80  would be spent at sea including some "long hauls" like Panama to San Francisco, Honolulu to Yokohama, Bombay to Sudan and Egypt and Gibraltar to New York. In an era when liners offered little in the way of organised entertainment and diversions during the day or evening, American Express following the model of Frank C. Clark's first world cruises, made special efforts to provide them:

The liner has been specially equipped for the recreation of the passengers. A gymnasium has been installed on the boat deck and contains machines for rowing, horseback riding, playing golf, boxing and other pastimes. There are two swimming pools, one of which will be used for the Father Neptune ceremonies when the Laconia crosses the equator.

One feature for the passengers will be a 'field' where wingshots may enjoy clay pigeon shooting, and, incidentally, the liner will be able to indulge in ancient pastime of archery. The ship will carry an American dentist and three nurses.

New York Tribune, 21 November 1922

One of the deck sport innovations introduced on Laconia's world cruise was clay pigeon shooting, a shipboard pastime now sadly relegated to history. 

The provision of clay pigeon shooting, "the sergeant system of trap shooting," was the first of its kind on a liner, "This sport, which is admirably adapted for sea voyages, was tried recently by well-known American society folk on the Aquitania." (Gloucestershire Echo), and Laconia was equipped with six sporting guns, 50,000 rounds of sporting cartridges and 40,000 clay bird targets.

Again following the Frank C. Clark model, the cruise staff included: "A special staff of lecturers will accompany Laconia on her cruise around the world. Just before arriving at a foreign port moving pictures of the places to be visited will be shown, and a lecture will be given on the subject pictured." (Pittsburgh Daily Post, 5 November 1922).

The Laconia is in charge of two captains, Captain Brown, of the Tyrrhenia, and Staff Captain Irving, of the Berengaria. The crew of close upon five hundred was specially recruited from the Aquitania, the Mauretania and the Berengaria. This is perfect Cunard service assured.

The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser (Weekly) 7 February 1923 

The passengers were almost all American, the cruise operated by an American company yet Laconia remained wholly British, British-built and proudly flying the Blue Ensign as well as the gold lion rampant on a field of red houseflag of "The Cunard Line of Steamers."  For some Americans already finding the Volstead Act and Prohibition a trial, her registry brought practical advantages: "As a good British ship, of course, the Laconia travels wet--decidedly wet. So the hours on the broad Pacific, maddeningly calm at times, will not be tedious for those interested in the ship's bar."

In a larger and lasting sense, Laconia's voyage conferred great credit on Cunard, the Merchant Navy and her officers and crew as anything else.  The first ocean liner to circle the globe entirely was a Cunarder and the considerable skill and seamanship required sail a vessel into ports never envisaged for her came from a specially selected crew:   "A picked crew and a picked staff of officers are handling the Laconia on the voyage. Capt. R.B. Irving, an active commander in the British Naval Reserve, is in command. It was not without difficulty that the Cunard line got him from the government," reported one paper.  

Staff Captain of Laconia on her world cruise, Capt. R.B. Irving rose to command Queen Mary in 1938 where he is shown on her bridge. 

Capt. F.G. Brown.

Capt. F.G. Brown, R.N.R., first joined Cunard Line in 1900 as Fourth Officer of Campania, after eight years in sail. By 1910, he had served in eight different Cunarders and given command of Thracia in 1911 followed by a period of duty as Staff Captain of Mauretania.  He then commanded Ascania and Ausonia on the Canadian run, by the time the Great War broke out. Holding a commission in the Royal Navy Reserve, he served in H.M.S. Albion during the war.  In 1920, he was  back with Cunard, commanding the new Albania and then the following year Tyrrhenia. 

The 22 American Express personnel aboard was by Dr. C.L. Babcock, who had conducted excursions for 21 years, assisted by Leslie Rowland, Fred E. Marble, W.B. Chandler, A.L. Maas, Raymond Fuller, S.T. Lassen, J.J. O'Leary, C.J.B. Dixon, A.C. Cosman, C.H. Watson, J.E. Donaldson, W.H. Evans, M.E. Merriman, W.D. Inman, manager of the Shanghai office, David Houston, dental surgeon and two registered nurses. 

Before Laconia left the Mersey on 7 November 1922, she was given a general overhaul including the provision of the gymnasium in a new deck house on the Boat Deck aft island.  She was also equipped with "the largest and most modern laundry afloat,  it is  fitted with all the appliances found in up-to-date laundries ashore and is controlled by a manager with a staff of thirty experienced hands. The machinery has the capacity of seventy thousand pieces of linen a week, and the plant will consume 46,000 gallons of fresh water in the same period." (Gloucestershire Echo, 8 November 1922). 

So much for the "product". How much did it cost?  Most of the accomodation was offered on a double or single occupancy basis. The lowest fare for a single cabin was $4,000 (equal to $70,000 in 2022 value) whereas the lowest rate, based on sharing a min. rate former Second Class cabin on "E" Deck was $1,350 ($24,000 in 2022 value per person).  Sharing a "D" Deck four-berth cabin cost $2,875 ($50,700 in 2022 value) and on "B" Deck, a three-berth cabin cost $4,355 pp or $76,500 pp) and the finest accommodation in the ship, a suite with private bath and sitting room cost $10,000 pp or $176,000 (2022) pp.  Most of the cabins were occupied as doubles with the average per person fare working out to $4,500 or $79,359 (2022) pp.

The cost to charter Laconia, inclusive of crew, fuel, provisions, docking and canal transit fees was $9,226 ($162,704 in 2022 value) a day or $1.25 mn. or $20.1 mn. (2022). The Wall Street Journal informed its readers that the gross revenue of the cruise totalled $1.8 mn, ($29 mn. in 2022). Each passenger was reported to have had an average of $2,000 ($32,200) in traveller's cheques and to  cash these check and offset exchange conditions in ports of all, Laconia had  £100,000 in cash aboard. 

The possibilities for these cruises seem very great. The United States is a country in which fashion counts for at least as much as in any other country. Probably it couns for more than in most. The country never does anything by halves, and it becomes the fashion to go cruising in great liners everybody who has the means and the time will wish to do so. It happens that the United States is now probably the wealthiest country in the world, and lack of means will certainly not hinder the filling of great liners on their tours around the world. Great as is the number of Americans who have been in the habit of visiting Europe, there still immense numbers who have not yet gone far from some of the great American cities. It was commonly and truly said that a substantial proportion of the American troops had the their first sight of the sea when the went on board the transports during the war. Wonderful in its own ways as the United States is, it necessarily cannot possess much that is the heritage of the old countries, and American are among the first to admit it. Happily for them, money seems easier to earn in the United States than in Europe, and so they are provided with the means of travel and of studying the older civilisations.

Shipbuilding & Shipping Record, 29 June 1922.

World cruise ships are customarily hailed as 'the ships of the millionaires,' and the Laconia would prove no exception to this irresistible hyperbole. In fact, while there were a handful of the very rich on the passenger list, most were perfectly ordinary middle-class Americans.

Liners to the Sun.

Original caption: Herbert L. Pratt, Vice President of the Standard Oil Company, photographed aboard the Ocean Liner SS Laconia, today. The SS Laconia started on a world cruise to last 130 days, stopping at the most interesting and important ports of the world where the passengers will do some sightseeing. The ship will pass through the Panama Canal. Herbert Lee Pratt was an American businessman and a leading figure in the United States oil industry. In 1923, he became head of Standard Oil of New York; his father Charles Pratt was a founder of Astral Oil Works, which later became part of Standard Oil. Credit: World Wide Photos. 

Among the interesting visitors, recently in Singapore on the liner Laconia, were five honeymoon couples, twelve rich widows, ten ex-servicemen, one ex-service nurse, ten men worth from ten to fifteen million dollars, a number worth a million a million each and quite a large number who were worth half a million apiece. Ghee!

The Straits Times 26 February 1923

Finally, who were Laconia's passengers?  After her call at San Francisco, she numbered 430 in all, hailing from 112 towns and cities in 37 states.  It was reported that there were five honeymoon couples aboard, 20 widows, 11 ex-American servicemen and an ex-American Army nurse and "almost every calling in American life from sea captain to army colonel, journalists to bishops, bucket shop operations to millionaires" was represented on the passenger list.

The extended Pratt Family headed the V.I.P. list aboard Laconia.  Credit: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 22 November 1922. 

Her almost entirely American passenger list was bereft of the titles before and the initials after the names that populated cruises from British ports and celebrity was conferred instead on business or society standing.  In any event, celebrity hunters were apt to be disappointed.  There was May Allison, "the motion picture beauty" and her husband, actor Robert Ellis, aboard on a belated honeymoon trip, Robert Ripley, the cartoonist,  and film director R.G. Vignola who had just completed the epic "When Knighthood Was in Flower," and Brigadier-General Asher Miner, who commanded the 28th Pennsylvania Division in the Great War and lost a leg in action at Apremont, France, in 1918, aboard with his family.

Some of Laconia's more famous passengers as photographed on arrival at Honolulu including: (top left): Brig.General Milner and family, (bottom right) Cartoonist R.L. Ripley and Yale swimming champion  John Davidson and below Laconia's Capt. F.G. Brown. Credit: Honolulu Advertiser, 17 December 1922.

"The Business of America is... Business" and Laconia's list was heavily populated with the men of American business, industry, trade, cultural institions and higher learning including Herbert L. Pratt, Vice President of the Standard Oil Company, and Mrs. Pratt. And their two daughters and Frederic B. Pratt a director of the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and his wife and daughter;  Mrs. William V. Hester, wife of the owner of the Brooklyn Eagle; C.W. Brown, President of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. and Joel W. Burdick, President of West Penn Steel Co.; E.W. Rice, Chairman of the Board of Directors, General Electric Co., and Mrs. Rice; G. F. Morrison, Vice President, General Electric Co., Dr. W.R. Whitney, head of the research laboratories of General Electric, and Mrs. Whitney; W.C. Lusk, head of General Electric's London office; J.W. Daniels, President of Archer-Daniels Linseed Co., and Mrs. Daniels; Claude Goodman, Managing Director of Rolls Royce, Ltd; Frank E. Titus, Goodyear Rubber Co.; Dr. W.R. Whitney, Egyptologist of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Baroness Van Eerde; and Charles Renshaw, President of the Newman Clock Co. 

The Business of America... Is Business. Even on a world cruise if you joined the Forbes party. Credit: Forbes. 

The large number of business executives was not by accident for Forbes magazine had actively promoted the cruise as a "working vacation" for American businessmen to sound out the opportunities in each country and port and arranged inspections of factories and business as well meeting with local business leaders. Forbes magazine correspondent Leslie W. Rowland accompanied the party which was promised:

You will meet on board ship, prominent business men and bankers from almost every part of the United States.

You will meet the big men in each Port of Call. On arrival, you will furnished with reports, statistics, information and other data essential for a first hand study of conditions. You will visit the leading industries, factories and plantations. You can make arrangements to meet any individual in any port on the itinerary.

Charles Bond, President of the Bond Foundry & Machine Co., with his family aboard Laconia. He contributed an article of his experiences to Belting & Transmission, an industry journal. Credit: Belting & Transmission. 

Credit: Great Falls (Montana) Montana Tribune, 19 November 1922. 

Such was the publicity surrounding the cruise, that almost every one of Lacona's passengers were instant celebritites in their hometowns when newspapers then reported on the travels of local residents, most were afforded a mention or photos.  Quite a few contributed regular accounts of their voyage to smaller, local newspapers although many have a "sameness" about them suggesting this was not too cleverly nuanced "planted"  press release campaign by American Express. In any event, Laconia's cruise and her passengers were "in the news" through the voyage.

One inveterate letter writer aboard, Halbert K. Hitchcock, privately printed a compilation of regular letters sent to his office and friends, and encouraged by the reception, they were, with photographs, printed by G.P. Putman as Trailing the Sun Around the Earth: A Series of Circular Letters from of Two Pilgrims to the Families at Home, November 21 1922 to August 1 1923, in 1925.  As the title indicates, Mr. Hitchcock extended his trip in Europe at the end of the cruise.

Credit: The Central New Jersey Home News, 24 November 1922.

And, of course, there had to be the photo of the tallest passenger and the shortest bellboy which was amply satisfied by the 6 ft. 5-in. tall Benjamin O. Willibrands of Detroit who had been accommodated by Cunard by adding 18-inches to his berth by removing a wardrobe at the foot of the bed. The wealthy ranch owner and electrical contractor who started as a newsboy and became a millionaire, told reporters that the world cruise was the fullfillment of his boyhood dreams. 

The most famous and publicised recorders of Laconia's world cruise was cartoonist Robert L. Ripley whose "Ripley's Ramble 'Round the world" was serialised in newspapers through the country February-May 1923. 

The most famous passenger in terms of an audience was cartoonist Robert L. Ripley (1890-1948), before his "Ripley's Believe it or Not" days.  Recently engaged by The Boston Globe as a sports writer and illustrator, the paper presiently booked him on Laconia's world cruise as an assignment: "Ripley's Ramble' Round the World" which was serialised in the Globe and papers through the country beginning in February 1923.  The cruise transformed his professional life, illuminating his inherent abilities as an inquisitive and intuitive travel writer and broadening his remarkable artistic skills and developing a keen passion in Asian and Indian cultures and religions which remained with him for the rest of life. Ripley would become a frequent passenger in some of the great liners through the 1920s and 1930s and visit 201 countries during his sadly short life.  "Ripley's Ramble 'Round the World" a century later provides a unique visual and written record of the Laconia voyage and remaiins one of Ripley's most entertaining serials. 

The Phelps Party aboard Laconia on sailing day, 21 November 1922 with Eleanor on the left, her mother in the middle and travel companion Claudia.  Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

Then there was perhaps the one passenger who best represents Laconia's passengers or the best of them, and whose meticulous two-volume diary, packed with photos, daily programmes and shore excursion leaflets, press clippings and most of all, with the most wonderful and insightful handwritten accounts of each port of call, days at seas, places and wonders seen, people met and all the ingredients of a voyage.  Her name was Miss  Eleanor S. Phelps  of Teaneck, New Jersey,  aged 26, and already an experienced traveller with her first trip made in 1912.  we have a day-by-day account of the voyage, written in her own hand.  She had her own cabin aboard Laconia but travelled with her mother who had a travelling companion.  Her remarkable journals have been meticulously saved and digitised by the University of South Carolina, allowing us to share Eleanor's personal journey around the world aboard Laconia a century later. 

The title page of Eleanor Phelps' remarkable two-volume diary of her voyage around the world aboard Laconia. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

With Eleanor and her fellow passengers embarked, R.M.S. Laconia, fully bunkered and provisioned, her chart room bursting at the seams and  the ship gleaming in fresh paint and dressed overall, is finally off on her much anticipated voyage right around the world.  

Now, voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

Each Laconia passenger was presented with this rather splendid embossed personal log book to record their memories of the voyage.  Credit: eBay auction photo.

... promptly at noon on Tuesday, the 21st of November, we sailed out into the beautiful Hudson while two bands played "Auld Lang Syne” and other familiar airs, and our friends lined the pier with the others to bid us "bon voyage." Colored strips of paper floated in the gentle breeze and the whole scene was one long to be remembered and brought a choking sensation to our throats... 

Trailing the Sun Around the Earth

Laconia's departure for New York to begin her world cruise occasioned almost as much press coverage in British newspapers as her actual sailing on the cruise itself did in American ones. 

Special interest attached to the departure of the Cunard liner Laconia from Liverpool for New York for, when she returns to the Mersey, she will have steamed a distance of over 35,000 miles.

Devon & Exeter Gazette, 9 November 1922

For Laconia, her officers and crew, the world cruise really began with their departure from Liverpool on 9 November 1922, beginning an absence from their homeport that would last some five months, longer than any outside the war for a Cunarder.  It was a very lightly patronised crossing, Laconia having only 29 First, 106 Second and 85 Third Class when she sailed so a chance for the crew to prepare for the long cruise to come as well as take it easy for the last time in quite a while. Upon leaving the Landing Stage, she had an unintended and well known passenger; Mr. Harry Wood, the conductor of the Empress Ballroom Orchestra at Blackpool Winter Gardens, who had gone aboard to see off his nephew, Hilton Cullerne, who was from the Royal College of Music and appointed conductor of the ship's orchestra. Unwittingly, Wood missed the last call ashore and had to continue with the ship all the way to Queenstown where he disembarked in very rough conditions via the pilot boat.  

Laconia docked at New York on 15 November 1921 so she had six days to provision and refuel for her world cruise and her First and Second Class accommodation opened up for a single class.  Her American Express cruise staff were quartered in Second Class cabins and part of the Third Class dining saloon used for staff.  

Embarkation day offered sunny, autumnal weather and more press attention and reporters at Pier 54 than surely attended Laconia's maiden arrival at New York that June. 

Chief Officer H.A.L. Bond (right) would become engaged to one of Laconia's passengers before the voyage was over.  Credit: Buffalo Times, 23 November 1922. 

One passenger, the already famous 6-foot 5-inch tall Benjamin O. Willibrands of Detroit was talking to newspapermen when a steward came up and told him his luggage had been accidently placed aboard Berengaria (which sailed for Southampton at 10:00 a.m.) at the other side of the pier.  Cunard officials wired Berengaria and requested that his luggage be put aboard the pilot boat and transferred to Laconia as she passed out of the harbour, thus saving Mr. Willibrands having to source a new wardrobe en route which given his stature might have proven one of the greatest undertakings of the whole voyage. 

R.M.S. Laconia, clear of her berth, ready to begin her passage down the North River and out to sea, 21 November 1922. Credit: Frank O. Braynard collection. 

R.M.S. Laconia, Capt. E.F. Brown, sailed from Pier 54, Port of New York, shortly after noon on 21 November 1922, with  341 passengers and a crew of 350.

The big ship slipped her cables and backed out into the river to the tune of 'Star-Spangled Banner.' Two thousand lined every inch of the dock as the vessel pulled out. The passengers lined every inch of the dock as the vessel pulled out. The passengers lined the rails of the ship and waved goodbye until the vessel had been nosed around by tugs and gathered speed for the trip down the bay.

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 21 November 1922

Gayly bedecked in flags, her decks covered with confetti and paper streamers by hundreds of persons on the pier who bid her passengers good voyage, the Cunard liner Laconia slipped out of her berth at West Fourteenth Street yesterday while the band played 'Auld Lang Syne,' on the initial leg of a cruise around the world, the first of its kind to be attempted by a passenger liners. She carried 415 tourists, which number will be augmented with another fifty in San Francisco.

New York Tribune, 22 November 1922

Credit: Johnston City Staff, 29 November 1922.

Credit: Victoria Daily Times, 22 November 1922.

Credit: St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 17 December 1922.

NEW YORK, N.Y. to HAVANA, CUBA, AT SEA, 21-25 November 1922

Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

We have now had three days of incomparable weather, the sea as smooth as glass and the ship everything that a ship should be. Clean, steady and perfectly manned and with somewhere over 400 fellow passengers who are to be our companions on this lovely cruise around the world which is in many respects unique, this being the first pleasure ship to sail completely around the world. Other ships have gone east from New York to San Francisco and back again, but to us is given the privilege of sailing on the first pleasure ship to entirely circumnavigate the globe.

Trailing the Sun Around the Earth

The Laconia is 20,000 tons, single smoke stack, oil burner, clean, fresh and new. The whole ship is open to the passengers and many eat in the second cabin dining room-- which is just as attractive as the main dining room. There is ample deck space, and plenty of everything except desks. The lounge is furnished rather strangely, Each table has four chairs-- on Chinese red lacquer, one tufted back chair, one Wm. & Mary straight chair and a cane back chair, rather odd but the effect no so unharmonious as one might suppose. 

Mother and Claudia have a 'suite'-- two rooms, bath and all; I have a single cabin in the forward part of the boat, called the 'island'-- I sleep in the upper berth in order to provide space for two wardrobe trunks, which stand on end under me. There is a wardrobe, a settee and a washstand. 

We sailed on time, and these first two and half days have been uneventful. As the passengers sort themselves out we can tell more about them; in the meanwhile it is best to lie low and look about.

Eleanor Phelps' Round the World diary

Eleanor Phelp's mother and travel companion shared a suite (above) and Eleanor occupied cabin B-9 in the forward island as a single. Note the lower berth is used to store two of her trunks. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

Boxing competition aboard Laconia en route to Cuba from an album of photographs from the World Cruise, auctioned in May 2022. Credit: invaluable.com

HAVANA, CUBA, 25 November 1922

Passing El Morro, Laconia comes into Havana, 25 November 1922. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

We got to the Sevilla Hotel for lunch, but as we were early C. and I walked along the Prado to the sea-wall. There is a north wind blowing in big combers which broke on the coral-rock outside the wall and came roaring straight at us, all green and white, with “Morro Castle” across the entrance to the harbor, which is only         ft wide at its mouth, great white clouds blowing across a very blue sky and a sea as blue as any Maxfield Parrish painting, it was a lovely picture.

We got back to Laconia at about 11, just catching a tender at the moment of departure. If all the days are as successful as this, we shall be very lucky. Every arrangement went like clockwork, people were prompt – almost too prompt – and one had no reason to think about plans or programmes. Certainly it is the only way to travel with anyone who is nervous or apprehensive. The weather was cool and fresh and clear, and Havana is altogether foreign and picturesque.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

HAVANA-PANANA CANAL, AT SEA, 26-28 November 1922

Daily Programme for 28 November 1922. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

These lazy days at sea save one’s life, as they allow real rest and relaxation. The joiner put up a shelf and my cabin is most luxurious now. It has lost the scrambled feeling it had before. The moonlight is lovely now – so white and clear and intense. Monday and Tuesday were equally pleasant and peaceful, with nothing really to recount. We read and wrote and ate and slept, fussed with the diaries, sewed and talked. We are not as fortunate as to travelling companions as on the Kaisar-i-Hind. There are no Stevens or Talmadges, no Dr. Silver and Bishop Lloyd and there are no signs of any people who “stand out” as being particularly interesting.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

PANAMA CANAL, C.Z., 29 November 1922

Laconia in the Culebra Cut, Panama Canal. William E. Wollard album. Credit: www.jamesarsenault.com

Laconia in the west chamber of Pedro Miguel Lock, Panama Canal, 29 November 1922. Credit: U.S. National Archives. 

The “Laconia” Transits Canal with Tour Party on an Around-the-World

Cruise. The Cunard liner Laconia transited the Canal on Wednesday, November 29, on an around-the-world cruise, with a party of 356 tourists, conducted by the American Express Company. She had come from New York by way of Havana, and at San Francisco, the next scheduled stop, will take on other passengers for the rest of the cruise. From San Francisco the route will include Japan, China, the Philippine Islands, Malay Peninsula, Java, Ceylon, thence through the Red Sea and Suez Canal to the Mediterranean, then to Great Britain and back to New York. The voyage is to end the latter part of March, 1923.

This is the first commercial passenger vessel to have passed through the Canal on an around-the-world cruise, and her passage aroused unusual interest at the Canal. The Governor of The Panama Canal, and other prominent officials of the Canal Zone and Panama, came through the Canal on the vessel, as the guests of the company. The party disembarked at Pedro Miguel Lock and took automobiles for the drive to Balboa and Panama. At Balboa they were entertained by an exhibition by the Red, White and Blue Troupe of swimmers. After a drive to the principal points of interest they had dinner at the Tivoli Hotel. The vessel sailed from Balboa at 10 o'clock that evening.

The Laconia is one of the largest passenger vessels to have passed through the Canal. She is 601.3 feet in length by 73.7 feet beam, and her registered gross and net tonnages are 19,680 and 11,829 tons, respectively. The tolls paid for her transit through the Canal were $13,237.50. 

Panama Canal Record, 1923.

An undoubted early highlight of the cruise was Laconia's transit of the Panama Canal, finally fulfilling the ambitions of HAPAG dating from 1914 to send a cruise ship right around the world, something only feasible with the completion of the canal.  Laconia was not only the first ship to accomplish this but was also, at the time, the first trans-Atlantic liner to transit the Canal and the largest merchant ship yet to do so. She paid a then record $13,237.50 in tolls for the privilege.  Hence, the press attention, worldwide, was fulsome with photographs of her transit appearing in countless dailies and "photogravure" special sections, all doubtless to the delight of Cunard and American Express. 

Eleanor Phelps' snaps of Laconia going the through the Panama Canal, left navigating the Culebra Cut. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

Panama, November 29, 1922

Our day at Panama began for us at 6 a.m. when the faithful Daley called me to see our entrance. We came in through the passage in the breakwater, in the early morning mist. The sky was all covered with soft clouds, tinted in light greys and violets, and out at sea the descent of rain in patches looked like gauzy veils of silver. On the left lay Colon and Cristobal, with blue mountains rising behind them, their tops covered with clouds and their color changing to purple and even black as the sky above them got darker.

Descriptions are always either unconvincing or inadequate, but next to the actual conception of such a piece of engineering, the great impression I got was of the beauty of it -- the cleanness and finish of the concrete work, the freshness of the green, the artistic effect of the planning and the evident thought for contour lines in the laying out of houses and streets. It took about 40 minutes, I should think, to go through the first three locks. We all ate breakfast hastily so that we shouldn’t miss anything of it, and we spent the morning hanging over the ship’s railings.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

Laconia passengers disembarking from the ship in the Pedro Miguel Locks for a tour. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

Passengers disembarked at the Pedro Miguel Locks at 3:20 p.m. for sightseeing, then on to the Balboa Swimming Club Fiesta as guests of the Canal Zone Executive Committee followed by dinner at Tivoli Hotel before returning to the ship in time for sailing at 9:30 p.m., ending what Eleanor Phelps called "a day long to be remembered – full of picturesque moments and beauty."

Passing through Panama Canal from an album of photographs from the World Cruise, auctioned in May 2022. Credit: invaluable.com

Laconia entering Gatun Locks. Credit: Clarence Walsh photo, Trailing the Sun Around the Earth.

At 10 P. M. we sailed, and as the ship left the dock and slowly steamed out into the Pacific, there came upon us a wondrous spell as the scene before us unfolded, the dark enveloping hills sprinkled with myriads of lights, back of these silently rose the dark mountains and above them all a vast canopy of blue sky, dotted with stars such as you see only in the tropics. When we finally stole back to our rooms, we all felt the mystery and beauty of the setting too deeply to voice our feelings, but were content in the knowledge that it was indeed the end of a perfect day, one such as rarely comes to mortal man.

Trailing the Sun Around the Earth

AT SEA, PANAMA to SAN FRANCISCO, 30 November-8 December 1922

From Panama to San Francisco, November 29 to December 8

We left Panama at about ten on Wednesday night – unfortunately I went to sleep before we started, so I didn’t have the actual sensation of going from Atlantic to Pacific in one day. The next morning, Thursday, I could be in my bunk and see the coast go by – all blue against the northeast sky – a coastline of mountains and large islands. During Thursday we were mostly within sight of land, but Friday and Saturday we were in the open ocean, hot and sticky most of the time, until late Saturday afternoon, there sprang up a strong north wind which blew the tops of the white caps into our portholes. The moonlight is glorious, very white and the moon is almost directly overhead.

...and a fancy dress ball. Also a classical concert on Sunday evening, at which Claudia, the Pratts, and I sat at the stern of the boat and listened to Butterfly while the moonlight poured down on us like a silver cloud. A week took a long time to go by, and it is one of our three biggest jumps – Hawaii to Yokohama, and Gibraltar to N.Y. being its only rivals in length. I can’t say I am sorry for that, as ten days at sea is rather longish. The Amexco tries to provide diversion for all tastes, and succeeds very well. But it remains a mystery why some of the passengers are taking the cruise. What are they going to get out of it?

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

It has never been our privilege to travel anywhere upon a ship so splendidly managed or so steady in all kinds of weather we have so far had. It is actually like being upon a palatial private yacht (only much steadier) where you have only to express a wish and it is immediately gratified. The food is good beyond belief and there is so much to do that you have not half enough time in which to do it.

Trailing the Sun Around the Earth

SAN FRANCISCO, USA, 9-10 December 1922

Amid the shrieking of whistles from bay craft and with the waterfront lined with a  mass of humanity from Land's End to Pier 32, the big Cunard liner Laconia dropped anchor in midstream yesterday afternoon shortly before 1 o'clock. The big liner with 400 passengers is on a world cruise.

Captain F.G. Brown, commander of the Laconia, appeared off the San Francisco lightship shortly before noon yesterday. As he approached the Union liner Maunganui, en route to New Zealand, passed out through the heads.  Both vessels have red smokestacks with black tops. Captain L. Worrel of the Maunganui greeted the Laconia with three blasts from her siren, which were promptly answered from Captain Brown.

This is the first time a Cunard liner has ever entered the Pacific Ocean, and San Francisco is the first port of call on the Pacific ever made by a Cunarder.

The San Francisco Examiner, 9 December 1922.  

The Cunard liner Laconia, carrying 400 tourists on a tour of the world, arrived here in San Francisco yesterday afternoon, greeted by tooting whistles from all the bay craft… The Laconia is the first tourist ship to touch San Francisco since the outbreak of the World War. Four more big ships are due here in the first four months of the new year.

The big liner passed through the Golden Gate shortly after 1 o'clock, hundreds of persons, lining the waterfront from the cliffs at Lands End to the barge office, witnessing her arrival. The Laconia, which is the first Cunard liner to visit San Francisco, presented a spectacular sight as she plowed through the bay, whistles from factories and waterfront craft blowing their welcoming  shrieks. She remained in quarantine a little more than an hour, steaming to Pier 32 where the tugs were waiting to assist her to her berth. 

The pier was jammed with people long before the big liner made her appearance off the Ferry Building. 

San Francisco Chronicle, 10 December 1922.

San Francisco did indeed open her Golden Gate for Laconia with a tremendous welcome and effusive, elaborate press coverage for the first Cunarder to ever call at the port and indeed, at the time, the largest liner to do so. 

Laconia was met upon arrival in the harbor by the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Golden Gate which conveyed an official welcoming delegation from the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and as soon as she tied up at Pier 32, Mayor Rolph boarded to convey an official welcome to Capt. F.G. Brown. While her passengers enjoyed a "30-mile drive" excursion by motorcars in seven sections of the sights of the city and environs followed by lunch at the Palace Hotel, more than 150 Cunard and American Express Co. agents, shipping men and reporters attended a luncheon aboard. Laconia's football squad played a match against the local Barbarians team in a downpour that afternoon, losing 4-1.

Credit: San Francisco Examiner, 9 December 1922.

I awoke on the morning on Friday Dec. 8 to see the coast of the Golden State slipping by my window, and it was golden - all tawny and orange and the sunlight making it all like a Mexican opal. All morning we sailed along it, and about 11 came in sight of the Golden Gate over which hung thick fog like dirty cotton wool - and that was the end of our sunlight. We picked up a pilot and the mail out just at the line the Sacramento River makes where it has its last fight before merging with to ocean [sic], and came on into the harbor, while the passengers were fighting for their mail and hardly anyone saw our entrance. We were warped in beautifully and lay at the Matson Line (to Honolulu) dock No. 32. I got ashore at 3. Cousin William and Cousin Alice Heger met us, both well and hearty, and we spent the afternoon shopping - photographers, White House, cleaners, cobblers, etc. Had dinner at the St. Francis and went to see “When Knighthood was in Flower” - an excellent movie which I was almost too tired to enjoy. Back to the boat about eleven and bed, but not too much sleep.

Our boat has been so well advertized in S.F. that every shop girl knew all about us and with true western friendliness were most interested in all we bought and everyone wished us “a pleasant journey”. They are nice and anyone who takes western people in the wrong way has only himself to blame.  One can’t help but appreciate the spirit and it is very cheering in these indifferent days.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

Among those embarking at San Francisco were May Allison, "the motion picture beauty" and her husband, actor Robert Ellis, on a belated honeymoon trip, Robert Ripley, the cartoonist, Yale athlete (swimming and diving) John S. Davidson and his mother.  With 72 embarking at the port added to her existing compliment of 341 on board from New York, Laconia now had a total of 413 passengers, "including five ministers, 50 widows and five honeymooners." as well as 35 Rotarians and  12 millionaires, one movie star, one moving picture director, one cartoonist, one army general, one colonel.

SAN FRANCISCO-HILO, AT SEA 8-14 December 1922

Laconia had a rough passage to Hawaii! Credit: Trailing the Sun Around the Earth.

We sailed this morning early. Left the dock at 5, but were delayed for nearly two hours by the fog before we finally left the Golden Gate behind us. We ran into a roughish sea outside and are crossing it diagonally which gives us a corkscrew motion. Many passengers have given up already. The Pacific belies its name sometimes - I hope it won’t for the next 17 days!

San Francisco to Hilo, December 10 to 15.

All day Sunday Dec. 10 we went through fog and a heavy swell and Mon., Tues, and Wed, all were gray or rainy. Thursday was clear and beautiful, and active, a meeting of the Committee of the Camera Club in the a.m. and of the Club members at 2:30. At 4 a meeting of the Verdant Victors – truly “Babbitt” – and in the evening [I to Z’s] chance at Dr. Marble’s lecture on Hawaii. These five days have been spent writing letters and reading and recovering from S.F.

Eleanor Phelp's Round the World diary

HILO, HAWAII, USA, 15 December 1922

Laconia anchored off Hilo, her captain deciding against docking at Kuhio wharf. Credit: eBay auction.

Eleanor Phelps' photo of the barges set up as shore launches alongside Laconia on arrival at Hilo.
Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina.  

Laconia's passengers coming ashore by barge at Hilo. William E. Woollard album. Credit: www.jamesarsenault.com

Nowhere was Laconia more welcomed than in Hawaii.  Anticipation of the call had begun months before and upon departure from San Francisco, there were daily updates of her progress toward Hilo, her first Hawaiian call. On 13 December 1922 it was reported Laconia was making 18 knots average on her passage south and had done 925 miles in the 49 hours since she left San Francisco.  

Then, too, was the prospect of the some 2,000 round-the-world tourists that winter spending an estimated $100,000 locally during their calls at the islands.  Laconia would be followed by Resolute, arriving on 1 February 1923, then Empress of France with a record 800 aboard on 9 February, via Hilo, and finally Samaria, uniquely routed eastwards, which would call at Honolulu on 13 May. 

As it was, Laconia bucked strong headwinds most of her way south, so that it was not until 2:25 p.m. on 15 December 1922 that she came into Hilo, some eight hours late.  The Captain of Laconia decided against docking alongside Kuhio wharf and her  passengers had to be taken ashore on two large sugar cane barges with folding chairs set up so it was not until 4:00 p.m. that they were off by a fleet of 70 motorcars to see the Kilauea volcano before Laconia sailed at midnight for Honolulu. The late arrival was rewarded by a dramatic evening eruption of the volcano. It was a late return to the ship, the barges leaving the wharf at 12:45 a.m. and the last passenger aboard Laconia an hour later. 

At midnight the passengers were lightered back to the Laconia, the night being typically Hawaiian, while about the barge and its silent, reflective crowd, boats circle with Hawaiian musicians aboard. As the Laconia pulled out for Honolulu at 2 in the morning the passengers shouted back their alohas to the good people of Hilo.

 Honolulu Advertiser, 17 December 1922.

Hilo, December 15

An unforgettable day – and a strenuous one. We were late in arriving, owing to fog and counter currents leaving S.F. so instead of arriving in the morning it was 2 p.m. when we got to the anchoring place. Our tender was strikingly original – two huge flat barges, on which were placed as at a camp meeting “funeral” chairs in rows, about 250 on the big one and 200 on the smaller. After they got moored alongside, a launch came up with hundreds of life-preservers and they were thrown on to the barges. A cheery feeling! After a while all the passengers were safely put upon the lighters and we started off. As we approached the shore, we found the entire population lined up to receive us: Chinese, Japs, Americans, Kanakas, etc., etc, an indiscriminate lot in all sorts of clothes. They cheered us, and on the landing float there were Hawaiian singers, steel-stringed guitars, women with lei, and on the shore palm trees.

.... but it was hot lava, and lava rock, and the sulphur fumes are carried up by the steam. We looked into the tremendous bowl, and in the bottom, seething and glowing in brilliant liquid fire- red and gold, copper, and inky black – was the lava. No description could give any idea of its power, its sinister glare, and yet it was incredibly beautiful, for in addition to the river of lava, there were rings, fairy rings of fire – “for methinks that Beauty and Terror are only one, not two”.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

HONOLULU, OAHU, USA, 16-17 December 1922

The combined efforts of the U.S. Navy and the Star-Bulletin produced these fabulous photos of Laconia 80 miles from Honolulu. 

Saturday, December 16

I was awakened at 6:45 by passengers, but wasn’t sorry as we were passing a gorgeous series of islands – all brown and purple and bright green, towering in ragged masses into a soft blue, cloud-flecked sky from a sapphire sea.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

Laconia followed a course to Honolulu via the windward side of Maui and Molokai, affording her passengers brilliant vistas of the passing islands in perfect weather during the entire morning. 

Not waiting for the liner to come to them, the U.S. Navy dispatched two  H-type float planes from Pearl Harbor Naval Air Station to Maui to photograph the inbound Laconia on passage at 17 knots between Mau and Lanai and drop greetings from the Star-Bulletin to the ship.  The photos were dropped by parachute in watertight containers on Sand Island opposite Pier 9 when Laconia would shortly arrive and rushed to the Star-Bulletin lab and processing in time for that day's edition. Another airborne welcome was provided by the U.S. Army Air Corps which sent a squadron from Luke Field  to meet the liner as she passed Diamond Head. 

Then the largest ship yet to call at the port, Laconia approaches her pier at Honolulu.  Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

The arrival of Laconia was afforded full spread photo coverage in the Honolulu papers. Credit: Honolulu Advertiser, 17 December 1922.

There was no difficulty in docking the Cunard liner Laconia at Pier 7 in Honolulu yesterday, the vessel responding easily to the directors given by the pilot until her great bulk rested easily and without jar against the pier, demonstrating that Honolulu's harbor is capable of handling the greatest liners that ply the Pacific.

The Laconia, first liner to circumnavigate the globe with a personally conducted list of passengers, is opening the way for other similar tourists, many of which will be made early in the coming year, each vessel to call at Honolulu.

Honolulu Advertiser, 17 December 1922

The Cunarder was, at the time, the largest ship ever to call at Honolulu, the existing record holder being  Taiyo Maru (15,987 grt, 561 ft.).  Laconia was not, however, as long as the 794 ft.-long H.M.S. Renown which visited in December 1920 with the Prince of Wales aboard. It was recorded by the Honolulu Star Bulletin that Laconia paid the largest port charges in the history of the port: $120 for pilotage, wharfage $354 and water $252 or a total of $726.

Aloha, Laconia!

Arrival of the big liner Laconia today opens a new era in Hawaii's tourist traffic.

There have been round-the-world excursion steamers touching here hitherto, but the Laconia is the first of an important series this season, the first arrival of a stately fleet. For the first time, Honolulu is a main port of call in the swing around the world made by two thousand tourists."

Honolulu Star Bulletin, 16 December 1922

Credit: R.I. Ripley drawing, Boston Globe, 16 February 1923.

Another Hawaiian welcome.

Sweet music. Leis are again placed over our heads as we descend the gangplank amid the murmur of 'Aloha, aloha.'

Such hospitality is from the heart. They come from far and near to greet their guests and bring the leis and garlands of beautiful tropical flowers to drape the necks of strangers they have never seen before or will ever see again. They have no ulterior motive-- nothing to sell. They come down to the dock for other purpose than to welcome you. And aloha means 'I love you.'

The only discordant note was an American prohibition officer, who searched everybody.

Ripley's Ramble 'Round the World

Boston Globe, 16 February 1923

The tour programme at Honolulu included an auto excursion to the Pali and around the city, dinner at the Moana Hotel and a display of surfing at Waikiki Beach.  The 55th Coast Artillery put on a display of their 155mm guns for the tourists at Fort Shafter. Laconia's football team had another chance to prove themselves against the local competition, playing a match on 16 December 1922 against team put together by the Honolulu Soccer Assoc. but lost 4-0.

Left: our diligent voyage diarist, Eleanor Phelps in swimming costume ready for a swim on Waikiki Beach. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

Sunday, December 17

In the morning we took the scheduled motor drive, first to the Pali. No photograph could do it justice, nor any description. The color, the blue of the sea, red earth, green vegetation, the outline of the mountains, all are amazing; it is so beautiful that I’ve never seen anything to equal it. We proceeded on our way, past sugar plantations, through school grounds, and the Parade ground at Fort Schafter... and around Diamond Head, returning to the Moana at 12. There we lunched and after that C. and I went in swimming – “On the Beach at Waikiki” – the air was warm but the water even warmer, very shallow (we simply couldn’t get out of our depth) but there was enough surf to give us plenty of exercise, and we swam about and enjoyed ourselves hugely. 

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

Swinging out into the stream at 5:30 p.m. yesterday just as dusk was falling over the harbor, the Cunard liner Laconia departed for Yokohama and the remainder of her world tour.

The hulking bulk of the steamer was handled as easily as when the vessel was docked Saturday afternoon. Two tugs took a bow line and swung the Laconia's nose out towards the channel while the liner's turbines reversed, eased her backwards toward the Ewa side of the stream. At half speed she slid past Sand Island and into the night.

Pier 8 was crowded with spectators witnessing the departure, as it was Saturday when the liner came in. The Hawaiian Band played native melodies, the passengers threw serpentine over the sides to old and new friends on the dock, and a rush and bustle centered around the gangplank as the stewards dashed up and down with hand luggage and tourists fluttered aboard, covered with leis. "

Honolulu Star Bulletin, 18 December 1922

We set sail at 5:30 P. M. with the ship covered with streamers of colored paper as at New York and the Hawaiian band playing “Aloha" and "Auld Lang Syne” and other familiar melodies. As we left the pier, the sun sank in the sea, the mountains were bathed in a purple mist of rare loveliness and we were sad, but happy as our eyes were now turned upon Japan and the Orient, which, of course, is our real objective.

Trailing the Sun Around the Earth

Taiyo Maru, the largest ship regularly sailing from Honolulu, left 30 mins earlier than Laconia which now headed out to begin the long nonstop trans-Pacific run to Japan. 

HONOLULU to YOKOHAMA, AT SEA, 17-28 December 1922

AT SEA-- We are leaving Hawaii.

The trailing streamers are dragging longingly in the water behind us as we slowly get under way. The last coin has been tossed to the naked divers that surrounded the ship, and the last brown-skinned native has leaped from the davits into the water, 60 feet below, and is paddling to his homeland-- a blinking stretch of sparking lights in the distance. The faint murmur of soft music is dying out and soon only the hugeness of Diamond Head remains of this hospitable frontier of America.

Losing a Day

Yesterday was Wednesday; today is Friday.

We crossed the 180th meridian and lost Thursday from our lives.

There are so many things I should have liked to have done on Thursday.

The day simply disappeared. Went to bed Wednesday and awake to find this Friday morning. Fortunately this phenomenon does not take place two days from now, or we would be cheated out of Christmas.

Credit: Boston Globe, 23 February 1923

RAINING AT SEA-- Could anything in the world be more foolish, I ask you? The ocean is an awful waste of water, anyway; yet a nice, beautiful day like is completely ruined by rain. 

The storm confined the passengers within the salons and saloons, where a good time was had by all. You folks at home probably know what a salon is, but most of you have doubtless forgotten the saloon. Let me tell you.

On this boat the saloon is affectionately known as 'A Aft.' The place is particularly easy to find. Start out in any direction you may choose and you will just naturally end up there. It is usually filled with American law-breakers and one of the best-known prohibition enforcement officers New York ever had. On the wall is a sign which reads:

NOTICE

Will passengers kindly give their orders for wines in advance so that they may insure them being served at the proper temperature.

Between crimes the American criminal element is fond of comparing penalties here and home, I submit a short list.

Cheerio!

Moet et Chandon, white seal 1906, $6 a quart

Heidesleck, dry monople, 1911, $5 per quart

Pol Roger, 1911, $5 a quart

Sparkling Moselle, $4 a quart

All kinds of cocktails, 20 cents a glass

All kinds of liqueurs, 25 cents a glass

Any kind of whisky, 20 cents a glass

Ale, stout and beer, 15 cents a bottle

VERY MUCH AT SEA-- Now is a storm and the wind blowing a hurricane. The passengers crowd the saloon windows and watch the Laconia plunge her nose into the mountainous waves, shattering them in fantastic fury high in the air above the ship, where the wind blows them into snowy showers over our heads.

Ripley's Ramble 'Round the World

Boston Globe, 23 February 1923

Christmas Dinner, at sea, aboard Laconia. Credit: eBay auction.

Christmas was celebrated in mid Pacific, three days before arrival at Yokohama and coinciding with the roughest weather encountered so far, with Laconia pummeling her way through 40 ft. head seas.  A passenger aboard, Charles Bond, wrote to friends: "We have not seen land, vessel or fish since we left Honololu. We have lectures, horse-racing, shuffle-board, prize-fighting, music, sermons and card-playing galore. Always something to keep you interested… This steamship is a wonder. She pitches, of course, seems to go up and down 30 or 40 ft. but she does not roll."

The Brooklyn Eagle's account of Christmas at sea aboard Laconia. 

...a very long distance, my brothers-- and the most persistently rough sea, I ever saw or imagined. Today is Dec 26 and I wonder whether we ever will get to Yokohama… Christmas is over, a strange far-away Christmas. Christmas night there was a 'Vaudeville Entertainment" but I left after a few turns. The before was what purported to be a Christmas Eve Service, but as there were no Christmas hymns or nothing suggestive of Christmas, the Pratts and ourselves for restive and after the service we got up in front of all the passengers and sang real Christmas carols, and felt better for it.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

CHRISTMAS DAY-- North Pacific Ocean, latitude, 24 degrees 32 minutes 40 seconds; longtitude, 154 degrees 28 minutes 27 seconds East: This is Christmas.

I don't know whether to be merry or not. I have been trying all day to make up my mind-- but despite the four Christmas trees aboard I cannot do it. 

The boat is too far from land. Too far in all directions-- from Hawaii, from Japan, and from the bottom of the ocean, as they say it is more than five miles deep about here.

ANOTHER STORM-- Thoroughly appropriate to the occasion-- as everybody felt that way, anyhow.

The captain says were are on the edge of a typhoon. The old boat certainly does bounce, and the wind, which is a howling horror, has blown the Laconia over sideways and is keeping her there. The waves have their tops blown off in snowy gusts until the sea looks like a stretch of steaming hills that remind me of the inside of the outer crater of Kilauea, Hawaii. 

But the elements hushed as hurriedly as they began and when darkness fell the blood-red setting sun broke through the clouds in splendor and threw a golden light across the Heavens until the snowy-white head of Fujiyama, the sacred mountain of Japan, stood revealed in magnificence. 

Tomorrow we are in Yokohama!

Ripley's Ramble 'Round the World

Boston Globe, 23 February 1923

Credit: Japan Advertiser, 27 December 1922

YOKOHAMA, JAPAN, 28 December 1922-2 January 1923

Yokohama will witness a big influx of visitors to-morrow afternoon, and the streets are likely to present a busy scene, with the American tourist getting a first glimpse of the Orient. Over four hundred visitors are making the round-the-world trip on the new Cunard liner Laconia, the trip arranged by the American Express Company's Travel Department, being the first round the world cruise since the war. The passengers are said to include some very wealthy Americans, and there are whispers of several millionaires being on board.

Japan Advertiser, 27 December 1922

The arrival at Yokohama on 28 Dcember 1922 began a comprehensive 19-day tour of the country including  Tokyo, Kobe, Osaka and Kyoto.  As an oil-burner, the customary call at Nagasaki for coaling was dispensed with.  A highlight was a daylight passage of the Inland Sea, "giving an intimate view of its beautiful islands and picturesque fisherfolk." During Laconia's stay in Yokohama (28 December 1922-3 January 1923), her passengers enjoyed tours to Tokyo (two full day tours), a half day excursion to Kamakura on New Years Day and one day free ricksha service for independent sightseeing in Yokohama and an optional tour to Nikko. There were also optional overland tours in Japan (eight days and rejoining the ship at Kobe) and a  17-day one to Japan, Korea and Peking, rejoining the ship at Shanghai.

Robert Ripley was in good form portraying the sights and impressions of Japan during Laconia's extended call there. Credit: Boston Globe, 28 February 1923. 

Despite the serge-suited, short-sabre-carrying police and the alarmists, the 500 American tourists who 'invaded' Japan received a hearty reception when they first set foot on Japanese soil at Yokohama. The warmth of the welcome accorded them justified the advance statement that will be similarly treated all through their stay in the country. A special dinner was given them by the municipality of Yokohama was one of the features of the manner in which the visitors were received, and, incidentally, this function, over which the Governor of Kanagwawa prefecture in which Yokohama is situated and the Mayor of the port city jointly provided, was a silent snug to the meddling police who, in the summer, tried to make out that this party of tourists was really a number of American spies who intended coming for the purpose of gleaning military secrets! 

North China Herald, 13 January 1923

Original caption: 'Three Phelpses on New Year's Day". Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

Dec. 28

After 11 days of sea, mostly stormy, we sighted land about 4 p.m. on December 28.  - brown rocky islands on each side of us as we came through the Channel leading to Yokohama Bay. It had been raining in torrents all morning and we had no idea that we would be able to see Fuji, but by a miracle just as we got near enough to see it, the clouds broke away leaving the white cone of Fuji veiled in a thin mist. Gradually even that blew off and we could see the top of the mountain floating above a bank of cloud and fog, seemingly detached from the earth. As the sun went down in a flame sunset, “mackerel” sky suffused with pink and gold, the light on Fuji’s snow was glorious. No wonder the Japanese worship it for it is incredibly beautiful.

The leading rickshaw-boy misunderstood the directions and took us to the Grand Hotel, jammed with “Laconia Crusaders”, so Claudia and I were determined to get to Theatre St.  Mr. Maas provided us, in the twinkling of an eye, with a Japanese guide, and we started off in three rickshaws for Theatre St. I shall never forget that ride – the silence of the rickshaw, the piercing cold, the dark streets at first, through the Foreign Quarter, and then the lighted streets. Lanterns, red and cream, shining with soft radiance; the shops, like booths, all open to the street with clogs, clothes, fruit, food, toys, confectionary, fish, every imaginable thing to see; some filled with customers, some with the owner squatting over a glazed earthenware brazier, the light from burning charcoal glowing up on to his face; a beggar on the bridge singing a curious minor song and rocking back and forth; canals filled with barges; men in black coats with enormous sleeves, women in kimonos, both on clogs – the lanterns gleaming everywhere and the cries of the rickshaw boys to each other – I wish I could describe it properly.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

The Phelps family took the 17-day overland tour to Japan, Korea and Peking and would not rejoin Laconia until Shanghai on 12 January 1923.  

KOBE, JAPAN, 3-6 January 1923

During Laconia's call at Kobe, her passengers made a one-day your to Osaka one day and one to Kyoto the following day.

PORT ARTHUR, JAPAN,  9 January 1923

Almost on the 19th anniversary of the watershed Battle of Port Arthur (9 February 1904), Laconia called at the famous former Russian fortified harbour and her passengers visited the old forts and Dairen city.

Credit: R.I. Ripley drawing,  Boston Globe, 20 March 1923. 

Port Arthur, Jan 9.

This morning I rode on a railroad built by an American, sat in a Pullman coach and was dragged by an engine built in Philadelphia to Port Arthur.

The late war has made a bum out of Port Arthur. The hills of Port Arthur mean much to the Japs, but the ruins of the Russo-Japanese War no longer have the kicking thrill they possessed before the late struggle. The battlefields of Europe dwarf these few hills and trenches into insignificance. 

Ripley's Ramble 'Round the World

Boston Globe, 20 March 1923

TSINGTAO (China), 10-11 January 1923

An American tourist party, consisting of about 450 people, is due to arrive in Tsingtao at noon on Wednesday next, and Mr. Worthman, of the American Express Company, Tientsin, has been here: to make the necessary arrange ments. The str. Laconia, 21,000 tons, which is bringing them, is the largest passenger steamer which. has ever entered the harbour. The party will dine and dance at the Grand Hotel, leaving the town at about 4 p.m. on Thursday for Shanghai, where they will be join ed by 50 other tourists who went as far as Peking, via Korea and Manchuria. The visit of such a large number will afford a fine opportunity for introducing Teingtao and its beauties to the travelling public, and the railway, wharf and other departments of the new Administration, as well as the Japan Tourist Bureau, under the direction of Mr. Hobow, are ready to afford the visitors every possible assistance.

North China Herald, 13 January 1923

Credit: R.I. Ripley drawing,  Boston Globe, 20 March 1923.

Tsingtao means 'Green Island' and is named after the small island with the lighthouse near which we are anchored. The Germans grabbed this slice of China in 1898, and characteristic thoroughness built a modern city here in 17 years that eclipsed any other similar project of any other Nation. 

Of course, there is old section where live 50,000 Chinese who form two-thirds of the entire population at Tsingtao, the other 15,000 being Japanese. 

Ripley's Ramble 'Round the World

Boston Globe, 20 March 1923

SHANGHAI (China), 12 JANUARY 1923

ON THE YELLOW SEA, Jan 12--

We left Tsingtao yesterday and sailed southward to Shanghai on a sea that is most certainly yellow, without a doubt.

Shanghai means: 'Approaching the Sea.' Practically all the 'ports' of China were established securely a few miles inland up a river. While a small city at the sea front received the shocks of pirate (and 'foreign devil') visitations. Shanghai, however, was not a large city until recently.

It lies 14 miles up the Whangpoo River from Woosung, where both this stream and the 3200-mile Yangtze reach the coast. Through Soochow Creek, which flows into the Whangpoo at Shanghai, the city communicates with the Grand Canal-- one of the world's wonders-- a 900-mile construction from Hangshow to Tientsin. These two mighty waterways have made Shanghai China's premier foreign trade city.

The Laconia dropped at Woosung at dusk and we boarded a tender for a two hours' ride up the Whangpoo. It was cold, but we sat on the back of the boat and drank gin to keep warm, while we watched the flickering lights on shore go by.

Soon the lights of Shanghai grew near; looking for all the world like a miniature New York. We could hardly realize we were in China when the tender tied up to the Bund. Modern buildings greeted our eye and the Chinese ricksha men seemed out of place as they trundled us down the Bund across Garden Bridge, which spans Soochow Creek, to the Astor House.

Ripley's Ramble 'Round the World

Boston Globe, 22 March 1923

Credit:R.I. Ripley drawing, Boston Globe, 22 March 1923.

Far too big to come into Shanghai, Laconia anchored off Woosung.  There, her passengers transferred to one of the big river steamers for the 13 miles up the Whangpoo to Shanghai for a tour of the city,  lunch and dinner at hotel, International Concession and the old Chinese quarter.

Credit:R.I. Ripley drawing, Boston Globe, 28 March 1923

It was at Shanghai, too, that diarist Eleanor Phelps and party rejoined Laconia, apparently most happy to be back aboard amid her familiar comforts: 

We left Pekin at 10 a.m. on Thursday January 11 – spent all that day and night and until 3 p.m. on Friday crossing China. At 3 o’clock we got out of our train and crossed the Yangtze at Nanking and arrived at Shanghai at 10 o’clock at night. The next morning Mother and Claudia saw the “willow pattern” Tea House and various sights of Shanghai while I stayed in bed, until we all took the tender at 4 o’clock and went down the Woosung River to the Laconia.  I never was gladder to see anything than was to see that big comfortable boat, with her ports lighted and clean sheets, soft pillows, and the prospect of tubs and a day of rest.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

Laconia sailed from Shanghai on 14 January 1923 for Formosa. 

KEELUNG (Formosa), 15 JANUARY 1923

This proved one of Laconia's most difficult calls. Throughout the voyage and in most of the ports, her size and draught precluded docking alongside.  What was an "intermediate" liner by North Atlantic standards was a "monster liner" elsewhere and broke records as being the largest ship to call at many of her ports, even some quite famous and capable ones.  

Thus, "tendering" passengers to and from the ship was a major and repeated operation entailing skill, seamanship, savvy boat handling and not a little luck when it came to unpredictable weather and sea conditions.  Alas, Laconia's luck ran out as her boat crews struggled in a sudden shift of conditions in Keelung harbour at the end of the day with a very high swell and strong winds which made getting boats alongside the gangway difficult and getting passengers safely aboard even more so. It was so bad that one passenger fell overboard, but was quickly plucked out of the water, and a party of passengers seeing the conditions, flatly refused to board the tenders and spent the night in port, causing Laconia to not depart until the following morning (16 January 1923). 

This was a stop somewhat off the beaten path, and the natives were amazed at the sight of so many Americans all together. Indeed, a considerable amount of difficulty was found in accommodating the visitors. On returning to the ship, which was laying some way out of the port, the tenders had a somewhat exciting time. The weather was extremely rough and a high wind was blowing. The boats experienced very great difficulty in getting alongside of the gangway, and once alongside it was necessary to wait till each tender was level with the gangway before the passengers could be lifted aboard. One man was unlucky enough to fall overboard but he was soon picked up.

Hong Kong Daily Press, 18 January 1923

Credit: R.I. Ripley drawing, Boston Globe, 29 March 1923.

We tried to reach the steamship which was anchored outside the harbor, but the wind and rain lashed the waves to a fury and the small lighters bounded like corks, making it a dangerous thing to approach the Laconia's ladder. 

The passengers clung perilously to the lighter and jumped when the bounding billows rose to the gangplank. Two fell overboard into the seething water! Fourteen were rescued by a Japanese warship. All were wet, frozen, frightened and seasick after the three-hour battle with the elements.

The Laconia now looks like a hospital ship and everybody who can sit up is frantically trying to tell the story of his experience-- all at the same time!

Ripley's Ramble 'Round the World

Boston Globe, 29 March 1923

When we left the ship, it had been a heavenly sunny day and tho during the day it had clouded over, we thought nothing of it.  By the time we arrived in Keelung however it was raining hard, and we dashed from the RR station to the dock and on to the first tender in sight. It was square and the sea was choppy and we knew the boat was overloaded, but we started out towards the Laconia. It was a long way and there was a real sea running. When we got out near the Laconia the boat seemed to get out of control and we spent ten really frightening minutes, until the captain decided to take us back to shore – we spend a few hours in the Director’s room of the Nippon [Yusen] Kaisha, while the whisky bottle circulated too freely and the dangers we had undergone grew so that a mutinous dozen flatly refused to go back to the Laconia, even when a wireless came from Dr. Babcock to come on. Most of us got into a larger tender and after a brief and stormy trip, landed with some difficulty and a certain amount of danger on the Laconia. The twelve went on board the Inaba Maru and refused to be roused by Dr. Babcock. So the sailing of the Laconia was delayed until 7:30 a.m. and there was much talk the next day – criticism and acrimony on all sides. Our only criticism was that there was no efficient American Express man with us. Had there been any sort of leadership, the “mutiny” would never have happened.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

It so happens that the harbor of Keelung is too small for the Laconia to come into, so we anchored outside in an open roadstead having a northeast exposure, and, while we were happy at Taihoku, the wind shifted to the north and began to blow so hard that the anchor dragged and the captain kept the engines going in order to keep the ship off the rocks. Well, you can imagine what a task it was to get 400 landlubbers aboard in such a sea. The tenders would bob up and down and when the deck of the tender came to the level of the landing stairs, two stalwart sailors jerked you onto it, and you climbed the stairs. This proceeding took several hours and some fourteen of our passengers with a timid streak in them, went back to shore and refused to come aboard that night, but waited until the morning, thereby making us some eight hours late in arriving at Hong Kong.

This experience, which was only an exciting one for Grace and myself, was a tragedy for many. They were deathly sick and one woman'was so paralyzed with fear that she had to be forcibly brought aboard.

Trailing the Sun Around the Earth

HONG KONG (B.C.C.), 17-19 January 1923

The Laconia has an excellent voyage out, and with the exception of the last few days, has been favoured with delightful weather. Socially the voyage has been a great success, and everyone has had a thoroughly enjoyable time.

Hong Kong Daily Press, 18 January 1923

Laconia arrived Hong Kong on 17 January 1923, anchoring at buoy A1 around 10:00 a.m. for a 60-hour stay.  Two days later, the port counted a record number of big liners in harbour with the arrival of Empress of Russia which joined Empress of Asia, Empress of Canada, Siberia Maru and Laconia in "the Fragrant Harbour." 

One passenger, Mr. Norman Campbell, aged 65, a well-known banker from Santa Barbara, California, became quite ill en route to Hong Kong after catching a cold in Tsingtao and was taken to French Hospital there on arrival. Sadly, he passed away there on 21 January 1923, from pneumonia.  

Photos of Hong Kong by Eleanor Phelps. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

Hong Kong, January 17, 18, and 19, 1923

We got within sight of land about 10:30 on Wednesday, Jan. 17. Another tumbled mass of volcanic mountains, channels opening in all directions, junks like butterfly wings moving across the surface of blue water, the white semi-circles of Chinese graves dotting the hillsides, “dirty British coasters”, and a harbor filled with ships flying the flags of all nations, from all parts of the world. Hong Kong lies along the waterfront, while rising almost immediately behind it, is the Peak – 1500 ft height – crowned with forts, a hotel, and the houses of the fortunate British who get some measure of fresh air during the steamy summers.

We descended into a comfortable ferry-tender and went ashore. We went first to a Chinese department store and ordered some silk dresses, then to photograph places and at four we met Mr. Donaldson at the Hong Kong Hotel. We had the new sensation of riding in a chair carried on long poles by two bearers. They walk out of step to avoid so much swinging, but there is a good deal of sway in the motion – at first a little alarming, but when one gets used to it, most pleasant. We got to the end of the Peak Tramway and went up in the funicular to the Peak Hotel. It is 1300 ft up, and we looked over Hong Kong and Kowloon, and on the other side over Aberdeen towards the old Portuguese colony of Macao. After tea we got into other chairs and were borne nearly to the top of the Peak. We got out and walked to the pavilion overlooking all sides of the Island. The sun went down, a flat gold disc, very large, and full, with a sea all dotted with copper islands, set in the midst of a path of gold. The sky was soft gold too, shading to silver and pale grey, and across the pathway of the sun [moved] slowly the fairy wings of the fishing boats. We came down a little and walked along a path overlooking the harbor, and watched the lights come out in Hong Kong and on the boats. Blue dusk, pale at first deepening with each moment, lights by ones and twos then by hundreds, and the glimmer of lights on water. I shall always think of Hong Kong as it was then.

We came back across the ferry, and dined on the Laconia. From the Kowloon side the lights go up into the sky and the junk-sils move across them with their graceful silhouettes.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

Special dinner for Laconia passengers in a Hong Kong restaurant, 19 January 1923. "At night we went to a “high-class” Chinese restaurant and had a Chinese dinner. Except for the mushrooms, it was all edible and the chicken and walnuts especially were delicious." (Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary).

In additional to touring, Laconia passengers indulged in yet more shopping and their penchant for commerce soon became world news in an emerging era of the "all mighty American dollar":

...the Cunard Liner Laconia was in Hong Kong the other day with its complement of American trippers, the stores did a very flourishing business. Jade was very much in demand on the part of the visitors, as was also fancy ivory work, while sun helmets, silk shirts and pongee suits were among the articles purchased. One shop alone is said to have sold over $58.000 in goods."

North China Herald, 27 January 1923

More than few passengers and crew bought canaries during the call at Hong Kong, including Eleanor Phelps from an album of photographs from the World Cruise, auctioned in May 2022. Credit: invaluable.com.

We sailed promptly at five, leaving a wharf crowded with men selling birds and chairs, brass, embroideries, “cash,” Manchurian coats. British officers and Tommies, East Indians, beggars – a wholly picturesque crowd. I have bought a canary, a friendly little thing, and he adds to my cabin what Daly calls “a ‘omelike feelin’, Miss.”

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

Laconia left Hong Kong the evening of 19 January, next stop: Manila.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES (U.S. Commonwealth), 21-22 January 1923

The Philippines, January 21 to 22, 1923

The journey from Hong Kong to Manila took from Friday at 5 p.m. until Sunday noon, each succeeding mile adding to the tropic warmth, until we came within sight of Corregidor Island. The masts of the wireless station are the only high things in sight. Manila (whose greatest elevation is 4 ft above sea level!) is flat and grey, far away behind it are the hills, which barely show on a hot hazy day. We were greeted by an excellent army band, lunched on board and at 1:30 got into motor cars for a drive around the town.

It is quite different from what I expected - which was a mixture of Panama and Hawaii – and tho it seemed very clean after China, it is so flimsy compared to the Canal Zone and so colorless compared to Honolulu that I was disappointed. 

We sailed at 8 o’clock, going out of the harbor all sparkling with lights, past Corregidor Island, anchored ships, little lighthouses, to the open sea.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

CROSSING THE EQUATOR, 25 January 1923

Crossing the Line Ceremony, William E. Woollard album. Credit: www.jamesarsenault.com/

Crossing the Line certificate from the cruise. Credit: eBay auction photo.

And now (it is Wed. Jan 24) we are going South towards “the Line”, hot, breathless air, an absolutely smooth sea, and a limp collection of passengers. The swimming bath has been put up again and an early morning plunge starts the days aright.

CROSSING THE LINE – Actually we crossed the Equator on Thursday night at about ten o’clock, but the official crossing and ducking began twelve hours later on Friday a.m. One of the bathing pools was equipped with a plank across it and all the men were smeared with a horrid concoction of soap and charcoal. The girls got off more lightly but we were all dumped into the water regardless – a silly ceremony but having been done once, that is over.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

One of the amusing incidents of the cruise was the Neptune ceremony that took place on Friday morning last to celebrate the crossing of the equatorial line. The Purser of the ship,  H.E. Cartright, played the part of Father Neptune, and Miss Agate Brown, of Pittsburgh, played the role of Amphrotite. Fifteen ladies and fifteen gentlemen were initiated into the mysteries of the deep by first being lathered with an abominable concoction, then shaved closely with a razor two feet in length and thrown into a bath.

Malaya Tribune, 30 January 1923

Photos of Crossing the Line ceremony aboard Laconia by Eleanor Phelps. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

Special luncheon meeting of Rotary-Kiwanis members aboard Laconia held on 25 January 1923. Credit: eBay auction photo.

TANJUNG PRIOK, BATAVIA (JAVA) 27-28 January 1923

Laconia arrived at Tanjung Priok on 27 January 1923 at 6:00 a.m. and docked at the NSM no. 2 berth in the inner harbour and did so in heavy weather.  Whilst maneuvering the Cunarder into port, the brand new tug Teddy, only in service two weeks, was hit by one of Laconia's screws, which carried away the tug's own screw and rudder. The accident "chipped" all four blades of the screw and dented a few hull plates, causing Laconia to complete the rest of the cruise at slightly reduced speed and throwing her schedule off by a few hours at each succeeding port. 

Tours in Java including visiting the expansive Buitenzorg Gardens with its vast orchard plantations  and overnight at  the Hotel Preanger, Bandoeng.

Photos of Java by Eleanor Phelps. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

Java, January 27 and 28, 1923

Our arrival in Java was, as usual, delayed and instead of starting on our way at 7 a.m. it was 8:15 when we finally left the dock – a thoroughly modern concrete dock with sheds roofed with red tiles, and all signs in Dutch. Our way led through the outskirts of Batavia and on through the country to Buitenzorg, the summer capital. There we stopped at the Botanical Gardens for an hour. Flowers are rare in the tropics apparently and the great impression of all the country is only greenness – the most vivid brilliant bountiful green one can imagine. But the lack of color in flowers is more than made up by the variety and harmony of the colors in the clothes of all the people.

Then we drove about the town and back to the hotel. Our trip down was at first through beautiful mountain scenery, then across flat rice fields and ditches, through driving rain to Batavia. We got there at 1:15, lunched, saw some native dances and came back to the Laconia, ready for a little rest. We left the pier at 6 o’clock, with another gorgeous sunset behind Java, and a lovely goldy green light over all the island.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

In addition to sightseeing, "The Laconians" penchant for shopping, indeed buying, continued unabated. The Het nieuws van den dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië reported on 2 March 1923 "according to moderate estimates, since the beginning of their Odyssey on November 21, an amount of $300,000 has been spent in various shops by tourists. They were funny people!"

In every port visited the Laconians, with a true Yankee spirit for making an impression, bought lavishly. The Singapore residents, in fact, wondered whether the party was travelling for pleasure or was on a professional yachting expedition. In Batavia guests de luxe splashed money everywhere. They had at least seven figures of dollars behind them, and then 'guessed' a dollar was round to go round, the greenbacks to plaster the earth. Therefore, the acquired silks and satins, lacquer, china and damoscene, pottery and rugs and furniture, 12 Chow puppies, 6 parrots, 10 cages of which contained from two to six love birds, six monkeys, and a pair of pomeranians. Large quantities of batik were purchased, and one in the party bought the batik trousers that his chaffeur was wearing, the garment being delivered on the spot! An Ohio farmer attempted to purchase the horse drawing the conveyance he was rising, but failed. As soon as the vessel reached Singapore half of the passengers left by train for Johore. The rest occupied 60 motor cars.

It is said that the possessions of the 20 or 30 widows aboard-- the fellow passengers calling them 'cod-widows, grass widows and clover widows-- amounted to an aggregated sum exceeding the American treasury. 

The Daily News, Perth, 13 February 1923

SINGAPORE,  MALAYA, 30 January 1923

The first giant ocean liner ever to attempt a cruise completely around the world, and the first Cunard ship ever to enter these waters, the Laconia, reached Singapore this morning under charter to the American Express Company, and carrying a party of about 430 American world tourists.

Straits Budget, 2 February 1923

The magnificent Cunard presented an imposing spectacle as she entered the Harbour yesterday morning and came alongside the Wharf. The deck rails along the entire length of the ship were lined with the tourists, keenly appreciative of the natural beauty of the approaches to Singapore.

The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 7 February 1923

Predating the construction the great British naval base there and dwarfing the P&O and British India mailships that linked it in the chain of Imperial Commerce, Laconia was the largest vessel yet to dock at Singapore and the object of considerable press attention and fulsome newspaper space during her brief one-day call there.

As soon as Laconia docked, about half the passengers left by train for an excursion to Johore and the remainder took seats in 60 cars "parked in one long row along the quay, like well behave school children waiting to start out on a Sunday School treat." (Singapore Free Press).  The local tourists had lunch at Raffles, "the hotel was completely Americanised during the tiffin hours, for amongst the bespectacled tourists impossible to mistake it was difficult to find the ordinary residents.  The arrangements for tiffin, which was served in the ball-room, were carried out in a manner which reflected the utmost credit upon the management. The hotel orchestra played during tiffin." Singapore, January 30, 1923.

Credit:R.I. Ripley drawing, Boston Globe, 11 April 1923

Each invader on arrival had two questions to ask, firstly, where was the check room, and, secondly, where was the bar? There was no noticeable upholding of the prohibition act, and least so far as aperitifs count. One dear old lady plaintively asking the name of Singapore's popular drink and expressed the hope that it was something apart from the ordinary Martini. A 'Million Dollar" one was suggested, but immediately turned down as having been sampled in Yokohama; even our pink drink left her unmoved and she went out to enquire of the bar-boy. 

Straits Budget, 2 February 1923

Before we got to Singapore we decided to “skip” the programme (which included 2 hrs. of railway travel) and go forth on our own responsibility. So, after all the other passengers had disembarked and started “grouping” we went ashore and got into rickshaws. We had no idea that the Raffles Hotel was so far away and we ricked and ricked and ricked for half an hour in the broiling sun. Finally we got there, and got some Straits Settlement money. Then we embarked on a real adventure, which made Singapore far more intelligible to us. We were rather at a loss as to what to do next. We appealed to Mr. Hayes, an Am. Ex. Co. “advance agent,” an attractive Englishman, and he hit upon the very thing. He introduced us to an Englishwoman, Mrs. Appleby, who had told him that she would be glad to take any of the Laconia-ites round Singapore. So we went in a car provided by Mr. Hayes; stopped at various places for solar topees, veils, etc., purchased buffalo-skin fans, and various odds and ends. We lunched at the Raffles Hotel in the main dining room only mildly surrounded by “Crusaders” 

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

...hundreds of people thronged the quayside and as the liner, towering over them, gradually drew away, there were mutual cheers and hankerchief waving. The ship's orchestra, hidden by the throngs of tourists along the deck rails, played 'Auld Lang Syne,' 'The Star Spangled Banner,' and 'God Save the King,' and then the Laconia, a majestic sight as she steamed at a good pace towards the sun, was on her way to Rangoon.

The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 7 February 1923

The Calypso pulled the liner out into the stream and Capt. Snow pilots her to Sultan Shoal. Many people remain on the wharf until the Blue Ensign could be seen no more and the Laconia faded away in the evening mists bound direct for Rangoon.

Straits Budget, 2 February 1923

RANGOON, BURMA, 2-3 February 1923

Rangoon, Feb 2

All day yesterday we sailed over muddiest sea since we passed though the Yellow Sea near the mouth of Hwang Ho. The Irrawddy River, the great river of Burma, with its head stream rising in Tibet, hurries down the magnificent defiles until near Rangoon where it flattens out and ours its muddy sediment into the Gulf of Martaban. The water is so dirty that it is unfit for use on the ship and therefore the swimming tank has been taken down and the bathtubs are not working. 

Rangoon is the first milepost on 'The Road to Mandalay.' It is a city off 293,000 souls-- a most cosmopolitan place, judging from the different caste marks on the foreheads of the passersby and the varied and brilliant costumes of the people.

Ripley's Ramble 'Round the World

Boston Globe, 18 April 1923

Credit:R.I. Ripley drawing, Boston Globe, 18 April 1923.

Laconia arrived at Hastings anchorage (about 30 minutes from Rangoon) at 5:00 p.m. on 2 February 1923, too late to land her passengers who were treated to a Burmese pwe troupe performance aboard instead.  The following morning, they were landed at Rangoon by launches and visited the bazaars, timber depots, Cantonment and the Shwe Dago Pagoda followed by luncheon at the Vienna Café.  The ship sailed early evening.  

Rangoon, February 3, 1923

“Hail Mother! Do they call me rich in trade? 

Little care I, but hear the shorn priest drone, 

And watch my silk-clad lovers, man by maid,

Laugh ‘neath my Shwe Dagon.”

For the Shwe Dagon is Rangoon – the rest is relatively little. Our day was very much as it was planned, only late all along the line, and full of difficulties because of the lack of interest and courtesy of the British authorities. We arrived at Hastings (the anchorage) at 3:30 on Feb 2nd and were not allowed to land unless we wanted to spend the night ashore. As hotel accommodations were both poor and limited few people had the courage to go. There was a native entertainment on board that evening – endless, but interesting, with much more animation than any of the previous native dances.

In the morning we went ashore, and motored for hours. Our first stop was to see the elephants working with the teak – a long walk in the sun but worthwhile, for the uncanny intelligence of the ‘yelfanims” and the association – next to see the sacred carp (very dull) and the Royal Park, past all the sights, and back to the [Vienna] Café at 11:20, where we dropped Mother and C. and I went back to see the Shwe Dagon. We had to take off both shoes and stockings, and patter through some rather unpleasant things, but it wasn’t as bad as we had expected under foot and the temple platform made it more than worthwhile overhead. Attached hereto is a description, for the curious, and the photographs give a better idea than anything else. But the color is superb – that great golden mass piercing the blue sky, the white marble floors, the carvings and jewels, and palms and bo-trees, the priests in their rich yellow robes, people, dogs, booths with flowers and gongs and candles, goldleaf and lacquer and the general confusion. It is of course the most sacred Buddhist shrine, containing the ashes of Gautama Buddha, eight hairs of his head and relics of the three preceding Buddhas.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

DIAMOND HARBOUR (CALCUTTA), INDIA, 6-10 February 1923

Credit: R.I. Ripley drawing, Boston Globe, 19 April 1923.

In one of his regular  "Ripley's Ramble 'Round the World" features,  Robert L. Ripley decribed Laconia's passage up the Hooghly River to Calcutta

Hooghly River, India, Feb. 5

We have been sailing through flat muddy water for half a day-- a sign that we were approaching the many mouths of the holy Ganges, through which are emptied the sin and sediment of India. We picked up the pilot at the mouth of the Hooghly River, which is about 100 miles from Calcutta, the metropolis of the Near East, and proceeded up the stream by high tide as far as Diamond [Harbour].

The Hooghly is the most dangerous river in the world and the most difficult to navigate. Apart from the danger of cyclones, which occur in any month except this one, there is the normal danger of shoals and tides and quicksands which, Capt. Brown informs use, are powerful enough to wreck a ship the size of the Laconia. New shoals are forming continually, and only a daily experience on the river will qualify a pilot to handle a ship safely. Naturally, the status of the Calcutta pilots is higher than that of any others of their profession anywhere.

The anchor splashed down in the mud and a lop-sided old ferryboat transferred the passengers to the shore. We set foot on India, the land of dreams-- and immediately searched for firearms. The English are careful that no weapons of any sort enter the country.

Ripley's Ramble 'Round the World

Boston Globe, 19 April 1923

The second largest ship to enter the port of Diamond Harbour (at the mouth of the Hooghly River), after Cap Polonio made a single call there in 1919, Laconia arrived on 6 February 1923 at 2:00 p.m. Of the 435 passengers aboard, 211 remained in Calcutta during the whole of the stay. 

The reporter for the Straits Times evidenced a considerable interest in Laconia's American passengers and the recently enacted Prohibition law in the country: "Both verbally and by example, the majority of the passengers announced their disapproval of the American dry law when Press representatives boarded the ship with the Customs officials." and added that her American passengers "...are travelling by a British ship on which the virtues, or otherwise, of Prohibition are unknown."

Calcutta

“Me the Sea Captain loved, the River built

Wealth sought, and Kings adventured life to hold,

Hail, England! I am Asia – Power on silt, 

Death in my hands, but Gold!”

No amount of gold, were I starving, could persuade me to live permanently in Calcutta! I felt like the woman who told Mr. Fuller that she had seen enough of India in one day, at the end of my first 24 hours in Calcutta. We got up there by river-steamer at lunch time on February 7th, and went to the Grand Hotel. We expected it to be poor and it was, abominably. In the afternoon Mother and Claudia went out to the Bazaar and round about on foot, but I stayed home and read letters and papers from home, and guarded our luggage. After an uncomfortable night we started our morning’s programme in a rattletrap motor, by a visit to the Zoo - just like any zoo, in a tropical setting – and to the Kali Ghat Temple. As an introduction to India it is pretty stiff. Thousands of beggars in all stages of deformity – real and false – swarm about one’s car, whining “mem sahib backshish!” and displaying every physical ailment. The confusion is unbounded, the smells unbelievable.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

Photos of Darjeeling by Eleanor Phelps. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

Tours were offered to Darjeeling by train, 9-10 February which created a far more pleasurable reaction for Miss Phelps:

 Ahead was the Kinchinjunga Range, now hidden by mists, now showing clear in the sky above us; off to the left visible only at rare moments was Everest, too far away (120 miles) to be imposing as compared to the great peaks nearby; on the right was the sun rising from behind the Himalayas, and shining across a sea of white rolling clouds. The big range seemed suspended from the sky, a floating mass of white and pink and mauve and translucent green. It is one of the great things of the world, and it is certainly the most spectacular that I have ever seen, and the most beautiful. 

We started down and reached Darjeeling in time for a nine o’clock breakfast, after which we sallied forth again for Observatory Hill, where we had the luck to see the Kinchinjungas all stretched before us with the depth of the valley below us to add to their seeming height. The tremendous sweep of their height, the fact that they are – even from a distance of 40 miles and from a point 7,500 ft in the air – swimming so far above the ordinary level of one’s vision makes them seem incredibly of the Heavens and totally unrelated to the earth.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

After returning to Calcutta, many passengers, including the Phelps' party, entrained for Benares by "a most luxurious special train, with compartments twice as big as any I’d ever seen before, and we had a beautifully comfortable night on the train" for a two-day stay there. 

Photos of Benares by Eleanor Phelps.  Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

It is utterly impossible to convey any idea of the impressiveness of the Bathing Ghats of Benares. One reads of movement and color, of the symbolism of it, of the reason why Benares is built only on the left bank of the Ganges, and the other side is a barren waste without even a shack (the soul of the fortunate individual who died in Benares goes straight to Heaven; should he have the misfortune to die on the other side – but no one does – his soul is translated into that of an ass). One can read of the dignity and solemnity of the hole men and the utter barbarity of the throwing of bodies into the Ganges (we saw two – a woman and a baby) – but until one has seen it all, one can’t believe it. We saw a holy man facing the east, his eyes staring straight into the rays of the blazing sun. We saw women exquisitely dressed in tissue and gold saris and men in glorious white silks bathing with the same simplicity as the most ragged of the pilgrims – an incredible, chaotic, fascinating moving place – the heart of India and the soul of the Hindu laid bare before your eyes.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

Credit: R.I. Ripley drawing, Boston Globe, 25 April 1923. 

It was on to Lucknow and Agra for the Phelps party and others on the overland, 14-16 February whilst Laconia, which had departed Diamond Harbour on the 10th for Colombo.

At the Taj Mahal. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

In the afternoon we went to the Taj Mahal. My expectations were high but were so far exceeded that there are no words, no possible means of expression. It is beauty and purity and the most delicate freeness, the white of clouds and lovely lace, the warmth of the inside of a shell, all brought into one ethereal whole. Nothing could possibly do it justice and so I shan’t try.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

COLOMBO, CEYLON, 14-16 February 1923

BOMBAY, INDIA, 19-24 February 1923

"All well and happy" aboard Laconia on arrival at Bombay. An idea originated by Frank C. Clark, American Express posted pre-printed postcards to passengers' relatives and friends during the course of the cruise advising the ship's safe arrival at each port of call. Credit: eBay auction photo. 

After visiting Fatehur Sikri, the Phelps party and others headed on to Delhi and Jaipur, Baroda and finally, Bombay reached on 22 February and a reunion with Laconia after an 18-day absence which had arrived there on the 19th from Colombo. 

Credit: R.L. Ripley drawing, Boston Globe, 17 May 1923.

“Royal and Dower Royal, I the Queen

Fronting thy richest sea with richer hands – 

A Thousand mills roar through me where I glean

All races from all lands.”

Without wishing to quibble I think that Kipling’s verse is the best thing about Bombay – that and the different types of people one sees on the streets. We got there at 8 a.m. on February 22nd and went as directly as a good deal of confusion would allow, to the Laconia where we rejoined our luggage, got our mail and got feeling more like respectable citizens than we had for a fortnight past. Claudia and I went ashore and lunched at the Taj Mahal Hotel, and afterwards started out in a car with Mr. Donaldson for our afternoon’s “programme”. It consisted of a drive along the waterfront by the Government offices, up Malabar Hill – a hummock really – to the hanging gardens and the Parsee Towers of Silence.

No matter how Bombay impresses the new arrival travelling East, to us who saw it after central India it is a bitter disappointment. It is not India at all, but a modern city with a portion of its inhabitants in interesting costumes and is an anti-climax. However while we were there we saw as much as possible of it.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

Laconia sailed at 3:00 p.m. from Bombay for Port Sudan.

BOMBAY TO PORT SUDAN, AT SEA 25 February-2 March 1923

So it was back to the relaxing routine of shipboard life aboard Laconia for the long haul across the Indian Ocean and into the Red Sea, doubtless appreciated by her tour weary passengers. The six days at at sea were occupied by a concert on day one, a deck golf contest between the officers (led by Capt. Brown) vs. the American Express staff (led by Dr. Babcock) and a formal dance in the evening on day two, deck sports tournaments and a formal "Leap Year Dance" on day three, a Fancy Dress and Masked Ball on day five and a concert by the crew presented on day six. 

Relaxing on deck aboard Laconia en route from Bombay to Port Sudan, Eleanor Phelps (right) and Abdul, the canary she acquired in Hong Kong, far left. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

Our trip from Bombay to Port Tewfik was uneventful. We were very hot for one or two days and cool and comfortable the rest of the time. There were three lectures by Professor Preston of Princeton on Egypt, one by Mrs. McQueen on Jerusalem, and a series of talks by Mr. Donaldson on Eastern religions. I read “India and Its Faiths”, a really stimulating and interesting book, and we all did diaries and photograph books energetically.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

On Laconia's Promenade Deck out of the sun on the passage through the Red Sea.  Note the bird cages, the Phelps were not the only ones to acquire a companion or two during the long voyage. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

PORT SUDAN, SUDAN,  3 March 1923

The coast of Sudan as photographed from Laconia. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

Laconia's call at Port Sudan landed passengers taking an overland trip, by de luxe sleeper train, to Khartoum, then to Wadi Halfa and embarking on a chartered Nile steamer for the voyage through Upper Egypt as far as Aswan, train to Luxor and on to Cairo. 

Alexandria, February 20.

The R.M.S. Laconia, which left New York on November 25 under the auspices of the American Express Co., on a cruise round the world, is due to arrive at Alexandria about the beginning of March, having about 400 passengers on board. She will call at Port Sudan on March 3 to disembark 50 passengers for Khartoum, and reaches Suez, Port Tewfik, ’ on March 5. Here 103 passengers will land for Jerusalem and 350 for Cairo, on a six days’ visit. These will re-embark on board the same vessel .a.t Alexandria on March 11. 

Mr. Leslie W. Boland, assistant-advertising manager of . the American Express Co., of New York, is a passenger on the Laconia. He is coming to Egypt, as representative of the Forbes Magazine, to write an article on the country for his paper.

The Sphinx, 24 February 1923

The last we wrote you we were in the Red Sea steaming up to Port Sudan where we landed one fair morning — March 3rd. Port Sudan is one of the principal ports on the Red Sea and is the railway terminus of the Sudan Government Railway, whose guests we were to be for the following days, and is a typical, modern, terminal town with a population of perhaps 5,000 inhabitants, a good hotel, banks, etc. I say we were the guests of the Sudan Government advisedly for the reason that no greater courtesy could have been shown us had we been in fact a royal family visiting a friendly sovereign rather than the group of twenty tourists which we really were. We were taken ashore on a splendid tender where we were expedited through the customs with as little inconvenience to us as was necessary to comply with the spirit of the law. Immediately behind the custom house a special train de luxe awaited us which was one of the regular trains de luxe that make this trip twice each week.

The train consisted of several almost dust-proof, compartment, sleeping cars provided with wash stands and electric fans and two berths set at right angles to permit of a free circulation of air to both berths. The upholstery was of a fine, light damask with clean linen "tidies.” Each compartment also had a comfortable chair. Glare-proof windows were also provided and the cars had a belt or detached, vertical, wooden awning around the top, separated from the coach proper, which allowed a free circulation of air between the car and the awning against which the sun beat. The result was a most comfortable journey across endless miles of barren desert. We also had a kitchen car separate from the dining car in which were served the best meals it has ever been my privilege to eat on a railroad train.

Trailing the Sun Around the Earth.

Credit: R.L. Ripley drawing, Boston Globe, 23 May 1923.

Passing the time at Port Sudan, some of the crew fished for sharks and landed a big one on a half-inch manila rope line but upon getting it on the deck, it chewed through the line and fell back into the sea. 

THE GULF OF ADEN, March 4-- It had been a terrible Winter in New York, I hear.

We take fiendish delight in reminding each other of the fact as we lie outstretched in our deck chairs while the Laconia plows a summer sea to Egypt.

On the right is Araby, the home of the Sheik. The balmy breezes blow gently from across the romantic sands to rouse us now and then heavy-lidden indolence to talk of many things: of show-- and ships-- and sealing wax-- of cabbages-- and Valentino, and we wonder how it is possible for this bloke to achieve fame and fortune at the expense of a country he has never been. 

Ripley's Ramble 'Round the World

Boston Globe, 22 May 1923

PORT TEWFIK (SUEZ CANAL TRANSIT), 5-6 March 1923

Entrance to the Suez Canal at Port Tewfik where passengers landed by tender and entrained for Cairo. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina.  

Laconia anchored off Port Tewfik on the morning of 5 March 1923, the entrance to the Suez Canal.  With the transit offering little but expanses of desert, passengers landed by tender there to embark on specially chartered express trains to Cairo for tours there or, farther afield to Jerusalem. 

Credit: R.L. Ripley drawing, Boston Globe, 25 May 1925

Port Tewfik, Egypt, March 7.

We anchored at the entrance of the Suez Canal.

The golden sands of Egypt stretch away on either side underneath the bluest sky in the world. The canal looks small and is lined with palm trees which give it the appearance of a little river, and we wonder how a steamship of the size of the Laconia can pass through it.

We transfer to lighters and float ashore where picturesque descendants of King Tut help us to the train. They wear bands of bright red around their heads and on their arms are shields bearing the insignia, 'Bum Boatman,' A superfluous comment!

Ripley's Ramble 'Round the World

Boston Globe, 25 May 1923

Laconia at Port Said, 5 March 1923. Credit: The Sphinx, 17 March 1923.

The ship's arrival in Egypt corresponded with a veritable explosion of interest in Ancient Egypt following the discovery of the tomb of King Tutankhamun, on 4 November 1922, by Howard Carter, in the Valley of the Kings.  Indeed, it was this mania that prompted the remarkable reintroduction of cruises from New York to the Mediterranean (including of course American Express' chartering of Mauretania) as well as ensuring Egypt was a focal point of the first and succeeding world cruises.  

Eleanor Phelps' mother ready to set off for sightseeing at Giza.  Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

EGYPT 5-11 March 1923

Our first view of the Pyramids was of a shadowy mass blotting out the stars as they shone through the trees which line the road. We had been driving fast, but all of a sudden the man sent the car hurling forward so that our breath was taken away. We shot past a big hotel – the Mena House – up a steep hill and drew up panting at the foot of the Great Pyramid. The moon was up and full and we caught the glint of its pathway on the waters of the Nile. Above and behind us, like a giant staircase was the Pyramid, and even the roaring of the camel and donkey men, the clatter and confusion of many motors and hundreds of tourists couldn’t really disturb the peace and majestic calm of that huge place. We walked on over the hill and down into the hollow beyond to see the Sphinx. The moonlight was full on its face, the Pyramids rose behind and beyond, and the desert sands gleamed almost white in the radiance. Across the face of the Sphinx moved the shadow of a man and then the silhouette of a ghostly camel. We sat and watched it all; off in the distance dogs barked with the same clear quality that one hears on moonlit nights at home. Coming home in the car it was bitterly cold, a real winter’s night.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

The marvel of the age, the recently discovered Tomb of Tutankamen in the Valley of the Kings, had been just resealed when Evelyn Phelps and other Laconia tourists visited the site.  Of course, it was what was found inside that was the wonder not the rather desolate site.  Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

On 7 March 1923 the group travelled by the overnight train from Cairo to Luxor and stayed at the Winter Palace Hotel with tours to Karnak Temple on the 8th and then across the Nile by ferry to see the Valley of the Kings.  The now legendary Tomb of Tutankhamen:  " the 'New Find' spoken of with such reverence and awe. When we saw it, it had all been sealed up, 17 tons of dirt and rock replaced and an armed guard put outside to keep off marauders. One sees only stones and roofing paper."  (Eleanor Phelps diary). After visiting the interior of two tombs, Ramsesseum and the Colissi of Memnon, the group returned to Luxor and then took the overnight train back to Cairo. 

After a final day in Cairo for the Egyptian Museum "an interesting collection of things Egyptian, not too well displayed" (nothing has changed!) and the Blue Mosque, on 11 March 1923 it was the morning train to Alexandria where the group reboarded Laconia at 2:00 p.m. 

ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT, 7-11 March 1923

Laconia at Alexandria 9-11 March 1923 with Caronia, also on a cruise, ahead of her.  In the span of just six days, the port hosted Laconia, Scythia, Caronia and Mauretania. Credit: Topical.

Laconia had transited the Suez Canal deserted of passengers and docked at Alexandria on 7 March 1923. Alexandria would in the space of days see a remarkable procession of Cunarders, all on cruises. Indeed, Laconia met up with Scythia which arrived on the next day on her own World Cruise for Cook's and Caronia arrived on the 9th from Constantinople. She would sail on the 13th for Haifa. On the 14th, Mauretania arrived from Haifa on her Mediterranean cruise also for American Express. A few Laconia passengers who wished to extend their stay in Egypt, would embark in Mauretania for Naples on the 21st for overland touring there or continue in her all the way back to New York. Cunard who were a bit late on the cruising scene were surely suddenly dominating it.

Credit: The Sphere, 10 March 1923.

We passed out of the bay of Aboukir in the afternoon sunlight and left Egypt with its ‘golden sands”, its picturesque squalor and its bawling people behind us. I’m glad to have seen it, but am not sure that I would want to go there again.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

ALEXANDRIA-NAPLES (AT SEA) 11-14 March 1923

With Laconia's sailing from Alexandria and Egypt, the last big highlight of the trip "done," the cruise was approaching its conclusion and the sights became increasingly less exotic.  Indeed, such was the sudden surfeit of Mediterranean cruises, the world cruise itinerary made short shrift of the region and Laconia made straight for Naples. 

Our crossing of the Mediterranean was marked by no untoward events – except one very stormy day which broke my record of many years and caused seasoned sea-traveler a painful day. 

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

NAPLES, ITALY, 14-18 March 1923

We came into the bay of Naples early in the morning of March 14 – a sky full of rather light clouds, blue water, smoking Vesuvius, pink and cream-colored houses, all as one would remember it, and yet, after the East, lacking in the keen pitch of color and tone which seemed part of it all, to the East-bound voyager. About 12 o’clock we got ashore, drove to the Excelsior (which is every bit as attractive as it seemed 13 years ago), lunched sumptuously, and started on our way.

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

MONACO, 18 March 1923

Laconia anchored off Monaco. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

We were anchored right under Monte Carlo at the foot of the Casino. Climbing up the hill (rather like Hong Kong) was the town, all pink and buff, regular and neat, and stretching away on either hand was the Riviera, a coastline much indented, green and luxuriant, which the waters of the Mediterranean a pale blue under a slightly overcast sky. We went ashore at 9:30 in a very comfortable tender, got into a large motor-car which was out in front of the lines, and drove off triumphantly first. 

Instead of following the regular route we drove first to Menton (shades of our youth!) and walked across the bridge at Ventimiglia into Italy. We turned, ascended to the hills, and drove to Nice, along the Grand Corniche, with all the Riviera spread out below us, and on the right hidden by clouds, the seldom-seen peaks of the Alpes Maritimes. We had a young and enthusiastic chauffeur who had a mania for “panorames” and “coups d’oeils” so we stopped frequently for photographs and views. My French was feeble but improved slightly with use. We lunched at the Negresco at Nice, some 350 strong, two orchestras, much shops, good food and all the fixin’s. 

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

GIBRALTAR, 21 March 1923

The Rock. Credit: Eleanor Phelps World Cruise Scrapbook, University of South Carolina. 

Gibraltar, March 21 

– and this begins the last page of “text” in this wordy diary. For how can I summarize the cruise? How can one come to a conclusion or express an opinion on “the world as I saw it in 130 days”? It would take more effrontery than even I am capable of developing. 

Therefore, Gibraltar ends the volume, except for diverse memoranda, recommendations, and statistics. 

Pouring rain, flower vendors on the boat selling freesia and orange blossoms, pansies and yellow poppies, an open tender, the grey of the Rock pierced with galleries and gunholes, green fields and a deeper bay than one expects, Africa not yet visible, the British Mediterranean fleet at anchor and in dock – and more rain. Ashore we found our motor gone, appropriated by someone else. So we – Mrs. Bond, 3 Phelpses, and Mr. Donaldson – awaited the arrival of another car. We got it, and a guide, and start for Algeciras. First we saw all the crew of the Queen Elizabeth, of Dardanelles fame, drilling. Then we saw the Prudential Life aspect of the Rock. Then we drove over a vastly bumpy road past picturesque villages to Algeciras. We got out and walked from the Plaza and its Church to the Hotel, photographing and observing by the way. The hotel is an English resort filled with very nice-looking people and having extremely good food, and a lovely glass bowl fountain in the courtyard. 

Gibraltar itself provided only a few moments’ diversion – a little shopping, the gardens and a drive about. We took a motor boat out to the Laconia and arrived to find that no accommodation ladder was down – so back we put-putted to the dock and came out in the 5:30 tender. 

We sailed soon after 6, and passed out to sea, Africa’s four light houses gleaming to port, and the rusty shores of Europe fading into blackness on the starboard side. 

Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

GIBRALTAR-NEW YORK (AT SEA), 21-29 March 1923

Our next land will be America, the anchor will next go down at Quarantine and we will be home – or so nearly home after all that we’ve seen and done that it seems impossible. 

And this ends an occupation which has at times been real work and yet which in the future will provide unlimited amusement and interest for us all. 

One hundred and thirty days well spent, and a circle made which is the largest one can make “on this mortal sphere”.

Final diary entry, Eleanor Phelps Round the World diary

NEW YORK CITY, U.S.A., 30 March 1923

The trip was wonderful, and the American Express Company, which chartered the Laconia, left nothing to be desired. Everybody was enthusiastic over India, that mysterious atmosphere of a musty Old World which is nation of hundreds of millions. But what made the deepest impression on me was the riotous native welcome at Honolulu on our way out. It was a remarkable experience to transatlantic travelers, our leisurely cruise into the world ports of the Pacific Ocean.

Mrs. William V. Hester

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle

31 March 1923

Another notable cruise by a Cunard steamer also terminated on Saturday last, when the Laconia arrived at New York in the early morning. The Laconia started from New York on November last on what was the first effort of an ocean cruising steamer to circumnavigate the globe. This she has successfully accomplished, steaming outwards through the Panama Canal, across to Japan and China, and thence to India, and back through the Suez Canal and Mediterranean to New York. This has meant steaming over 30,000 miles and calling at 27 places… with the exception of one occasion, when bad weather delayed her arrival in Japan by about half a day, she has consistently arrived at her various ports at the scheduled hour. More than 400 passengers took advantage of this unique opportunity of seeing the world under ideal conditions of comfort and travel.

Liverpool Journal of Commerce, 3 April 1923

When Laconia returned to New York on 30 March 1923, her passengers, officers and officers had plenty of stories and memories to share with the hoardes of reporters who boarded her at Quarantine. Also boarding were American Express agents with $40,000 in travelers checks to advance to passenger who had run out of spending money on a final souvenir spree in Europe. Altogether, she had 261 landing at New York, the others electing to extend their stay in Britain or the Continent and avail themselves of the option to return on an Cunard sailing that season.

 "Every woman passengers was presented with a corsage bouquet as an Easter greeting by the American Express Company when they came down the gangplank, while the men were givven white carnations. Many of the men declared as they were arriving in a dry country the white carnation was singularly appropriate. The 71st Regt. Band furnished musical selections as the passengers had their baggage examined on the coldest day of spring," reported the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the wife of the owner being among the passengers landing that day. 

Credit: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1 April 1923. 

The customs men were overwhelmed not only by the amount of normal luggage expected from a four-month-long voyage, but no less than four tons of souvenirs; "The Laconia came into port loaded with souvenirs and a considerable amount of livestock. It was claimed there was a parrot on board, purchased in Egypt, that could say 'Tutankhamen,' die with the second syllable on his bill. There were chow puppies, canaries, and other animals and bird purchased in various ports. Inanimate objects there were aplenty and ranging from Madeira willow furnture to quaint musical instruments."

Credit: The Daily News, 1 April 1923.

There were stories of numerous shipboard romances, notably the engagement of Chief Officer H.A.L. Bond, RNR, of Liverpool, to Miss Mary E. Hammond of Lyons, New York. 

American Express officials on hand told reporters that the company had already chartered the new Cunarder Franconia for a repeat world cruise, the vessel having been revised on the stocks to incorporate added features including additional public rooms in First Class, more private facility cabins and an indoor swimming pool that was "bigger than Aquitania's." and thus more suited to cruising. 

Another notable cruise by a Cunard steamer also terminated on Saturday last, when the Laconia arrived at New York in the early morning. The Laconia started from New York on November last on what was the first effort of an ocean cruising steamer to circumnavigate the globe. This she has successfully accomplished, steaming outwards through the Panama Canal, across to Japan and China, and thence to India, and back through the Suez Canal and Mediterranean to New York. This has meant steaming over 30,000 miles and calling at 27 places… with the exception of one occasion, when bad weather delayed her arrival in Japan by about half a day, she has consistently arrived at her various ports at the scheduled hour. More than 400 passengers took advantage of this unique opportunity of seeing the world under ideal conditions of comfort and travel.

Liverpool Journal of Commerce, 3 April 1923

BOSTON-LIVERPOOL, AT SEA, 7-15 April 1923

It was time for Laconia to retreat from the arc lamps of celebrity and welcomes at each of her port of calls and resume the hum-drum routine of an Atlantic Ferry which she had occupied for only a few months.  She deadended from New York to Boston where she arrivedat Pier 3, East Boston,  the morning of the 6 April 1923.  There, she was thrown open to pubic inspection from 10:00 a.m. to noon and again from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. to introduce to her to the locals before she resumed the Boston-Liverpool run.

Finally homeward-bound, Laconia on 7 April 1923 for Liverpool with 68 First, 52 Second and 79 Third Class passengers. 

"Daddy's Home"... Laconia returns to Liverpool. Credit: Pinterest.

LIVERPOOL, ARRIVE 16 April 1923

During her absence from Liverpool the Laconia has sailed nine seas and steamed more than 30,000 miles. She is not only the largest vessel to have passed through the Panama Cabal, but also the largest to have anchored in the number of foreign harbours at which she called.

The North Star, 17 April 1923

For Laconia, her officers and crew, the Great World Cruise of 1922-1923 was not over until they reached that best and most anticipated port of any voyage: home. She had been away from the Mersey for close to five months and the nearly new ship that put to sea in October 1922, returned a seasoned veteran with 30,000 nautical miles under her keel which sorely needed a good scrape and paint by then. There were reunions and souvenirs, trinkets and presents galore when her men returned to their families and loved ones on what was almost a wartime deployment in length away from home.

A RECORD WORLD'S CRUISE, Curios of every description representative of various parts of the world were to be seen on board the Cunard liner Laconia on her arrival at Liverpool on Monday, April 16th. The Laconia was returning to the Mersey after completing a most successful world cruise. She left New York last November with over 400 passengers on board, and after steaming through the Panama Canal, proceeded to ports in China and Japan, thence to India, Ceylon, and back through the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean to New York where she' arrived on Easter Saturday, During her absence from Liverpool the Laconia sailed nine seas and steamed over 36,000 miles. She is not only the largest vessel to have passed through the Panama Canal, but also the largest to have anchored in a number of the foreign harbours at which she called. Everywhere the Laconia was received with great enthusiasm and at Honolulu when approaching the harbour an aeroplane dropped streamers of welcome on board. The passengers on landing were met by the inhabitants and decorated with garlands of flowers in accordance with the native custom. In the evening there was concert, the feature of which was native music by massed bands from the town.

Western Chronicle, 27 April 1923.

The Laconia Cup as displayed aboard Queen Mary 2. Credit: Chris Frame photo, via The QE2 Story.com

So ended Laconia's World Cruise of 1922-23. It had been the longest single Cunard voyage to date and undoubtedly one of their most newsworthy and successful. That it was almost entirely conducted outside the North Atlantic Ferry pointed to the wider horizons it opened up for Cunard. For the ensuing 100 years since,  Cunard have been synomious with cruising as well as crossing. 

Carry on cruising and crossing... R.M.S. Laconia had a fulsome 16-year-career to play out after her famous first world cruise. Credit: Merseyside Maritime Museum. 

For Laconia, the 1922-23 world cruise occurred during her first year in service and she would play out her  ensuing 16-year commercial career in comparative obscurity.  Like her two sisters, Scythia and Samaria, it would combine crossing and cruising as the first truly "dual purpose" Cunarders, Laconia especially so, and for both the American market (1923-1928) and out of Britain (1929-1939). She made two more world cruises as well being the first Cunarder to circle both South America and Africa on separate cruises and was the largest ship to come into the Port Of Miami before the war.  

Laconia's ensuing loss, with great loss of life, in the South Atlantic in 1942, is what she is sadly remembered for today, amply and recently documented so that the following resume of her life post May 1923 will concentrate on her commercial career during which she proved a happy and successful ship and whose role in introducing Cunard to cruising is doubtless her most enduring achivement.

Back on the trans-Atlantic run, Laconia was assigned to Cunard's new Hamburg-New York run which was promoted with this splendid poster by German artists Hans Bohrdt. Credit: Swann Galleries. 

In the absence of German liners immediately after the war, Cunard operated a Hamburg to New York service from April 1922, initially with Caronia and Saxonia. The following year the new Tyrrhenia replaced Caronia and after just one roundtrip on the Boston run, Laconia joined her for the first of four roundtrips on the route, starting with her Hamburg departure on 26 June 1923. With her 1 December 1923 Liverpool sailing, she was back on the Mersey-New York intermediate run, but wider horizons beckoned her once again. 

Laconia's newly installed Sperry auto gyro steering system: she was the first ship to voyage around the world almost solely on automatic steerting in 1924. Credit: Shipbuilding & Shipping Record.

Before departing Liverpool for New York on 29 December 1923, whence she would begin her second cruise around the world, Laconia became the first liner fitted with the new Sperry Auto Gyro Steering System which could automatically correct a ship's course within one-sixth of a degree from the set gyro compass course heading. Whilst a helmsman was alway on duty and the device not employed leaving or entering port or in coastal waters, Laconia became the first ship to cicumnavigate the world almost entirely on auto pilot. 

Laconia's second world cruise was under charter to Frank C. Clark, from New York 19 January 1924, thus giving the pioneering American firm the distinction of operating both Laconias on cruises.  This attracted more than 600 passengers and the call at Los Angeles on 30 January 1924 was the first by a Cunarder. The 30,000-mile, 23-port voyage concluded at Liverpool on 12 May and passengers could take any Cunarder to New York.  After a refit, Laconia resumed the Liverpool-Queenstown-New York service.

Clark's would also charter Laconia for their 21st long Mediterranean cruise from New York 31 January 1925 and her 687 passengers was the most carried of  no fewer than five other Mediterranean-bound ships that winter. 

THE CRUSADERS. Still another vessel of the Cunard fleet left Liverpool on Saturday, and will seen here no more until she has completed a lengthy cruise of the Mediterranean. This was the Laconia, a ship which is specially designed to afford all the comforts of terra firma on the high seas. She due to leave New York on  January 31st, and her trip will cover something in the region of 10,000 miles. Some 700 rich 'Americans have arranged to indulge in the "little holiday." The vessel will proceed to Haifa where six days will be spent by the passengers in extended excursions into the Holy Land through what is virtually the gateway to Palestine. At Alexandria three days will be spent in visiting the Valley of the Tombs and ancient Egyptian ruins. Included in the Laconia's itinerary are Madeira, Cadiz, Gibraltar, Algiers, Phaleron Bay, Constantinople, Naples, and Villefranche. The tour terminates at Cherbourg on March 28th when the American tourists can either transfer to one of the regular steamers  of Cunard Line sailing for New York or prolong stay to tour other parts of Europe. 

Liverpool Journal of Commerce, 19 January 1925

On the morning of 6 September 1925, the New York-bound Laconia (Capt. E.T. Britten) collided with the four-masted lumber schooner Lucia P. Dow, en route to Portland, Maine, in dense fog 60 miles of Nantucket.  The fog was so dense that Capt. Britten said that the schooner, which had it prow above the water, crushed, was not even seen until later when Laconia attached a tow line her to tow her until a tug could arrive.  This delayed the otherwise undamaged Laconia's arrival at New York by almost 24 hours and she came in late on the 7th. 

Seaplanes of the U.S. Navy photographed Laconia as she approached Honolulu. Credit: Honolulu, 12 February 1926.

Laconia's third and final visit to Honolulu in Febuary 1926 was afforded considerable press coverage. Credit: Honolulu Star Bulletin, 13 February 1926.

On the 6th Clark's World Cruise and her third (and last) circumnavigation, Laconia left New York on 20 January 1926 with 520 passengers on a 128-day voyage.  On this, she reprised her call at Hilo on the first world cruise. On the final leg to Liverpool, Laconia rescued 160 passengers on the Orient liner Otranto which had struck a rock off Cape Matapan on a cruise. She arrived at Liverpool on 23 May 1926. 

Laconia at Boston where she was a regular visitor from 1926-1939.  Credit: Mystic Seaport Museum, Lang Collection. 

With Caronia and Carmania now on Cunard's expanded London-New York service, Laconia begin to call more at Boston en route to and from New York to replace them, joining her sisters Scythia and Samaria on the route in June 1926. Henceforth, Laconia would, like her pre-war predecessor, be a regular "Boston Boat" on what was Cunard's oldest route. 

Laconia's famous and usually reliable "Iron Mike" automatic self steering system broke down shortly after the ship left Cobh on 8 August 1926 and she had to be steered by human quartermasters all the way across.  Among her passengers were nine of Scotland's best footballers en route to play for American "soccer" teams during the off season. 

It was a case of "hurry up and wait" for Laconia (Capt. G. Gibbons) which left Liverpool the afternoon of 4 September 1926, and after calling at Queenstown, had 1,342 passengers aboard, and after a very smart passage of 7 days 6 hours 28 mins. Including the Queenstown stop, arrived at Boston on the 12th.  However, the German liner Thuringia beat her to Quarantine and Laconia did not dock at East Boston until 9:15 p.m., two hours and 35 minutes off schedule. 

Although  Laconia  had been provisionally chartered again by Clark's for their 7th World Cruise in January 1927, this was changed to California of Anchor Line. But Laconia would hardly be idle that winter.

Raymond & Whitcomb's charter of Laconia made her the first Cunard to circle South America during her 63-day cruise in winter 1927. Credit: eBay auction photos.

Few travel agencies participated more in the American cruise boom of the 1920s than did Raymond & Whitcomb of Boston. In July 1926, they announced the charter of no fewer than five Cunarders, at a cost of some $3 mn, for cruises.  This included Laconia which would undertake the first Round South America Cruise by a Cunarder, from New York on 29 January 1927.  The  63-day, 14,395-mile  itinerary took her to Havana, Colon, Panama Canal, Callao, Mollendo, Arica, Antofagasta, Valparaiso, Straits of Magellan, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Santos, Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, Brighton, Port of Spain and San Juan.  This attracted 350 passengers and a maximum of 390 berths were offered, this assuring only First Class accommodation was used.

Mersey-bound, Laconia sails from Boston on 4 September 1927. Credit: Mariner's Museum, William B. Taylor Collection. 

By the end of the 1927 season, Laconia had already logged 130,000 cruising miles with three world cruise, one long Mediterranean cruise and the round South America cruise to her credit.

Raymond & Whitcomb scored another " first" for Laconia and Cunarder with the first Round Africa Cruise from New York in January 1928. It proved to be her final cruise from the United States. Credit: eBay auction photos. 

On what would be her final cruise from U.S., Laconia sails from New York in January 1928 on her Round Africa Cruise for Raymond & Whitcomb. Credit: Daily News, 15 January 1928.

Raymond & Whitcomb continued to broaden their horizons and those of Laconia and Cunard.  In March 1927 they announced the first Round Africa Cruise from the U.S. in Laconia on 14 January 1928. The 18,000-mile cruise circling the Continent from West Coast (including visiting St. Helena), round the Cape and up the East Coast to Egypt, Suez and into the Mediterranean, had 333 passengers. 

When converted to carry Cabin, Tourist and Third Classes, the former Second Class dining saloon was completely redecorated on Laconia and her sisters to be fully comparable to that for Cabin (First) and especially useful when both classes were combined for cruising.

For the 1928 trans-Atlantic season, Laconia, Scythia and Samaria were converted to carry Cabin (400), Tourist Third (450) and Third Class (850) passengers. During this, the former Second Class cabins were provided with hot and cold running water and the dining saloon was considerably upgraded with new freestanding armchairs, new flooring and table lamps as found in First (Cabin) Class. These improvements greatly facilitated combining Cabin and Tourist accommodation and public rooms to one-class on cruises.  Laconia arrived at New York for the first time as a "cabin liner" on 30 April. 

It was not called the Roaring Twenties for nothing and trans-Atlantic tourist business burgeoned.  The freshly refurbished "Cabin Boat" Laconia had 476 passengers aboard when she left New York on 9 June 1928 and a record 534 embarking at Boston the next day.  The Cunard pier was mobbed with 2,100 visitors and well wishers and a traffic jam of 500 motorcars jammed the nearby streets all afternoon. 

Among those sailing in Laconia from Boston on 5 August 1928 was 12-year-old Vincent Mahoney on his third Atlantic crossing travelling alone. His first unaccompanied crossing was at age 6: "We old-timers always get along all right," he told reporters. The orphan, who lived with his grandmother, was off to visit his uncle in Aberdeen.  Credit: Boston Globe, 6 August 1928. 

Laconia's Catering  Department, 2 August 1928. Credit: Merseyside Maritime Museum. 

There would be no more cruises from America for Laconia and instead she would join Lancastria in an expanded Cunard cruise schedule from British ports.

Laconia's first cruise programme from Britain... "In Wake of the Merchant Venturers"... in winter 1929 was advertised with this splendid poster by Scottish artist Thomas Curr. Credit: artnet.com

As announced in August 1928, In January-April 1929, Laconia operated her first cruise programme for Cunard from Southampton, "In the Wake of the Merchant Venturers." This comprised a 39-day West Indies cruise on 19 January to Madeira, Martinique, Kingstown, Port of Spain, Colon, Kingston, Havana, Nassau, Bermuda and the Azores;  a 23-day Mediterranean itinerary 2 March  to Malaga, Palma, Villefranche, Naples, Palermo, Syracuse, Malta, Algiers and Gibraltar and a 16-day "Atlantic Island and North Africa" cruise on 28 March visting Madeira, Santa Cruz, Las Palmas, Casablanca, Tangier and Gibraltar.  

Society "Sun Chasers" Lady Lettice Lygon (left) and Viscountess Weymouth (right) at Waterloo off on Laconia's first cruise to the West Indies in January 1929 and Lady Lygon and Lady Brownlow aboard. Credit: The Sketch 

Laconia-- "The Ideal Cruising Liner"-- quickly became one of the "it" cruise ships of British society, numbering among her passengers on her maiden long West Indies cruise in January 1929 the rival newspaper barons Lord Beaverbrook and Lord Rothermere.

Laconia's 1930 cruise programme.  

An increased quota for Irish immigration to the U.S. prompted monthly westbound calls at Galway by Laconia, Scythia and Lancastria  beginning in 1930.

Boston was the setting for a unique meeting of the two great pioneering world cruise liners when HAPAG's veteran Cleveland, first to complete a world cruise in 1910, and Laconia, first to complete a circumnavigation, sailed within a hour of one another from Commonwealth Pier on 4 May 1930.

Water plumes by fireboats welcomed Laconia as she arrived at Boston on 20 July 1930 on the 90th anniversary of the maiden arrival of Cunard's Britannia. Credit: Boston Globe, 21 July 1930.

Laconia (Capt. Michael Doyle) received quite a welcome upon arrival at Boston on 20 July 1930 on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the maiden call of the Cunarder Britannia at the port to open the first regularly scheduled North Atlantic steamship service. Dressed overall for the occasion, Laconia was greeted with water spouting fireboats and an official delegation from the city.

Sailing from Liverpool on her long West Indies cruise on 20 January 1931, Laconia additionally called at Plymouth the next day and this was repeated the following year.  Thereafter, Southampton was used for the convenience of Home Counties passengers.

Poster for Laconia's 1931 cruises.

Old Man Depression was absent on the Boston waterfront when Laconia sailed for Liverpool on 26 July 1931, her holds packed with 9,000 tons including 100,000 bushels of grain, 20,000 boxes of New England apples, 10,000 packages of peaches, plums and pears, and six motorcars.  In addition to the 422 who embarked at New York the day before, 211 came aboard at Boston.  Such was the amount of cargo, she was more than two hours late in sailing. 

Each year's brochure featured distinctive artwork: left (1931) and right (1932).

Laconia's 1932 cruise programme, note the West Indies cruise calling outbound at Plymouth for Home counties passengers.  The following year, Southampton was used instead. 

Advertisement for Laconia's 1933 cruise programme. Credit: The Sphere, 19 November 1932. 

Laconia's 1933 West Indies Cruise, from Liverpool on 26 January, featured a call at Bermuda on the homeward leg of the 39-day voyage which also called ay Madeira, Barbados, St. Lucia, Kingston, Havana, Casablanca and Gibraltar. Among the 308 aboard were The Rt. Hon. Viscount Curzon and Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon and Lady Bacon. On the homeward call at Havana 15 February, the British Ambassador, Sir John Broderick and Lady Broderick joined the ship for the voyage home. 

Depression notwithstanding, the Cunard-Anchor liners Laconia, Franconia and Cameronia and the White Star Line's Britannic sailed in and out of Boston Harbor on 27 August 1933, seen off by some 10,000 visitors.  Franconia was off on a cruise to Saguenay and Bermuda and Laconia arrived from Liverpool with 667 passengers.

Only the most fashionable British cruise ships: Arandora Star, Atlantis, Franconia and Laconia figured in the society pages of The Tatler, The Sphere and The Bystander.  Here are society notables enjoying Life on the Ocean Wave aboard Laconia 1933-34.

The 1934 cruise programme for Laconia was the most audacious since she entered the U.K. cruise market.  Credit: Illustrated London News, 21 October 1933.

For winter 1934, Laconia's regular West Indies cruise was lengthened by a week to 46 days and 13,164 miles, from Liverpool on 20 January  to Madeira, Barbados, La Guayra, Colon, Kingston, Havana, Guadeloupe, Dakar and Gibraltar and returning to Southampton on 7 March.  A second cruise, from Southampton on 10 March  called at Ceuta, Casablanca, Las Palmas, Tenerife, Madeira, Gibraltar and Vigo in 16 days and a third, 29 days, took Laconia and her passengers from Southampton on 28 March to Algiers, Cyprus, Haifa, Port Said, Athens, Naples, Civitavecchia and Lisbon, returning to Liverpool after 29 days.   Among her passengers was the celebrated Welsh playwright and composer, Ivor Novello. That year saw the height of Britain's "Cruise Boom" and 125,000 taking cruises on 250 cruises in 27 ships from Easter to October.

Ivor Novello (front) and travel companions at the Dome of the Rock, Jersusalem, during Laconia's spring  1934 Mediterranean cruise. Credit: eBay auction photo.

Laconia looking very smart in her revised livery introduced at the start of the 1934 trans-Atlantic season with the white superstructure paint carried to the first hull deck. Credit: Travel Weekly.

During her spring 1934 overhaul, Laconia, like the other Cunard intermediates, were repainted in a revised livery with a wide white strake given to their hulls, essentially carrying the white superstructure paint to the first hull deck.  

More changes came on 1 July 1934 with the merger of Cunard and White Star to form Cunard-White Star Line. Laconia was the first to arrive at Boston on 2 July after the announcement. Hence she and her fleetmates flew the dual houseflags of both lines. 

Pan Royal, at Boston, and Laconia at New York (note the white-painted Mauretania at the adjacent pier) showing the effects of their collision in fog off Cape Cod.

Laconia collided with the American freighter Pan Royal in fog at 3:51 a.m. off Cape Cod on 24 September 1934. The Cunarder was bound for New York with 555 passengers and the freighter en route to Boston from southern ports.  Pan Royal suffered a gash above the waterline, took on some water, but proceeded under her steam to Boston escorted by a Coast Guard cutter. Laconia with a badly twisted stem 15 ft. abover the waterline, continued to New York where docked the next day. Capt. Oram told reporters that visibility was down to a few feet when Pan Royal came into view about 30 seconds before the collision. The liner's engines were put into full reverse, but she grazed the freighter at the stern. Laconia was drydocked in Brooklyn on the 29th for repairs costing $39,736 and finally sailed for Liverpool on 26 October.

Laconia's last crossing for 1934 was one of her roughest ever.  Arriving at Queenstown on 4 December, two days late, Capt. Oram told reporters the weather was the worst he had ever experienced in his career: "From the time we left Boston [23 November] we have encountered a succession of strong northerly gales and tremendous seas, which at times dashed completely over the ship. On Wednesday and Thursday last the gales reached hurricane forces, and we lay hove-to for four and twenty hours respectively. The Laconia rode the waves magnificently and I would sooner been on her than in any hotel in London."

After rather remarkably avoiding "W.N.A." (Winter North Atlantic) so far in her career, Laconia finally found herself making a January roundtrip in 1935, arriving at New York on 22 January and sailing for Queenstown and Liverpool three days later where she arrived on 4 February. 

Among those sailing in Laconia on a five-week-long Mediterranean cruise in February 1935 were HRH Prince and Princess Arthur of Connaught. 

It was a quick turnaround for the ship, for Laconia was off on 6 February 1935 on an  expanded five-week-long Round the Mediterranean cruise from Liverpool on 6 February. The 14-port, 7,814-mile cruise called at Lisbon, Palma, Malta, Alexandria, Haifa, Larnaca, Rhodes, Istanbul, Athens, Messina, Naples, Monaco, Barcelona and Gibraltar and had among its passengers HRH Prince and Princess Arthur of Connaught. The cruise ended on a somewhat sour note on 13 March when a passenger developed a case of chickenpox en route from Gibraltar and everyone had to be vaccinated before disembarking. 

The Cunard White Star merger resulted in the termination of the Cunard-Anchor association. Indeed, Cunard decided to compete directly with Anchor for a share in the Clyde-New York trade and begin regular calls at Greenock.  Laconia was credited with inaugurating the service with her arrival there on 16 December 1935.  

Laconia's only cruise for 1936 was a 35-day cruise to the Canaries, Africa and Mediterranean in March. 

Laconia reprised her single January North Atlantic round trip from Liverpool to New York in 1936 and her cruising was limited to but a single "Fascinating Spring Cruise" from Liverpool on 4 March 1936 to Madeira, Las Palmas, Freetown, Dakar, Casablanca, Gibraltar, Monte Carlo, Barcelona and Lisbon, the 35-day voyage totalling over 8,000 miles.

Laconia's career coincided with the heyday of British poster art and her first cruise to Rio was afforded this spectacular poster by the famous Paul Jarvis. 

The highlight of Laconia's winter cruise programme for 1937 was her six-week-long cruise from Southampton on 27 January to Rio and the West Indies.  The 14,000-mile voyage called at 11 ports and returned to Southampton on 13 March.  The ship encountered very stormy conditions en route from Las Palmas to Rio where she docked on 13 February for a three-day stay. 

The traditional spring Mediterranean cruise for 1937 saw Laconia sailing from Southampton on 17 March on a 30-day jaunt to Lisbon, Algiers, Malta, Kotor, Dubrovnik, Athens, Haifa, Alexandria (3 days), Naples, Villefranche and Barcelona, returning on 16 April. 

For the 1937 Atlantic season, Cunard White Star further expanded their Irish business by adding a westbound stop at Dublin every fortnight before the Galway call with Laconia making her first visit to at Dublin on 24 April.  

The sisters were not often in port together, but one such occasion was in Boston on 11 April 1937, Laconia, bound for Liverpool via New York, and Samaria, arriving from Liverpool via Belfast and Greenock, both docked at Pier 3.

The routine life of a liner: a typical New York to Liverpool crossing for Laconia in July 1937 on a souvenir log card. Credit: eBay auction photo.

Beautiful and distinctive brochure and advertisement artwork for Laconia's 1938 cruises. 

New for Laconia's long winter cruise for 1938 (from Liverpool 24 January and Southampton on the 26th) were calls at Miami and Vera Cruz (for Mexico City).  The complete 52-day itinerary stopped at Las Palmas, Brighton, Port of Spain, Grenada, Curacao, Cartagena, Colon, Vera Cruz, Havana, Miami, Kingston, St. Thomas, Madeira and Lisbon. 

It proved a challenging voyage. High winds caused Laconia to drag her anchor off Vera Cruz on 22 February 1938 and  head out to sea to avoid being forced onto a reef, thus stranding her 227 passengers ashore for the night until it was safe to re-enter the harbour.  This delayed her arrival at Miami from the 26th to the following day. As she had been so often on her first world cruise, Laconia became the largest ship yet to enter the port. The call was marred when the tug L.R. Hisey was crushed between the liner and the end of Pier 2 as she was berthing.  The badly holed tug was taken in tow by two other tugs which attempted to beach her, but she settled on the bottom.  She was quickly patched, refloated and repaired. 

During her spring 1938 drydocking, Laconia, like her sisters, got new solid bronze screws which were far more efficient than the original bolt-on bladed variety, giving a half-knot more speed.  When she docked at Boston on 8 May. Laconia had logged 450 miles on her final 24 hours at sea. 

Laconia's long winter cruise for 1939 included calls at Rio and Miami. Credit: Illustrated London News, 26 November  and 22 October1938.

Laconia's winter 1939 cruise, from Liverpool 26 January and Southampton two days later, was routed via the West Coast of Africa, crossing the Equator on 8 February and on to Rio de Janiero, Bahia, West Indies and call at Miami before sailing from there on 7 March for home via Madeira. 

FIVE TIMES ROUND THE WORLD CRUISE SHIP STEWARD’S RECORD 

Five times round the world and never missed a Laconia cruise in the whole of her sixteen years as liner aad cruiseship is the record of saloon-steward F Richards, of Freshfield, Liverpool, who sailed yesterday from Liverpool in the Cunard White Star liner Laconia, on her annual cruise to the West Indies. Mr. Richards, who is a member tlie first-class dining-room staff, told the Daily Post that crusing had enabled him to see the most pleasant spots in all parts of the world in the most pleasant way and furthermore had kept him free from ills and even the smallest attention by the ship’s doctor throughout the years. 

The Laconia is the first cruise ship of the new season out of Liverpool. She is bound for the West Indies via the North African coast and before her return, in the middle of March next, will have visited twelve ports between Rio de Janeiro and Miami. Among the passengers who boarded her at Liverpool were Alderman W. J. Yates, of Crosby, and Mr. and Mrs. E. Sydney-Wright, of Liverpool. The Laconia will call at Southampton to-day and will depart to-morrow. 

Liverpool Daily Post, 27 January 1939

On what would be her final commercial voyage, R.M.S. Laconia left Liverpool on 12 August 1939 and arrived at Boston on the 21st, via Galway, and New York a day later.  Among those landing at Boston was British actor Donald Crisp who was bound for Hollywood to begin production of "Captain Hornblower" also starring Errol Flynn. 

Laconia sailed from New York for Liverpool on 25 August 1939 and from Boston on the 26th.  In fact, hers would prove the final regularly scheduled Cunard departure from Boston on that day.  One year short of a century, Cunard's Boston run was suddenly gone "for the duration" and in fact forever. Laconia was at sea on 3 September 1939 when Britain declared on Germany but reached Liverpool the following day.  On the 8th, Cunard White Star announced cancellation of her schedule westbound sailing for the next day. 

The Admiralty lost little time in requisitioning Laconia literally the day she arrived at Liverpool on 4 September 1939. After destoring, she sailed for Portsmouth where she arrived on the 9th for conversion into an armed merchant cruiser.  Whilst hardly ideal as a warship in any role, Laconia was even less suitable  in the role than other liners owing to her relatively slow speed, large superstructure and prominent features which made her more of a target than a deterrent.  But with a dire shortage of escort vessels, her range and her hastily installed armament of eight 6-inch Mk VII guns and two 3-inch dual purpose guns saw her duly commissioned  on 6 January 1940 as H.M.S. Laconia (F42) under Capt. Gilbert George Pearse Hewett, RN.

A.M.C. Laconia (F42). Credit: www.shipbucket.com

After trials off the Isle of Wight, Laconia embarked gold bullion and sailed for Portland, Maine and Halifax, Nova Scotia on 23 January 1940 and arrived at Halifax on 8 February.  Assigned to the Halifax Escort Force from 6 January-May 1940. Laconia then began her escort duties for the troop convoys carrying Canadian forces to Britain, starting with Convoy HXF.20 (Halifax 12 February to Liverpool arriving 25th).  

On 9 June 1940, she ran aground in the Bedford Basin at Halifax, suffering considerable damage.  She was refloated and sailed for St. John, N.B. for repairs on the 12th which occupied ten days and then arrived at Halifax on the 23rd.  Laconia resumed service on the 27th, sailing with Convoy HX.61, for Liverpool, reached on 15 August. She continued in this role through Convoy HX.67 (Halifax 20 August to Liverpool, arriving 4 September).  In all, Laconia escorted six Canadian convoys from Halifax to Liverpool from February-September.

Reassigned to the Bermuda and Halifax Escort Force, Laconia sailed from Halifax on 11 September 1940 and arrived Bermuda on 14th.  Her first convoy from Bermuda to escort was BHX.77 departing on the 28th and continued through BHX.133, from Bermuda on 14 October and joining convoy HX.133 at Halifax on the 20th for Liverpool. Upon arrival on the Mersey, Laconia underwent a refit with her lower deck passenger accommodation largely dismantled and 'tween decks filled with empty oil drums to provide extra buoyancy if torpedoed. 

Upon returning to service, Laconia escorted one more convoy via Bermuda, BHX.87, in November 1940 and then resumed accompanying those direct from Halifax to the Mersey including  HX.90, HX.99 (via Sydney CB), HX.107, SC.25, HX.120, SC.32 and in June 1941, BHX.133 via Bermuda.  Upon return, she sailed to St. John, NB, arriving on the 23rd and refitted there until late August. 

With the Battle of the Atlantic assuming its most lethal stage and with more suitable escort vessels on hand, Laconia concluded her AMC duties assigned to the North Atlantic Escort Force and her final escort assignment was Convoy HX.147 from Halifax on 29 August 1941, arriving Liverpool 12 September. She then entered Bidston Dock, Birkenhead and was taken over by Cammell Laird and Company to be converted into a transport with a capacity of 4,000 troops. She was officially paid off from naval service, on 1 October and transferred to the Ministry of War Transport.   Laconia sailed from Liverpool on 4 January 1942 and arrived on the Clyde on the 8th.

Reverting to a Merchant Navy crew, her new master was Capt. Rudolph Sharp, OBE, who was in command of the Cunarder Lancastria when she was bombed and sunk with frightful loss of life, evacuating troops from St. Nazaire in June 1940. 

As with most "fast" transports on the long route to the Middle East via the Cape, the outbound voyage was normally in convoy via Freetown (for bunkers and water) then to Suez via Durban with occasional diversions to Bombay whilst the homeward voyages were undertaken independently. 

Australian troops aboard Laconia en route from England to Bombay in March 1942. Credit: Australian War Memorial. 

Laconia's first convoy was WS.15 from Liverpool to Freetown (10-25 January 1942) carrying 3,035 troops of the Australian Imperial Force returning to Australia to bolster the country's defence against the Japanese. Laconia proceeded to Cape Town on the 29th where she docked on 10 February and thence to Aden, reached on 1 March. She continued to Suez and then on Bombay where Laconia docked on 23 March and her Australian tropps transhipped to the transports Katoomba and Duntroon.  Independently Laconia returned to Cape Town (arriving 12 April) and then home via Freetown (26th) to return to Liverpool on 9 May.

Australian troops man one of the remaining pair of 6-inch guns aft from Laconia's armed merchant cruiser armament. Credit: Australian War Memorial. 

Once again, the outbound trip, with 3,728 troops, was in convoy (WS.19P), when Laconia sailed from the Clyde on 31 May 1942 for Freetown (15 June), Cape Town (1 July) and on to Aden, reached on the 20th. At Port Tewfik, Laconia embarked her varied passengers for her homeward trip to England, comprising 268 returning British servicemen, 80 civilian women and children,  103 Polish guards and  1,809 Italian PoWs, captured during the Battle of El-Alamein.   From Suez, Laconia sailed for Mombasa when she arrived on 10 August.  Beginning her long trip home, she sailed on the 14th, calling at Durban (20-29th) and arriving at Cape Town on 1 September.  When she sailed for England on the 4th, she had a total of 2,732 souls aboard and, as usual, was making the voyage alone and without escort. 

Laconia was 130 miles northeast of Ascension Island in the South Atlantic on 12 September 1942 when she was sighted by submarine U-156 (Kapitänleutnant Werner Hartenstein) who fired a single torpedo which struck the liner on her starboardside at 22.07 hrs. This struck one of the holds packed with Italian prisoners and almost all of them, 450 in all, perished.  Although quickly developing a starboard list, Laconia remained afloat until a second torpedo hit her in the no. 2 hold forward and she quickly settled by the stern. 

Capt. Sharp ordered Abandon Ship and began putting the women and children first into the boats of which there were no fewer than 32, although many could not be launched owing to the list and confusion. For the Italian prisoners, trapped in still locked or grated holds, the situation was dire and panic broke out, many managing to escape via ventilation shafts or breaking through hatch covers. Several were shot or bayonetted by the Polish guards when a group of prisoners rushed a lifeboat, and a large number were bayoneted to death to prevent their boarding of one of the few lifeboats available. 

With no time to properly load the remaining lifeboats, many were launched nearly empty and most of those remaining aboard had to jump into the shark invested water. Many Italian prisoners were clubbed and pushed away from boarding the boats amid harrowing scenes.

Laconia's Capt. Rudolph Sharp, OBE, went down with his ship. Credit: deadlinescotland.wordpress

An hour and twenty minutes after taking the first torpedo, Laconia sank at 23.23 hrs by the stern with her bows straight up and proud. She took with her the captain, 97 crew, 133 civilian passengers, 33 Polish guards and 1,394 Italian prisoners. It was reported that Capt. Sharp, after ensuring the women and children were in the boats, returned to his cabin and locked the door, determined to go down with his ship and not survive his second tragic sinking. 

Shuttle service for survivors from the Laconia between U-156 (foreground) and U-507 (background). Credit: wikipediacommons

Laconia survivors crowding the deck of one of the rescuing German submarines. Credit: Deutsches U-Boot Museum. 

Realising that most of those aboard Laconia had been civilians and Italian prisoners after he surfaced close to the scene of the sinking, Capt. Hartenstein of U-156  began picking up survivors, took lifeboats in tow and notified headquarters about her rescue operation, requesting additional U-Boats in the area to rendevous. On 15 September 1942, U-506 (Würdemann), U-507 (Schacht) and the Italian submarine Cappellini (Marco Revedin) arrived and participated in the rescue. Prominent Red Cross flags were displayed on the submarines and the makeshift convoy made for the African coast to meet united of the French Navy dispatched from Dakar.  Apart from those survivors that could be placed in lifeboats under tow there were a total of 236 survivors on board U-156 whilst U-507 had aboard or in tow 152 Italian PoWs, 2 British officers and 86 men plus 2 women.

Women and children survivors coming alongside one of the rescuing submarines. Credit: Deutsches U-Boot Museum.

Tragedy was compounded by callous stupidity when at 12:32 on 16 September 1942 the convoy was attacked by a U.S. Air Force B-24 Liberator belong to the USAF 343 Squadron based on Ascension Island with bombs and depth charges in ignorance or defiance of the Red Cross marking and morse lamp signals warning there were survivors aboard. One bomb scored a direct hit on a lifeboat and the others straddled U-156. As a consequence, Hartenstein ordered the survivors on his deck back into the lifeboats which were cast adrift and U-Boats submerged and left the scene. 

On 17 September 1942, U-156 and another U-boat were attacked by American B-24 Liberator aircraft operating from Ascension USAF 343 Squadron from the US base on Ascension Island. Even though they displayed a large Red Cross flag, the plane dropped three depth charges. 

Rescued British personnel on the French warship Gloire by Edward Bawden. Credit: wikipediacommons.

Between 17-20 September 1942, a total of 1,083 survivors (among them 415 Italians) were picked up from lifeboats or directly from the U-boats by French warships Gloire, Dumont d´Urville and Annamite and taken to Dakar. The 668 Allied survivors were brought to Casablanca by Gloire on 26 September. On board were 1 officer and 178 ratings of the Royal Navy, 17 officers and 87 ratings from the British Army, 9 officers and 70 ratings from the Royal Air Force, 8 officers and 178 men from the Merchant Navy, 1 officer and 69 ratings from the Free Polish Army and 50 women and children. The last four survivors were not picked up until 21 October, the last occupants of a boat that originally had 51 pccupants.  

The sinking of Laconia was the second worse British troopship loss of the Second World War, only exceeded in casaulties by the loss of her erstwhile fleetmate Lancastria. Altogethe, 1,649 lives were lost and there were 1,083 survivors. 

A final coda to the tragedy of Laconia's sinking was German Admiral Dönitz issuing the Trton Null Order or more commonly known as "The Laconia Order" forbidding U-boat commanders from rescuing survivors. Although the U.S. Navy would issued a similar directive for its submarines in the Pacific, the Laconia Order was used as an indictment against Dönitz in the Nuernberg War Crimes trials. Dönitz was convicted of war crimes by the Nuernberg Tribunal and sentenced to 11 and a half years in Spandau prison.

R.M.S. Laconia, 1922-1942.  Odin Rosenvinge.

Thus ended Laconia's 20-year career which had begun with the post-war promise of a new era in world travel and ended in the horror of another world war, securing her place in history for her tragic loss rather than her pioneering world cruise and enduring popularity as a liner and cruise ship. 

Cunard's fabled Green Goddess, R.M.S. Caronia of 1949, made the first world cruise after the war in January 1951 and would undertake one annually through January 1967

After the war, Cunard staged more than a comeback and achieved a new Golden Age that prospered into the mid 1960s in which cruising played an increasingly dominate role.  In Laconia's wake, the new dual-purpose Caronia (1949) resumed world cruises with her 6 January 1951 sailing from New York on a classic 111-day, 28-port itinerary and world cruise or similar long "event" cruise would feature annually in The Green Goddess' annual programme through 1967 when she, along with Queen Mary, was withdrawn from service.  The Cunard world cruise tradition was renewed when Queen Elizabeth 2 made her first circumnavigation in January 1975 and  went on to make more world cruises than any single vessel.  

Today, Queen Mary 2 and Queen Victoria continue to circumnavigate the world. Indeed, Cunard can claim to have made more world cruises than any line.  In this respect, Laconia  pioneered as enduring a tradition in 1922 as did Britannia did in 1840, carrying the Cunard houseflag and Red Duster 'round the world. 

It was not until January 1975 that Cunard's world cruise tradition was resumed by Queen Elizabeth 2 which went on to complete more world cruise than any single ship up until her retirement in 2008.

On 20 January 2023 Queen Victoria will sail from New York on The Centenary World Voyage, 92 days, commemorating Laconia's pioneering circumnavigation and calling at some of the original ports including the Panama Canal, San Francisco, Hilo, Honolulu, Jakarta,  Singapore, the Suez Canal, Naples and ending at Southampton on 23 April.

And what of that diligent chronicler of Laconia's pioneering world cruise, Eleanor Phelps? Six months after returning from the voyage, she married Robert Henry Wilds, a doctor from Aiken, South Carolina. She became stepmother to his two children and then had two sons of her own.  She was named ‘Woman of the Year’ in 1958 by the Aiken Chamber of Commerce. Eleanor passed away on 23 January 1967, leaving 11 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.  She, through her diary and photos left us with a unique perspective on an epic voyage, the appeal and magic of which endures to this day for contemporary travellers.

When Queen Victoria sails on her Centenary World Cruise, her passengers, like Eleanor Phelps and her fellow "Laconians," will be heeding the words of Walt Whitman:

Now, voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

Liners to the Sun, John Maxtone-Graham, 1985

Trailing the Sun Around the Earth: A Series of Circular Letters from of Two Pilgrims to the Families at Home, November 21 1922 to August 1 1923

Belting & Transmission 

Forbes

Illustrated London News

Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects

Marine Engineering & Shipping Age

Shipbuilding & Shipping Record

The Bystander

The Sketch

The Shipbuilder

The Sphinx

The Tatler

Travel Weekly

Panama Canal Record

Boston Globe

Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Buffalo Times

Central New Jersey Home News

Daily Newsz

Detroit Free Press

Devon & Exeter Gazette

Evening Public Ledger

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Het nieuws van den dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië

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Honolulu Advertiser

Honolulu Star Bulletin

Liverpool Daily Post

Liverpool Echo

Liverpool Journal of Commerce

Malaya Tribune

Montreal Gazette

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North China Herald

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Taunton Courier

The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser

San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Examiner

 St. Louis Globe-Democrat

Straits Budget

The Sphere

The Straits Times

Western Chronicle

Victoria Daily Times

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Additions/Corrections/Contributions welcomed

contact the author at posted_at_sea@hotmail.com

© Peter C. Kohler