by Siân Evans
Every day is Judgement Day for many people at Ellis Island … families are cut in twain, husband and wife separated, children taken from their parents, or one taken and the other left. It is all wrong … These people have been saving for years, denying their families many little luxuries in order that they might get together sufficient funds to come steerage. After years of sacrifice and saving, they come to this port only to be sent back to Europe. And sent back to what? Literally to the Devil and his angels.
Europe is worse off today than during the war. These people go back with no home, no business, broken in pocket, and, a thousand times worse, broken in spirit. No one can ever picture the scenes of anguish of spirit we see at this port. We frequently found it necessary to carry people bodily from the building and put them on the ship, many of them going into hysterics and threatening to jump overboard.5
Would-be immigrants could be deported if they showed signs of physical or mental illness, but less well-known is the discrimination against the illiterate. Adults arriving at Ellis Island were required to read out loud forty words of a printed language – any language; a wide variety of texts were supplied – to prove they were literate. This discriminatory policy often split up families, and it particularly affected women from remote and traditional communities in eastern Europe, who were less likely to have been taught to read. Wallis recalled one case where a young Jewish woman was parted from her younger brothers and sisters, and was to be deported because she couldn’t read, though they could. Sobbing, she explained that she was the eldest and had never learned to read because she had to stay at home and work so that her younger siblings could be educated. Despite sympathy from the immigration officials, she was sent back to her home country and an uncertain future.
In the early 1920s poor immigrants hoping to gain permanent entry to America found the process increasingly difficult as quota restrictions and stricter entry criteria were enforced on those ‘huddled masses, yearning to be free’. Paradoxically, for the more privileged women – crossing the Atlantic in the first- and second-class decks far above steerage, in every sense – their voyages between Europe and North America had never been so fascinating or enjoyable.
On the upper decks of every ocean liner, accommodated in luxury, were the leisured wealthy, who were destined to become the new ‘cruising class’ as the economic realities of ocean travel changed. The respectably prosperous who travelled in second class for business or commerce hoped to pick up the threads of their disrupted mercantile life or to create new fortunes in the New World. On the larger ships there was usually a ‘floating population’ of travellers hoping to profit from their more naïve shipmates: they were the serious gamblers, gigolos, ocean vamps, card-sharps, procurers, snake-oil salesmen and blackmailers. And then there were the performers – those already established as actors, singers or dancers – hoping to make it big on the stages of New York or London, or even on the silver screen, as well as aspirant stars whose names were only known to their nearest and dearest. The transatlantic ship not only provided a form of transport across the globe, it was also both the practical means and the symbol of opportunity, of new beginnings and fresh starts. From ‘third class’ to ‘top deck’, from desperate women escaping financial hardship to wealthy international sophisticates hoping for romance and adventure, every transatlantic liner of this post-war era was freighted with hope.
4
The Roaring Twenties
In January 1924 Parisian-born impresario André Charlot and twenty exuberant and sociable chorus girls and actresses boarded the Aquitania at Southampton in a high state of excitement. Following a successful London run, they had been booked to take Charlot’s Musical Revue to New York, with an all-British cast. The Revue featured comic songs by Noël Coward and Ivor Novello; it relied upon ribald Cockney slang, and was peppered with London colloquialisms, but, contrary to most expectations, the show captivated American audiences. The company’s initial six-week booking on Broadway was extended for a nine-month run, eventually totalling 298 performances. Gertrude Lawrence and Beatrice Lillie were in the Revue, and the success of the show subsequently brought them international fame as actresses.
As might be expected, the voyage out on the Aquitania was a particularly lively and entertaining one for the performers and their fellow passengers. The extrovert company were all excellent dancers, and every evening they took to the floor to dance with their fellow passengers, accompanied by the scintillating sounds of the ship’s band, who probably couldn’t believe their luck. Anticipating potential difficulties, Mr Charlot had wisely engaged a female chaperone to look after the young women’s welfare and to curb their enthusiasm while on board, but despite Matron’s best efforts, one ingénue managed to conduct an illicit romance with a millionaire, and accepted his offer of marriage, so their numbers were reduced to nineteen by the time they arrived in New York.
The liveliness of all parties on board the Aquitania during this voyage might be put down to natural causes, but it may also be attributed to high spirits, particularly alcoholic ones. In the 1920s European shipping lines had one considerable advantage over their American rivals: they were able to serve alcohol on board their liners. Prohibition – the banning of the import, manufacture and sale of alcohol – had come into force throughout the United States in January 1920, and it was to have a profound effect on many aspects of American life for the next decade.
The new law did not ban the actual consumption of alcohol, so those Americans with foresight and funds simply stockpiled supplies before the Volstead Act passed into law. It was rumoured that the Yale Club in New York City had stored enough liquor in its basement to keep it supplied for fourteen years. But for those without the resources and storage space, Prohibition was a serious imposition. Illegal drinking dens, known as speakeasies, and underground nightclubs mushroomed to meet public demand. Illicit alcohol, often brewed in unlikely and probably insanitary circumstances, was available to those prepared to pay for it, even if it did mean travelling to the shadier parts of town and muttering a password to some taciturn heavies on the door to gain entry. Huge profits could be made, and so organised crime took over the liquor business. There was also corruption: at Chumley’s, one of the most popular New York speakeasies, the staff were told by the police that in the event of a raid they should usher their customers out of the exit leading on to Bedford Street, as the police would be coming in through the Pamela Court entrance. Purser Spedding of the Aquitania, a frequent visitor to New York in the 1920s, recalled the double standards that prevailed: ‘I once attended a big police dinner in New York, and there were so many of the guests over the mark that the chairman of the feast called everybody to order, and said that if the drinking did not stop, he would send for a policeman. He had a whisky and soda in hand at the time, and this sally caused much merriment amongst the blue-uniformed guests.’1
American-owned liners were legally deemed to be American territory, so no alcohol could be served on them. However, it was unclear at first if the new regulations also applied to foreign-owned ships. Until informed that they were breaking the law, the many passenger liners docked alongside the wharfs of American harbours were unprecedentedly popular with thirsty visitors who, unable to get a drink on terra firma, were going aboard for dinner, dancing and cocktails, happy to pay for a night out.
Attempts to enforce Prohibition on other nations’ vessels met firm resistance. Their protests were not solely on behalf of their passengers: on British ships there were the crew’s rum rations to consider. The provision of a wine ration was not only legal but compulsory in some Latin ships. The Italian Lines pointed out indignantly that their officers, members of the crew and third-class passengers were entitled to a daily allocation of wine of not less than 12 per cent alcohol.
Eventually all foreign-owned ships agreed to keep their liquor stores sealed while in American waters, within three miles of the mainland; that boundary was later increased to twelve miles. Despite Prohibition, Ameri
can cocktail barmen marked both occasions by creating, first, the Three Mile Limit (a heady mix of white rum, grenadine, cognac and lemon juice), succeeded by an even more potent brew, the Twelve Mile Limit (as before, but with a slug of rye whiskey). Thirsty passengers would make for the bars as soon as they departed New York, and a roaring trade commenced as soon as the ship reached international waters.
Paradoxically, in the same era as America was technically dry, cocktails boomed. Ocean liners prided themselves on the ingenuity and inventiveness of their bar staff; as British-born travel writer Basil Woon observed in 1926: ‘The Atlantic has never been so wet as it has been since Prohibition started and Americans began travelling. What puzzles a ship’s bartender is the baffling number of new cocktails the Americans have invented since 1919. Americans are no longer content to stay on a drinking diet of beer or whisky. They change their drink with every round.’2
The other major consequence of Prohibition for ocean-going ships was the inevitable temptation to smuggle illicit alcohol, for personal consumption or for sale. Between 1920 and 1933, Prohibition created an insatiable market for smuggled alcohol. Criminal gangs often approached the crews of ocean liners, offering them incentives to bring in large quantities of alcohol. A bottle of whisky in Britain cost about 12s 6d – the equivalent of 62 pence – and could be sold in New York for $5 – the equivalent of £1 – representing a decent profit. Demand was huge; young Americans carried hip flasks on nights out, containing any alcoholic tipple they could acquire. It was considered smart to drink alcohol, and even smarter to be able to acquire it.
The American gangs awaiting the arrival of the big liners might try to chisel down the price; seafarers might retaliate by watering the whisky. In addition, the Prohibition agents, who were employed to enforce the law, were often corrupt; one of them was seen tottering back down the Aquitania’s gangway one evening with his bag so full of illicit booze he was attempting to bend the neck of a protruding bottle to conceal it. The captain and senior officers were expected to try to deter the practice by organising searches of the ship, but it is possible they occasionally turned a blind eye.
Violet Jessop had returned to work as a first-class stewardess with White Star Line in 1920, employed once again on the Olympic. Violet was indignant at the extraordinary lengths to which her passengers would go in order to smuggle drink ashore, especially as they often tried to involve her in their subterfuge:
We were called upon as if it were our daily task, to help, advise, and often assist passengers to conceal their ‘hooch’ as we drew near to New York. It was all so fantastic. There were members of the Four Hundred, pillars of Wall Street, senators, lawyers, debutantes, card sharps, all with their minds on the same problem as we approached the shores of the United States. Under the circumstances, it was not surprising that often our men obliged, at a price, and even our women too. One ample-bosomed stewardess found she could carry off a quart of champagne in her ‘balcony’, and no customs official, however hard-boiled, had the nerve to tap the offending bottle with his little metal mallet used for such purposes, so she got away with it. Not quite so lucky was a small syndicate of stewards who ran quite a profitable business in liquor, until one day a coffin was needed in a hurry from the storeroom and their cache was discovered.3
Naturally, the absence of alcohol on American-owned ships presented no problem for teetotallers of any nationality, but it was an important factor in some passengers’ choice of ships. Those who liked to drink were inclined to choose foreign-owned vessels, substantially reducing profits for the American companies. The strictures against the sale of alcohol on shore led directly to the invention of the ‘booze cruise’, developed to cater specifically for the determined party-goer. A brief maritime jaunt for a few days along the coastline of the North American continent to Havana or the West Indies in a foreign-owned ship provided an opportunity to party long and hard for the duration of the trip, in the company of like-minded revellers. Ostensibly this was for the purposes of tourism, but many pleasure-seeking passengers did not even disembark on reaching their supposed destination. What mattered was the opportunity for a luxurious blowout in a floating hotel with a hard liquor licence and obliging staff who would bring all manner of liquid refreshment to one’s cabin, saloon table or recliner. Convivial cabin parties could be organised with the help of stewards, who were well-tipped to provide ample folding chairs and copious refreshments. The last night of a voyage before the ship re-entered American waters tended to generate a febrile atmosphere among the passengers:
They were sailing towards the land of Prohibition, towards dry America, where no one knew how soon he would get a good drink again. So, everybody drank as much as he could and some of them more. Someone had made the statement, and it had become a belief, that all spiritous liquors would have to be poured into the ocean before the ship entered the harbour, so everybody tried his best to rob the tides of their precious booty … their weapons were the glasses in their hands and the empty bottles under the tables their trophies of victory.4
The enforcement of Prohibition in America also had unintended consequences for the transatlantic trade, providing an added incentive to travel – ostensibly to explore the world, but in fact to look for pleasure as well as business. This aspect was leaped upon by shipping companies, eager to fill their normally empty berths on the return trips to Europe, having landed the migrants who made up the bulk of their westward trade. With migrant numbers dropping due to stricter American immigration quotas, it made sense for shipping companies to upgrade their most economical accommodation, renaming it ‘tourist class’. Much of the advertising and marketing of this era now focused on the affordability and sense of adventure involved in travelling the Atlantic. As both labour and fuel were then relatively cheap, steamships (which relied heavily on both) were comparatively inexpensive. Both the pound and the dollar were very strong against the post-war European currencies, so that a few dollars would buy excellent accommodation and wonderful food in France. The new tourists, American travellers on a budget, were increasingly attracted to the prospect of exploring mainland Europe. The Hemingways were able to live lavishly in France for $5 a day. In 1922 they dined at the best hotel in Kehl in Germany for 120 marks, the equivalent of 15 cents.
Long-distance sea travel had never been more affordable. The writer Alec Waugh, elder brother of the novelist Evelyn Waugh, undertook his first round-the-world trip in 1926. He claimed that it was more cost-efficient for him to travel by ocean liner than to rent an apartment in London. Thanks to his portable typewriter, he could work as a writer as well at sea as on land, selling travel features as he went. It was also possible to travel for years by writing about it. Writers carried their offices with them, and could work in isolation in their cabin, or in matey conviviality in a saloon. As a result, shipboard life started to feature in the literature of the era. P.G. Wodehouse’s comic novel The Girl on the Boat perfectly captured the Zeitgeist, while Anita Loos’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is largely set on board a transatlantic liner, and helped to establish ocean crossings in her readers’ minds as the perfect environment for smart, modern young women on the make.
America and Hollywood beckoned to many British performers, entertainers and writers, keen to try their luck on the other side of the world and establish a career in the movies. Third-class cabin or tourist-class tickets were affordable for those living on frugal budgets, and it was a gamble that attracted many ambitious, creative women hoping to ‘make it big’ in the United States.
Elinor Glyn was a British-born novelist, and the younger sister of Lucy Duff-Gordon, who had survived the sinking of the Titanic. Elinor wrote romantic fiction to help support the finances of her husband, the spendthrift barrister Clayton. Elinor’s novels sold reasonably well, but it was her notorious book Three Weeks that caused a sensation on publication in 1907. The heroine was an exotic Balkan queen, wealthy and worldly, who successfully seduced a much younger British aristocrat. Although it was a work of f
iction, the book was rumoured to depict Elinor’s affair with Lord Alistair Innes-Ker, younger brother of the Duke of Roxburghe, who was sixteen years her junior. In one scene in the book, the heroine lounges seductively on a tiger-skin rug, and this baroque detail piqued the interest of lusty widower George Curzon, who sent Elinor the skin of a tiger he had shot while Viceroy of India. They embarked on an affair, which lasted eight years and was the talk of London. When Elinor’s husband obliged her by dying in 1915, she nurtured hopes that Lord Curzon might marry her once she was out of mourning. They seemed as close as ever, and the following year he asked her to supervise the refurbishment of an Elizabethan house he had acquired – Montacute, in Somerset. However, while she was working on the interior of the historic house alone in December 1916, she accidentally picked up a six-day-old copy of The Times. In the Announcements column, she read of the engagement of Lord Curzon to society beauty Grace Duggan. Elinor left Montacute, never to return, and condemned her former lover as ‘so faithless, and so vile’.
Having acquired a public reputation as a passionate and promiscuous woman, in defiance of the social norms of the era, she bitterly resented the humiliation now inflicted on her by Curzon. A doggerel poem of the time ran:
Would you like to sin
With Elinor Glyn
On a tiger skin?
Or would you prefer
To err with her
On some other fur?
Elinor decided to escape hateful London society at the earliest opportunity. She was now fifty-two, recently widowed, and the object of public notoriety and scorn. However, her writing had earned her a decent living: Three Weeks had sold 2 million copies and had been translated into a number of languages. Still smarting from the end of the affair with Curzon, and confined to Britain by wartime travel restrictions, she nevertheless continued to support herself writing magazine articles and fiction, building up a considerable portfolio.
