Tag Archives: sea voyage

Graffiti of historic interest in a church in Cambridgeshire

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LITLINGTON IS A SMALL village in the south of Cambridgeshire. Its parish church, St Catherine’s, dates from about 1150. Between then and the 15th century, it underwent many modifications. As in many old buildings, people have inscribed graffiti into the church’s stone walls. One stone in one of the south windows has some especially interesting graffiti.

The neatly carved inscription (in Latin), which refers to the great sailor Sir Francis Drake (c1540 – 1596) reads:

“Francis Drake, knight, about to set sail in the thirty-seventh year of the reign of the most august and serene princess Elizabeth, by the grace of God Queen of England, France and Ireland, defender of the faith. 1595. Always the same. The same always. John Sherman, April the tenth.”

The date refers to the year of Drake’s final voyage, from which he never returned (he was ‘buried’ at sea near Portobelo (now in Panama)). Drake had set out from Plymouth in September 1595 to carry out activities against the Spanish in Puerto Rico and other places in and around the Caribbean.

John Sherman lived in Litlington, as did his son-in-law, Robert Bownest, who died during Drake’s final voyage. In “A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely: Volume 8” (published in 1982), we can read:

“John Sherman died in 1599, having transferred his manor and other purchased lands in 1597 to his eldest son William”

John’s father, William, was a wealthy landowner in Litlington. What is not clear is whether this John Sherman wrote the inscription and if he participated in in Drake’s ill-fated expedition of 1595, as did his son-in-law.

Tiny details such as the inscription I have described help to make visits to places in England really interesting, and, in a way, help to give vitality to what are otherwise simply historical events.

Some old baggage discovered in an attic and a Roman toga

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WHEN MY FATHER sold our family home in Hampstead Garden Suburb in the early 1990s, he gave some of his unwanted possessions to some neighbours, who still live opposite. They stored much of it in their attic. Recently, a plumbing problem required them to empty the attic. Soon after this, we paid them a visit as we had not seen them since before the start of the covid19 pandemic and its associated lockdowns. Amongst the stuff they removed from their attic, they found a sturdy, brown leather suitcase in a well-worn canvas protective covering. The covering was stencilled with the letters ‘BSY’, these being my father’s initials.

The canvas case bears an oval label, which was provided by the “Holland-Afrikalijn”. It states that the suitcase was “For the cabin” and the name of the ship’s destination was “Southampton”. The ship carrying this case was the “Jagersfontein”, and the label bears the date “3/9/55”, There is another torn label, which was issued by South African Railways and what is left of it is “T Elizabeth”, which probably was “Port Elizabeth” before it was torn. This suggests that the case must have travelled to and/or from Port Elizabeth by rail. A third label, which is circular and was stuck on by the shipping company bears a large capital “Y”.

By September 1955, I was three years (and a few months) old. That year, my parents, who were born in South Africa, took me from London, where we lived, to be shown to family and friends in that country. I remember almost nothing of that visit apart from two things. One of them was getting my small foot caught in the groove of the tram-like track of a mobile dockside crane. The other thing was being afraid of the cacti in a greenhouse in a park in Port Elizabeth, the city where my father’s sister and his mother resided.

I know that we also visited King Williams Town, where many of my mother’s family lived. This visit was recorded in a 1955 issue of the town’s “Cape Mercury” newspaper. I discovered it while I was researching information about my mother’s grandmother, who lived in the town. The newspaper article, which is full of small inaccuracies, described me as being “… an adorable little son, aged three …”.

The Jagersfontein has an interesting history (http://ssmaritime.com/fontein-ships-1.htm). Built in Danzig (Germany) in 1939 and given another name, it was badly damaged during WW2, and it sunk. In 1947, she was recovered from the sea, towed to Holland, and refurbished by the Dutch. In September 1947, she began sailing again, as a passenger-cargo liner.

During the voyage from Southampton to South Africa, I crossed the Equator for the first time in my life. My mother told me that when the ship carrying us crossed the Line, a fancy-dress party was held for the children onboard. Some of the parents knew that this would happen and had come prepared with fancy-dress costumes for their children. However, my mother was unaware that this would happen. Being a creative person, she took some of the white bed linen from our cabin, and fashioned a Roman toga for me to wear at the party.

My mother died 44 years ago. Only a few days before we saw the suitcase at our old neighbours’ home, I was rummaging through some photographs that I had not seen since her death. It shows me in my rapidly fashioned bedsheet toga, standing between two larger children dressed up to depict Belisha beacons (that mark so-called ‘zebra’ pedestrian crossings). A small cloth with black and white stripes, representing a zebra crossing, separated the two beacons. Behind the three of us are some adults, whom I cannot recognise.

Empty, the leather case, which looks almost new, weighs 6.3 kilogrammes (13.9 lb). In 1955, passengers travelling by ships such as the Jagersfontein did not need to worry about the weight of their luggage. There were plenty of porters to carry it. We have been given the suitcase, which our daughter is keen to have because it is a family heirloom with sentimental value. Along with the photograph and the newspaper cutting, the case is a wonderful reminder of my first ever travel adventure.

Atlantic crossing

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I CAN ONLY FIND ONE photograph taken on board the SS France when we sailed from Southampton to New York City in September 1963. I do not know who took the picture and why I seem to have no photographs taken during the four months we spent in the USA that year. However, I do recall aspects of that voyage across the Atlantic, and I will share these with you.

FRANCE BLOG

My dear Uncle Felix gave me a present before we left London. It was a pocket-size set of tools (screwdrivers, a miniature saw, etc.) held together on a hinge. I thought that it might prove to be very useful if I became trapped in a cabin while the ship was sinking. Years before, my friend Charles S had recommended that I kept a small notebook and pencil in my pyjama pocket, just in case I was kidnapped – a prospect that used to fill me with fear. Charles’ idea was that, equipped with the writing material, one could send notes to rescuers in the (unlikely in my case) event of being kidnapped. I was, as you might be beginning to realise, a cautious little boy.

Soon after boarding the liner, which had been selected amongst others because my mother had learnt that the vessel had been fitted with the most advanced stabilisers, we looked around. When we reached the ship’s cinema, we poked our heads in and saw (on the screen) a parade of scantily dressed women parading round a pool. My mother pulled my sister and me out of the auditorium to protect us from seeing something she thought inappropriate for our tender young eyes (I was only eleven and my sister younger). The film being shown was “Scheherazade”. 

We set sail in the evening. Our first night was horrendous. As we crossed the Irish Sea and entered the Atlantic, the sea was exceedingly rough. My mother, my sister, and I became terribly sea-sick, despite the state-of-the-art stabilisers. None of my mother’s strong sea-sickness tablets had any effect on her. She insisted on summoning the ship’s doctor, a French man. She told him that she had read that there was an injection for countering seasickness, which had been recently developed, and she wanted that immediately. The doctor had not heard of this wonder cure. However, my mother, a forceful personality at the best of times, insisted on having it. She was not taking ‘no’ or even ‘non’ as an answer. I am sure that the doctor was beginning to regret having come to her aid. In the end, he gave in, and gave her an injection. It may have only been saline, but my mother was happier although no less seasick.

My father was the only member of our family who felt well enough to face lunch in the ship’s dining room. When he arrived there, he was one of a small handful of passengers who felt well enough to have an appetite. After that first night, we sailed through calm waters for four gloriously sunlit days.

During the day, my parents lazed on sun-loungers on a deck. My father is a keen amateur art historian. In his spare time, he read the academic journals, like the Burlington Magazine and the Art Bulletin, which professional art historians read and in which they published learned articles. He might well have been reading one of these, when he turned his head and noticed that a man on the lounger next to his was reading an art historical monograph, which he had read recently. He began speaking to his neighbour. Dad was very excited to discover that he was lounging next to the art historian Leopold Ettlinger (1913-1989), a specialist in the art of the Italian renaissance, the period which fascinated my father most. Leopold and his then wife, Helen, were on their way to the USA to take up a temporary position in an American university, as was my father. My parents struck up a friendship with the Ettlingers, who came to stay with us in Chicago on the weekend immediately following the assassination of President JF Kennedy.

I cannot remember what my sister did during the days we spent on board, but I recall what I did. Far from soaking up the sun, I spent most of the daylight hours in darkness, in the ship’s comfortable cinema. Every day, a different film was screened, several times each day. Except at mealtimes, I watched the same film again and again each day. Two of these films, both filmed in black and white, stick in my mind although I have long forgotten their titles.

One of them, which might have had a title like “The Siege of Altona” concerned a German (maybe a Nazi), who had locked himself inside a flat in the Hamburg suburb of Altona. It was a very moving psychological drama, something that my mother might not have thought suitable for her eleven-year-old son.

The other film was a French comedy. I have not the slightest memory of its title. It concerned two thieves, who robbed locked collection boxes in churches.  Their method was ingenious even if not particularly efficient. The thieves first sucked thin circular toffees attached to long threads. After sucking one, ta toffee was lowered through the coin slot until it touched the coins. When the sweet touched a coin, the latter would stick to the toffee. Then using the thread, the coin and toffee where carefully removed from the collection box. The film worked towards it climax when the thieves conceived an improved method. They arrived in a church with a vacuum cleaner. Attached to its hose was a long thin plastic piece that fitted into the slots on the collection boxes. The thieves inserted this nozzle, turned on the machine, and were able to suck all the coins from a box. However, this discovery coincided with greater police in the activities of this duo. I cannot remember how the film finished, but the two crooks did not come out well in the end. I would love to see this film again. So, if any of you, dear readers, have any idea of its title, please do let me know.

We docked at a quay on the west side of Mahattan. Soon after that, we visited our old friends, the late Cyril and Elaine Sofer, in their holiday home on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Cyril had been a friend of my father’s since they were both young in Cape Town. Elaine outlived him. She was, incidentally, the first person to make a Bloody Mary for me (not in 1963, but much later, I hasten to add). Leopold Ettlinger, Cyril and Elaine Sofer, and my mother are no more, nor is the SS France. It made its last voyage in 2008, when it docked at the breakers’ yards in Alang (Gujarat, India), where it was broken up for scrap.