Fifty years later, writing in August 2023, I can state with conviction that sea cruises are extremely fashionable amongst the travelling classes, while Janie and I are both relentlessly keen to avoid such holidays.
But in 1973, ahead of my eleventh birthday, my parents took me on this Mediterranean cruise ahead of me starting at Alleyn’s School for my secondary education.
Context
I suspect that dad bought our holiday at a bucket shop price in a travel agent on or near St John’s Hill Battersea (near his shop) and I suspect that it was sold to dad as a “holiday of a lifetime”.
In truth, we were probably lucky that it didn’t lead to an extreme shortening of all our lifetimes. Our ship, the Delphi, was part of a cobbled together fleet of ships owned by Costas Efthymiades, one of whose crowded tubs, the Heleanna, had caught fire and led to dozens of fatalities on my birthday two year’s earlier. “Hold the front page!” news even in the Evening Sentinel, although the typesetter, in their rush, seems to have jumbled the headline!
Heleanna Ferry Tragedy Sentinel 28 Aug 1971 28 Aug 1971, Sat Evening Sentinel (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England) Newspapers.com
While word of the above tragedy and the negligence cases that arose from it almost certainly evaded my father, I don’t suppose it had a positive impact on the market for that particular family of passenger ships. Hence, I’m just guessing here, the bucket shop price that I imagine would have attracted dad at that time.
Clarkson’s Cruises Telegraph January 1973 13 Jan 1973, Sat The Daily Telegraph (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com
Hold on…wait a minute…SW11 5RG – Lavender Hill – dad must have known some of those Clarkson’s people. I bet dad didn’t pay £73 per head.
Our tub, The Delphi, was probably not quite such a death trap as the ill-fated Heleanna. It had started its life primarily as a passenger ship, Ferdinand de Lesseps, rather than a cargo ship, so its conversion to a cruise ship was probably more appropriate and safer.
I do remember the days at sea feeling very crowded, albeit fun-packed for kids like me. The first two-and-a-half minutes of the cine film (see links below) looks even more crowded than the following photo.
Still, I have very happy memories of this holiday. We even cruised again as a family, one last time, a couple of year’s later. By that time, I think I was able to express my opinion: I loved seeing lots of different places on a holiday, but I did not love being on a cruise ship.
Itinerary
I didn’t start keeping a diary until 1974, so I have had to try and reconstruct the itinerary from the photographic/cinematographic materials (see links), from memory and from a vague sense of routing, geography and timings. There might be some inaccuracies:
- 18 August – Day Zero: Streatham -> Luton Airport -> Porto di Rimini;
- 19 & 20 August – Days One & Two: All At Sea;
- 21 August – Day Three: Athens;
- 22 August – Day Four: Mykonos:
- 23 August – Day Five: Rhodes;
- 24 August – Day Six: Cyprus:
- 25 August – Day Seven: Lebanon;
- 26 August – Day Eight: Jerusalem:
- 27 August – Day Nine: At Sea;
- 28 August – Day Ten: Crete;
- 29 August – Day Eleven: Katakolon;
- 30 August – Day Twelve: Corfu;
- 31 August – Day Thirteen: Dubrovnik:
- 1 September – Day Fourteen: Rimini -> home.
Historians might note that, within a year, all of the countries we visited, with the exception of Yugoslavia, had been involved in a war. Within a few weeks of our trip, Clarkson’s Cruise-Jet holidays were avoiding the Lebanon and Israel stops as a result of the Yom Kippur war, which made the term “Holy Land Cruise” somewhat of a misnomer.
Links
There is a movie of this holiday. Not one of dad’s best; he/we never got around to adding a commentary so the soundtrack is just music. Also there was some film spoilage which destroyed most of the film from Lebanon and all of the Israel/Crete footage is lost.
Dad’s main shtick for this holiday was Stereo (3D) still photography. Here is a link to the digitised stereos I have painstakingly made from the stereo transparencies.
You either need a viewing gadget or extremely strong eyes trained to be able to see stereo images in stereo.
The following link shows the stereo images in mono, as it were:
There are also a few prints from the single roll of film dad put into his ordinary camera. They are mostly pictures taken with flash in the evenings. Dad clearly forgot about this roll for some time – there is one picture from December of 1973 in the little batch of prints and they are all dated May 1974. Fifty years later, can you imagine anyone waiting nine months between snapping and seeing the results.
The expression “cobblers children” comes to mind. I expect dad took the camera with the half-finished roll to the shop with a view to doing something or other with it and then “rediscovered it” months later – possibly on more than one procrastinating occasion.
Day Zero: Streatham To Porto di Rimini via Luton Airport
Nowhere in the materials we have retained does it mention Rimini – I just firmly remember that we embarked and disembarked there. In my mind for much of my childhood that place was a major port from whence the Mediterranean opened up. Most likely it was a place where Clarkson’s and/or Efthymiades had done a good deal, because it doesn’t otherwise make sense to start and end a Greek islands/Holy Land cruise at Rimini.
I remember that Dad was very excited that we would be flying on a Lockheed TriStar, which was a relatively new plane at that time.
This holiday was my first, and to date only, experience of flying from and to Luton Airport. For much of the remainder of my childhood, I took pleasure in having been there, whenever the then ubiquitous Campari advert was shown:
I remember little about my journeys to and from Luton Airport, but paradise it wasn’t.