Thanks to John Sayers for these insights into the long voyage from Sydney to England.
I can’t resist a group of photographic images related to my collecting passion of Ocean Liners. So, when I saw a combination of a dozen postcard and photograph images taken on board the SS Euripides of the Aberdeen Line as she sailed from Australia to England in 1921, I couldn’t resist. My wallet came out and money flowed to the happy dealer at the speed of light (well, they weren’t very expensive!)
There are six photographs and six postcards, with no attribution to any photographer. Several have penciled captions which may not have been made by the original traveler. One gets that impression when a caption has a question mark after it. Figures 1 and 2 carry the caption of “Crossing the Line?” which makes me think that it may be a dealer’s guess rather than reality. Clever costumes, but were they instead for an onboard costume party, which was a normal feature of almost any voyage?
The pirate’s hat in the background to Figure 2, and the elaborate elephant outfit in Figure 1, suggest that it was an event planned by the ship’s crew and carried out by them as the ship ‘Crossed the Line’ i.e. crossed the Equator from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere. This ceremony, featuring King Neptune, occurred as a matter of tradition and continues to this day. These costumes could have been used many times by the ship, for many ceremonies.
One of the stops on the route to England would have been in Durban, South Africa and this is probably where the photo in Figure #3 was taken. Photos 4, 5, and 6 were all taken ‘at sea’, including the jaunty First Engineer in #6.
Figures 7 and 8, postcards picturing the departure, are wonderful at capturing the emotions of the moment. You can almost watch the streamers float to the dock and hear the good wishes shouted by those on shore to those standing on the deck of the S.S. Euripides. This was an important event, considering the distance to be covered and the long time to be spent and the risks faced at sea.
The men pictured in postcards 9 and 10 are crew, but why would one want photos of groups of the crew? One’s Room Steward perhaps, and one’s Dining Room Steward(s), but why the entire lot of them?
Of course, Sydney to England by sea, with stops at several ports en route, would be a long voyage and a gregarious young man such as the one in Figure 12 would get to know many people. Note that there were no women in the crew. Men only at this stage of passenger shipping.
One of the bridges to get to know fellow passengers was mealtime and the grouping around the table in Figure 11 gives us a feeling for the moments when the ice was broken. Welcome Dinners, Gala Dinners, and other dining platforms all helped to pass the time. And of course, the Farewell Dinner, when table mates signed each other’s menus and vowed to keep in touch, brought down the curtain on the voyage.
Unfortunately, we do not know the name of the gentleman who made this voyage, but we do have a probable photograph of him on the postcard in Figure 12.
At the time of this note, the voyage was 96 years ago. The dashing young man, now no longer with us, who had perhaps already made his fortune in Australia, was heading to England to purchase an enormous country estate – or a Town House in London – or to claim an inheritance – or??? We do not know, and we will never know, but at least we have been able to enjoy part of his journey to England, almost one hundred years later!
We are grateful to John Sayers for this intriguing post, which ideally demonstrates the way in which ephemera can provide pieces of the jigsaw of social history.
One has to wonder who gave the captain this charming gift. Was it the shipping line itself, or a frequent passenger who always tried to sail with Cüppers? Captains had the power of medieval kings on board their ship. No doubt if you could ingratiate yourself with the captain, you would be given whatever you wanted. But what ship was he on when he received this presentation? Pictured is a fascinating piece of ephemera – a cigar case presented to Captain Cüppers of the North German Lloyd line on the occasion of his 100th voyage. It appears to be made of Papier Mache shaped into the form of a convenient-sized cigar case that would fit easily into a pocket of the Captain’s uniform. On one side is the inscription shown here, and on the other side is the name and the crest of the North German Lloyd shipping line. The lettering is very professional, so it may have been made and presented on shore prior to the voyage.
Postcards give us the answer. A colour postcard picturing Cüppers is undated, but the undivided back places its age near the beginning of the career of the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse which made her Maiden Voyage in 1897 and captured the Blue Riband that year. Was this Cüppers ship? Another card showing Captain Cüppers has a divided back, pictures the newer Kaiser Wilhelm II, is postally used, and the year ‘1908’ can be discerned from the postmark. We hit the proverbial Jackpot! The date matches our cigar case.
Was the Kaiser Wilhelm II a prominent ship, or just an ‘old tub’? Not just an ‘old tub’. When you name your ship after the Kaiser, it has to be the best. The Kaiser Wilhelm II made her Maiden Voyage in 1903, and in June 1906 she captured the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing of the North Atlantic. But Captain Cüppers already had a long-standing record as a captain. In an article in The Illustrated American of March 8, 1895, Captain Cüppers was pictured and included in an article profiling important German ship captains.
We can’t find what became of the Captain, but six years later the Kaiser Wilhelm II was interned in New York on the outbreak of the First War and if he were still its captain, Cüppers would have been detained in America and been subsumed into American history.
This ephemera and a large number of other Ocean Liner items is contained in The Sayers Collection in the John Johnson Collection at the Bodleian Library. A vast quantity of other ocean liner ephemera capturing social, shipping, historical, and commercial information in The Sayers Collection, will continue to migrate across the Atlantic to the John Johnson Collection after lockdown!
We are grateful to John for sending guest posts about the treasures of the Sayers Collection of Ocean Liner Ephemera, now being transferred to the Bodleian Libraries where it forms one of the named collections added to the John Johnson Collection.
I already had in my Ocean Liner collection a postcard of the Canadian Pacific Pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition (Figure 1) drawn by an artist whose signature is illegible. Recently, I found a booklet describing the Pavilion, with a similar cover image as the postcard, drawn by P. A. Staynes. But it also had a centrefold drawing of the beautiful interior of the Pavilion (Figure 2). Since it was a promotional item, it also carried CP advertising, including a captivating page promoting their services to the Far East (Figure 3). This ephemera is a realm beyond postcards.
So much for the Ocean Liner element. But to appreciate the significance of the Exhibition and whether CP was relatively prominent, one has to go beyond this single building at the Exhibition to look at the larger aspect of the Fair itself. At this time the British Empire of Queen Victoria’s era was relatively intact. There were rumblings of a thirst for independence in the colonies, notably Gandhi’s activities in India, but the sun hadn’t yet set on the British Empire.The Exhibition was officially opened on April 23, 1924 so the booklet would have been harvested by an Empire Exhibition visitor who was among the eventual 27 million visitors to this largest-ever event of its type to this date.
This was a landmark event, but it also flags the high commercial status of the Canadian Pacific organization.
Broadening the focus from Ocean Liner companies to the nature and extent of the Fair itself, and having come to appreciate the significance of the event, one can now place the Canadian Pacific Ocean Liner material’s British Empire Exhibition component in its proper context within the Sayers Collection.
This material, and a significant amount of other Canadian Pacific shipping ephemera such as Passenger Lists, Brochures, Menus and Cruise Activities, is contained in The Sayers Collection in the John Johnson Collection at the Bodleian Library. A vast quantity of other ocean liner ephemera capturing social, shipping, historical, and commercial information in The Sayers Collection, continues to migrate across the Atlantic to the John Johnson Collection.
We are delighted to have another post from John relating to his wonderful donation of the Sayers Collection of Ocean Liner Ephemera. This one relates to a fascinating archive within the collection.
It’s exciting to find new ephemera for your collection. It’s even more exciting when you find two or more items. It’s most exciting when you find an entire archive that helps to put together all those individual pieces of the puzzle.
An archive of material gives you more background to the cards and ephemera, but it can also tell you something about the people who were part of the experience. Let’s be more specific. Suppose that you found a cache of material from a house clearance when you were shopping at the annual Madison-Bouckville Antique Week in New York State in August.
In this case, it was ephemera from a 1930 cruise on the Canadian Pacific liner Duchess of Bedford. The material had come from a house in Rochester, NY, and the vendor was offering the entire pile of ‘stuff ‘ for sale en bloc. If he hadn’t specialized in house clearances, he would probably have broken up the material and packaged and sold the items separately or in small groups.
There were De Muth postcards (Figures 1,2), ship’s daily newsletters, menus, farewell greeting cards, letters and envelopes, and a number of other items of ephemera, which all packaged separately would have commanded a total price considerably higher than what I paid for the entire lot. What would have been worse is that dispersing those components to separate buyers would have destroyed many things that this collection tells us about cruising in 1930, and the people who took those cruises.
Farewells
You probably have a number of friends who have taken cruises to exotic destinations. That’s today. In 1930, cruising was not so common, and to take a cruise was to make a statement about your financial health and your sophistication. Your friends would have been so impressed that they would have mailed Bon Voyage greetings to you, such as the three examples pictured (Figures 3-5) with distinctly different designs.
The cards are delightful and the artwork is sweet. But if the archive had been broken up, you would have been competing with collectors of greeting cards. A particularly scarce trophy is probably the Welcome Home card in Figure 6. Nice artwork – and how many people would send a card to welcome someone home when they could telephone them or maybe even see them on the street in town.
It’s not only the greeting cards that would have been a crossover collectible. Some people out there collect telegrams and their attractive artwork. So to buy the envelope in Figure 7, and the message inside, you might have had to compete with a collector of telegrams.
All this shows that the couple taking the cruise had a number of sophisticated friends who were impressed enough by the occasion to buy and mail some very nice greeting cards, and even to send a telegram.
We can also guess that the husband was a stamp or cover collector. One of
their friends sent the letter and cover in Figure 8 with the comment, “We hope you are enjoying your trip, thought you would like an air mail letter for a remembrance of your trip.” Ironically, it appears that the letter did not get to Curacao in time, and it was returned back to the sender in Rochester! Nice stamps.
The Ship
The Duchess of Bedford went into service in 1928, so in 1930 she was a very modern ship by the standards of the day. At some 20,000 tons she was not large, but comparable in size to the Cunard vessels that were her competition. She is pictured on a Real Photo card (Figure 9), printed in England, but with no indication of the publisher.
Letters En Route
Several letters were sent to the couple while they were on their cruise. There is an undercurrent of envy in some of the letters (which underscores just how prestigious a trip such as this would have been) including one that includes “Laura is now down the cellar putting some coal in the furnace and you lucky sons of guns are down in Bermuda, sweating I suppose. It was 4 above zero here yesterday morning and to-day it is raining.”
Clearly the travelers sent out some of the De Muth postcards, because one of the letters they received notes, “Received your card from Port de France. Glad to know you are having such a wonderful time.” The De Muth postcards carry strong and unconventional travel images.
Many of the comments emphasize the winter. “Emma & Frank, Bill & I were on the toboggan last night, it sure was great. Bill got rammed in the rear end (I mean his car) by a bus.” Sounds like Northern New York State roads were in their usual treacherous winter condition!
On-board Ephemera
This trip was played out in the environment which followed Black Monday on Wall Street and the accompanying stock market crash and financial meltdown. Had our travellers prepaid their trip before the meltdown took place? Would they be coming back to a personal financial disaster? We can’t tell from this material, but we can get a feel for the world financial crisis which must have cast a cloud over their vacation. One issue of the ship’s daily newspaper carries the story that “Several hours before he was to set sail for Europe, Herbert Martin, wealthy business man, fell or jumped to his death from his apartment window to Park Avenue, nine floors below.” Maybe from a bad day on the stock market?
On another day, we read that “William Fox and all other officers and directors of the Fox Film Corporation and Fox Theatres Corporation have offered to resign in an effort to avert the threatened receivership; but the creditors declined to accept their conditional offer.”
Yet another issue of the daily Canadian Pacific Wireless News includes the report that “The Local Government of Chicago is in financial distress and has failed in an attempt to float bond issues. It is feared the schools will have to close.” Imagine being on a month-long cruise with this – and other financial distress stories – being part of every day’s news.
Getting Home
We have seen the Welcome Home card. Other letters offer to pick the couple up at the train station if they can advise of their timing. Clearly they had a strong support group of friends.
One final thrill from an archive such as this is that it is a potential genealogical gold mine. There are names – lots of names – and communications from all these people in Rochester, New York. If I had only the De Muth postcards, or just a batch of daily ship’s newspapers, or merely a collection of menus, there would be only one window on this trip. This group has more historical color than a stained glass window. So even if you collect only one type of ephemera, when you can find a comprehensive archive like this – go for it!
John G. Sayers has completed 9 years on the Board of The Ephemera Society of America, and 7 years on the Council of the British Ephemera Society. He has been a keen collector for many years, and can be reached at jasayers@saybuck.com.All images are from the Sayers Collection at the Johnson Collection.
Not only is John Sayers giving his collection to the Bodleian Library, but each tranche of his donation is accompanied by articles on specific types of ephemera or individual items. His notes on menus attached to postcards provide fascinating insights into a little-known genre of ephemera.
It is relatively easy to find menu postcards from shipping lines – a brilliant marketing concept in which the traveler is given a menu and on the back is the address side of a postcard. On ships, these were generally for the lower classes of passengers.
If you travelled on the Baltic of the White Star Line on August 22, 1910 (PM80A) your Second Class Dinner Menu would offer you the challenge of making decisions regarding Kidney Soup; Hake with Parsley Sauce; Beefsteak Pie; or Roast Mutton. To the collector with a developed sense of culinary delights, the offerings in this menu may not be very impressive. No caviar. No smoked salmon. No lobster. No elegant pâté. And no hint of foie gras.
Those highlights certainly appeared on menus of those travelling in First (a.k.a. Saloon or Cabin) Class. However, to put the situation into context, if you were migrating to North America from crop failures in Europe, potato famine in Ireland, or subsistence living in a large British city, these menus would seem like a king’s feast.
The back of this card carries the announcement that “The Largest Steamers in the World” are being built, and refers specifically to Olympic and Titanic “Each 45,000 tons”. Yes there was room for a brief message, but the primary objective was to promote the line and its services, while presenting the menu for the meal.
For several years I was attracted at postcard shows by beautiful artist-drawn cards of the North German Lloyd shipping line (PM80B) and the Red Star Line, with the name of a ship and a date in the early 1900s. Being an ocean liner collector I bought them, but couldn’t solve the puzzle of why the shipping line would have put a date on them. The name of the ship – yes. The date that the card was obtained – no, why would they do that?
The problem was solved after many years when my wife, Judith, and I found three postcards with menus attached below them at a vintage paper display at the vast antiques fair in Brimfield, Massachusetts. These were from the Red Star Line, a creator of some beautiful cards a century ago. At the top – a detachable postcard. Below – the menu for a meal on a particular date on board the ship.
With this format, the two worlds came together. Since then we have found more menu/postcard combinations of the Red Star Line, plus White Star, Cunard, North German Lloyd, NYK, and some minor lines. These are not common. When one has found only some 70 examples in 40 years of collecting, while searching at fairs in Canada, the U.S.A. and the U.K., it is reasonable to say that they are scarce
For the shipping collector, the synergies are blatantly obvious. But why collect these as a postcard collector? First, they represent the way that the postcards first appeared – attached to a menu. Second, they establish the place where the postcards were acquired – a dining room on a particular date on a specific ship. How many postcards (artist-drawn, shipping, or otherwise) provide this type of provenance unless they have been posted and have a clear cancellation?
Finally, and in many ways the most important feature, the combination shows that the postcard alone is in some cases missing a significant part of the artwork’s image. The most extreme example is a 1920 Xmas Dinner card and menu of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company (PM80C).
When you look at the illustration, you can see that having the postcard alone would tell only part of the artist’s story. The beautiful garden would be cut off, the lower Geisha girl would be chopped in half, and the balance of the picture – the entire effect of the garden trailing into the shipping line logo – would be missing. Who would want an artist-drawn card with a piece of the artwork missing?
For the ephemera enthusiast, these have the delight of carrying the menu for a meal on board ship, with the specificity of the date and the name of the ship, and in many instances excellent artwork, signed in many cases by the artist such as Cassiers working for the Red Star Line and Tivo for the North German Lloyd.
Of course, you wouldn’t know that you were missing part of the image. If you weren’t alerted before you read this report, you now know to scrutinize postcards for: (i) the name of the ship and a date printed in black; (ii) an image that seems to have been cut off (i.e. it looks like it might bleed beyond the lower edge of the card); and (iii) the lower edge of the card is not clean-cut (these cards were generally perforated or otherwise scored, and detaching them would not have left a clean edge). You may also find that the card is smaller than the normal card size, where the perforations did not hit the right place on the initial sheet.
We haven’t found many of these at postcard shows. Our experience shows that you are much more likely to find them at an ephemera fair, categorized under ‘Menus’. It makes some sense, because a postcard dealer offers postcard collections, generally coming from an estate. His or her protective sleeves and display boxes are designed for the dimensions of postcards, and these postcard/menu combinations do not fit into a conventional postcard display.
A first-cousin, as it were, to these postcard/menu combinations is a full-page menu designed so that it can be folded in three panels with space on the back for an addressee on one panel, and room for a brief letter on the other panels. This format is represented in the President Jackson and President Wilson examples in PM 78 and PM79. There are other examples elsewhere in the Collection, notably in the menus of the NYK Line of Japan, contained in that section.
This style of menu and message combination appears to be confined to the Pacific Ocean passenger liner fleets of both Japan and the United States. As with the postcard variety, the objectives of the shipping line were to facilitate the passenger sending messages about his or her trip, to give those passengers an activity for their spare time during the long voyage, and most importantly to promote the shipping line and whet the recipients’ appetites for ocean travel.
These postcard and letter card variants might not appeal to a narrowly-focused postcard collector. That postcard collector would face the prospect of having to acquire A4 or 8 ½ x 11-inch acid-free sleeves and put these trophies in a separate 3-ring binder as Menu Cards, or merge them in the same type of sleeve in the body of a Menu collection. From personal experience, postcard/menu combinations in a dedicated binder could be fairly sparse for the first 20 or so years!
We are delighted to announce a major donation of Ocean Liner ephemera: the Sayers Collection. To launch it, we interviewed the collector & donor: John Sayers, seen here with his very supportive wife, Judith, on the roof terrace of the Weston Library.
What sparked your interest in ocean liners and, in particular, the ephemera relating to them?
A combination of personal recollection and a lifelong interest in history. The personal recollection dates back to travelling with my parents on the RMS Queen Elizabeth; the interest was sharpened by my history major in university and in particular a fascination with both design and social history.
How (and with what items) did your collection begin?
I began with enamel souvenir lapel pins, like the one that I brought back to Canada in 1954 as an RMS Queen Elizabeth souvenir gift for my late aunt Beth (you know, the maiden aunt who has everything!). That interest expanded to other three-dimensional objects with enamelling. That focus was then enlarged by the first foray into ephemera, to reminisce about meals on board [Figure #1], baggage labels [Figure #2], and all the other printed reminders of life on a great ship. However, I discovered such a broad information landscape in ephemera that I eventually divested my three-dimensional objects to become completely immersed in ephemera.
What did you aim to achieve through the collection? Has that aim changed?
In terms of ephemera, the objective was to provide a record of what took place on board a ship; what happened beforehand to plan the trip; and any effects afterward where there is a relevant follow-up experience.
The change of the aim occurred when I discovered that there was a further enlargement to my scope. The scope had originally been established as North Atlantic steamships. However, I came to realize that those that plied the South Atlantic were also interesting and relevant. Then I discovered Pacific Ocean shipping.
Part of the attraction was the beautiful artwork on the Japanese NYK Line ephemera [Figure #3], and the equally attractive designs produced by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company [Figure #4] and the Dollar Line. I believe that the way to describe this phenomenon is ‘topic creep’.
How has the collection evolved?
As well as the directions I have already mentioned, the collection has gained a greater reflection of social history and business elements. As with most collections that have evolved over 40+ years, there has been an increasing appreciation of the nuances.
For example, as well as First War Hospital Ships that served during the campaign in the Eastern Mediterranean, there was a Cunard tour in 1935 to Gallipoli, advertised in a Cunard promotional booklet, to revisit the terrain and the landmarks of the First War [Figure #5]. I would guess that the primary participants in the tour would have been the next of kin of those that did not come back alive, but one speculates on the motivations of those who sailed in 1936 on that Cunarder. A similar event occurred in 1936 with the pilgrimage of over 5,000 people from Canada to attend the unveiling of the Vimy Memorial.
Are you still collecting?
Yes. Passionately. I have described my collection as a pointillist painting, that continues to need more ‘dots’ to add to the clarity of the image.
What are your favourite items?
Shipping ephemera with a tinge of social or design elements. For example, I recently acquired a Real Photo postcard captioned “On Board SS Grantully Castle en route to Capetown, 27.6.14” [Fig #6]. The beginning of the First War was only two months away. The young children pictured in the deck scene would not have been directly affected, but their fathers, if not already in the military, would certainly soon have been.
What insights into social history does this material offer?
The material in the Sayers Collection touches upon issues such as; class differences; matters relating to the status of women; the struggles of immigrants; the habit of smoking; the treatment of children; racial stereotypes; and troopship life in both World Wars.
Specifically, the frustrations of women and the tinder for the sparks for the women’s rights movement are quite evident in some material. For example, a 1930s postcard image of a Smoking Room among the 100 or so of them in my collection was later displaced by an identical image on a card written by a woman bemoaning the fact that she is not allowed into this men’s domain.
What inspired you to donate your collection to the John Johnson Collection in the Bodleian Library?
We have been supporters of the John Johnson Collection for over a decade and during that time we have come to appreciate the professionalism applied to the Collection and their broad appreciation of ephemera. An emotional reason is my British parentage and the massive role that Britain has played in global shipbuilding and shipping operations over the years.
The Sayers Collection reflects the role of Britain as a major influence in global shipping operations, whether it be as the builder of Canadian Pacific’s 1930s premier liner, the RMS Empress of Britain [Figure #7]; as the operator of ships such as Cunard’s RMS Berengaria, originally the German liner Imperator, seized as war reparations after the First War [Figure #8]; or as a major global competitor to shipping companies of several other nations (whose ephemera is also well represented in the Collection for purposes of comparison).
This collection will add extensively to the ocean liner material collected by John Johnson, to provide many more opportunities for study and research.
How do you hope that future users/scholars will explore your collection?
For the design, business, history, or social history scholar, whatever their thesis, there is a good possibility that material in the collection will provide a valuable resource. Alternatively, the material may trigger a line of study for those seeking a fresh avenue to pursue.
There are opportunities for study and research on many planes. As a Chartered Accountant, I can appreciate the opportunities to study the various business aspects of the industry, ranging from advertising and promotion (an elaborate 1876 Cunard commemorative book appears to represent one of the earliest examples of modern-day ‘co-operative advertising’) [Figure #9], to the costs of menu offerings over many decades. In regard to the latter, did costs increase using constant dollars, and did they reflect the same percentage of passage charges? What culinary offerings have been added and deleted over the years? Why?
It would be useful if at some stage all the Passenger Lists could be digitized and made searchable. As well as the Cunard ones already delivered to Oxford, there are more to follow from other lines. The end result would be a useful database for genealogists, students of patterns of military deployment, celebrity hunters (at one time they all had to travel by sea!), industrialists, and the frequency of the use of servants, to name a few topics.
What advice would you give people starting a collection today?
Collect something that has meaning for you. And make sure that you collect ephemera! The great delight of ephemera is that the universe is not defined, so (unlike postage stamps or cigarette cards, for example) you never know what you are going to find that illuminates your knowledge or memories of a particular topic. When a collector describes an acquisition as something that ‘speaks to me’ he or she is describing the impact that the piece has upon their memories or their knowledge. I never purchase anything on line. I have to see it. That means going to postcard and ephemera fairs, which my wife, Judith, and I enjoy immensely.
Don’t feel that every specimen has to be many years old. All ephemera was new once! I like the 1920s and 1930s, and objects of that period such as menus [Figure #10] do not have to cost a fortune, while often providing fascinating cover artwork and food choices inside. Whether your interest is fashion, food, design, autos, ships, planes, social history – or even your local city or town – there is material out there to stimulate your interest.