30th April 2010

A Chaplain’s Diary

 

Cruising for all

 

A half page spread

If the Times had written an obituary of my godfather they would probably have finished the half page spread with those lovely and understood words at the end “he never married”.  The possibility of the obituary in the Times wasn’t altogether impossible because he was one of   Sheffield’s Master Cutlers, an honorary title which was held for one year and entitled you to host the Cutler’s Feast in Sheffield City Hall when the great and good don their “dusted down” black ties and dinner jackets for the social event of the cutlery world’s year.  The title may have been honorific, but you still had a train engine named after you, ‘The Master Cutler’ which, even to this day, whisks you at some ungodly hour without stopping from the grimy Sheffield Midland station down to the delights of London.

 

Cruising

Instead he spent his not inconsiderable bachelor wealth going on cruises.  Three or four times a year he would lift down his old battered leather suitcase, put his large black Rover 90 car into the garage and head for summer climes.  Being a man of very few words at the best of times, this simply added to the mystique – he was someone who went on cruises – at a time when they were outside the experience of most ordinary people.  It was a lifestyle and holiday that was beyond the budget of most working class people, who could only gawp at the evocative and colourful brochures.  We read about cruises, we saw photographs of cruises and if we were very lucky we knew someone who had been on one – and the food! – and all that dressing up at night! – and the swimming pool on board! – and the little brown men who brought you tea and biscuits in bed! – it was all a different world and not one we inhabited – it was beyond our wildest dreams.

 

A dream come true

Move on twenty years if you will to the late 1970s.  The phone rang and it was our local Staffordshire Education Authority in the person of an Education Officer asking if I would consider acting as Ship’s Chaplain for two weeks on board the Educational Cruise ship SS Uganda – 1,200 schoolchildren from Staffordshire, 45 teachers and a handful of paying passengers plying around the Med?  I thought about the request for the whole of three seconds – yes, yes and yes!  It was a dream come true – a busman’s holiday on board what was then one of P and O’ s finest.  The large black-funnelled ship had done the East Africa run from 1952 to 1967 when she became an educational cruise ship before acting as a hospital ship during the Falklands War, then a troopship before being demolished in 1986.

 

A floating school

After the government had announced that it would cease trooping by sea SS Uganda had been converted to a floating school with dormitory accommodation for the children, classrooms, a lecture theatre and cinema, library and deck space for sports, together with cabin accommodation for the teachers and independent cabin passengers.  Students spent the days at sea having normal lessons, port lectures and deck sports, all co-ordinated by the ship’s headmaster, who was helped by a staff of matrons and masters-at-arms to help with seasickness and patrol the dormitories.  Days ashore were spent roaming the Mediterranean cities where excited children would be disgorged from the ship in their school uniforms to facilitate recognition. 

 

Busman’s holiday

We arrived as excited as it was possible to be.  Our cabin was slightly smaller than our rabbit hutch at home but it could have been Buckingham Palace for all we cared – we were cruising and that was what mattered.  A busman’s holiday on a boat.  As ship’s Chaplain I was responsible for a daily Holy Communion Service; the Captain’s Sunday Service, some teaching and for a reason, which was never fully explained to me, my main job was to produce the Cruise Pantomime – and that, was almost a fulltime job in itself.  But we were hooked and as we buffeted our way into the Grand Harbour at Valetta in Malta for our flight home, we were ready to be on call for any future trip should duty and country call.

 

Cruising and children

That call came a few years later from the most unlikely quarter.  I was working for the BBC and they wanted someone with children to report on the children’s facilities on board P & O’s luxury cruise ship SS Canberra.  I tried to look apprehensive and unwilling for the whole of 10 seconds.  A free 14-day cruise for the whole family – “Ok then I’ll go! but I shall want all expenses and time off in lieu!” I retorted.  The children thought they had died and gone to heaven.  Mickey Mouse was on board; there were coketail parties, (no that is not a typo – think about it) fancy dress parades, children’s teas and talent competitions.  In fact, the last thing they wanted to do was actually get off the ship when we visited a new destination.  Being “press” and knowing I was from the BBC meant we were treated like royalty; the press officer fawned over us, we had access to parts of the ship that were normally out of bounds and we were fed in the best dining room – the Pacific Room on the next table to Sir Jeffrey Stirling and his family who were also on board.  I got my “piece” with all the interviews I needed and some vox pop as well – a two-week free holiday for seven minutes of BBC broadcasting time, and the cue introductions said it all “If you’ve ever thought that cruising was only for the middleclass elderly then think again. Increasingly cruise ships are catering for the younger end of the market with their children.  So do cruising and children suit each other?  Robert Ellis went to find out …”

 

What I didn’t mention in my seven-minute report was that I caught some sort of stomach bug and was holed up in my cabin for three days, throwing up for England – with the world falling out of my bottom - but that’s another story!

 

A sister ship

It was therefore with some feigned reluctance that in 2007 I first agreed to accompany the Georgie Insull Singers on the their initial Cruise Tour on board the ship Island Star which used to sail out of Palma every Saturday. Since then it has been Ocean Village and this year its Thomson Destiny for a change.  For anyone living on the island these cruise ships sailing out of Palma are a godsend because there is no flying involved, just a taxi or bus ride down to the terminal and you can be in your 2-bedded cabin within twenty minutes, trying to decide which show to see that evening and whether you fancy a bit of style in the restaurant or the buffet cafeteria as its your first night.

 

A sense of excitement

Cruising is more than a villa holiday wandering down to the pool and enjoying the bougainvillaea. You can sense the excitement as the other folk, who have flown in from the UK, pour out of arrivals at the airport heading for the buses to whisk them away to the dream into which they have bought.  Then there are the gasps as the coach passes the Cathedral, the marina’s yachting millions and the cruise ships come into view.  Food is on offer 24 hours a day, the theatre, with its shows each evening, is enormous and the cabins, well don’t think rabbit hutches any more.  Bunks are history, queuing up for the heads on F deck below the water line is now something you read about in old detective novels – anyway who needs them when every cabin has its own en-suite facilities, television and hairdryer.

 

 

 

Excitement and expectancy

Saturday is “turn around day” and its usually about getting the last lot of unwilling passengers off the ship and onto flights home, whilst welcoming the next intake on board.  Just like the old educational cruise ship Uganda there is a uniform – but it’s a uniform feeling of excitement and expectancy.  There they sit on deck staring out at us in our apartment on shore whilst we similarly sit on our balconies staring back at them.  Stand at the end of our road in Palma and there they are – the cruise ships of the 21^st century – scuttling in and out all week long during the summer months.  Coketail parties and talent competitions are no longer my bag these days.  The university fees mount up and there is the mortgage to pay, but the world of cruising still calls and I shall be the first up the gang plank tomorrow morning to board Thomson Destiny when she docks in Palma. Casablanca, Tangiers and Gibraltar here we come and unfortunately no I shall not have a girl in every port waving as we dock…the wife is coming…… and, no, you certainly won’t need a dicky bow and dinner jacket – it is 2010 after all!

 

Father Robert Ellis is the Anglican Chaplain of Majorca

St Philip & St James Church

Nunez de Balboa, 6

Son Armadans

Palma 07014

e-mail: anglicanpalma@gmail.com  website: www.anglican-mallorca.org