It’s been 180 years, people! That’s almost three lifetimes .. in current average life spans, that is. Or about 7-8 generations ago. Do you know what your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents did for leisure? Well, maybe you should look into it. There’s at least a statistical chance they were some of the few who took to the high seas for a newfangled leisure activity that began 180 years ago to this day, August 15th, 2023!
It's Cruising, folks! In case the subject of this blog hasn’t already tipped you off. I’m talking about cruising as a commercial leisure activity. In fact that’s all I ever do in this space, specifically about the very long, and largely unknown history of the phenomenon. That history has reached a milestone today; 180 years, and I thought I would do something slightly different to commemorate the occasion. So far in this blog I have been zooming in on individual events or developments and keeping a tight focus on specific aspects or tales of early cruise history, but what if we 'zoomed out' and took in the big picture... filled the gaps between stories with historic context and background, so to speak, to create a proper chronicle of the early history of cruising. Surely that would provide a different kind of appreciation for the long, meandering ‘itinerary’ of cruise history (and keep me busy for many more installments).
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Readers of this blog will know that (I believe) the first commercial leisure cruise sailing took place on a Tuesday – Tuesday, 15. August 1843 to be exact – on the P&O Royal Mail Steamer Tagus out of Southampton. If you don't know that, I can only suggest you double back and read Lost Origin in this blog. That sailing is a fairly uncontested fact, though some sources are a year off or so, but dissent can arise when you start discussing the definition of a ‘commercial leisure cruise’.
The Francesco Excursion
Yes, I am aware of the three-month pleasure cruise of the Sicilian-flagged paddle steamer Francesco I in June of 1833 complete with shore excursions, onboard entertainment and the works but the guests were such a rarified, exalted scraping of European high society, that it might as well have been by private invite only. Mere money would not have bought your way onboard if you did not have the right social standing, titled lineage or color blood to boot, and so I don’t consider this or any other ‘exclusive outings’ like it, hosted by / for elites and aristocracy to be part of the quest for the origin of cruising that I am currently on. I went looking for the earliest signs of popular commercial cruising, defined as group travel by sea for no other purpose than exploration and leisure, on voyages marketed and sold as such in the free market, taking place on passenger vessels (mail steamers, ocean liners, cargo ships etc.) and visiting a number of foreign destinations. And thus, we land on that Tuesday, when P&O dispatched a dozen pioneering leisure travelers, with tickets bought with physical currency, rather than social, on the Tagus for a 2-month Mediterranean cruise. That is my reasoning for calling today, August 15, 2023, the 180th anniversary of the popular commercial cruise phenomenon.
A Journey without a Name
A phenomenon is ‘a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in question’ (Oxford Dictionary) and that’s exactly what ‘cruising’ was by the middle of the 19th century. Not only was the cause in question, in as far as the broader public could even wrap their heads around the appeal of travelling abroad ‘just because’, but there also was no fully realized, physical format in which to do so. It was barely more than a fluffy notion… nay, an abstract idea of travelling for self-interest, pursuing recreation / discovery / leisure, entertained exclusively by the wealthy upper class. In fact, the idea was so abstract, it didn’t even have a name. That’s right; Victorians did not ‘go on a cruise’ or talk about ‘cruising’ at all. The leisure activity we now designate as a ‘cruise’ was not even known by that word for at least the first 50 years of its existence. The word ‘cruise’ is derived from the Dutch ‘kruisen’ meaning ‘to cross, sail to and fro’, first appearing in the mid-1600’s and later evolving to mean ‘a voyage taken in courses’ around early-1700, but references to cruise / cruising in the sense of ‘voyages taken by tourists on ships’ do not start to crop up in writing until around 1900. In the 19th century leisure travel by ship was referred to as journeys, voyages, excursions, expeditions or similar – words that did imply that there was more going on than a simple passage by sea but stopped short of actually defining the concept by encompassing the onboard experience on par with the destinations. There are some deeper semantic consequences to this but we can get to those later when ‘cruise’ becomes a household word. For now, just know that it’s me using the term ‘cruising’ retrospectively, not the leisure travelers of the 1800’s.
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Industrial Origins
The emergence of cruising is a direct consequence of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain. Without the Industrial Revolution we would not have developed the steam engines which enabled ships to keep the regular schedules needed to plan out leisure travel. Or enabled steam trains to run far and wide on schedules, thereby greatly boosting the personal mobility of the traveling public. Without the Industrial Revolution, the greater public would not have experienced such an increase in spending power and leisure time that they suddenly needed to find something to do with. Without the Industrial Revolution they would not even have been exposed to the wider world in a way that made them discover and appreciate travel for leisure. Seaside holidays and day-trips by steam train within Great Britain became enormously popular with the general public, introducing many who had never even left their place of birth to the joys of travel and discovery and creating a genuine mass movement of tourism. Britons were on the move, to relax, to discover and to have some fun, Victorian-style!
And while the Britons were enjoying themselves at the seaside many would board that other new wonder of mechanical transportation, steam ship paddle boats, for a scenic cruise along the coast or up England's rivers, introducing them to sea travel and showing them glimpses of a much further horizon that held even more wonder and discovery. These brief escapes from the cities, that were usually crowded, dirty, loud and unhealthy, afforded the lower classes af feeling of freedom, self-determinism and joy and the upper classes more opportunities to chase new pleasures and experiences. Britons became far more mobile and more leisure-oriented and once they had had a taste of what their own country offered, the ones with the means to travel began to look further afield, wondering what the rest of the world held in store. And for Britons looking further afield meant looking across the ocean.
The Seafaring Tribe
As for why Britain of all places became the birth place of cruising… well, it was the cradle of the industrial revolution and had a long history of maritime and commercial dominance of the seas and as soon as the industrial revolution created the conditions for it, people like Thomas Cook stepped in and basically invented ‘mass tourism’ using the logistical and technological framework established to bring sightseeing to the masses … or rather, take the masses sightseeing. But I would argue there is another, even simpler reason underlying it all. Britons were actually uniquely conditioned to be natural-born cruise guests by geography and empire. For an island nation in a world before aviation, any voyage abroad would naturally entail a sea voyage, whether for business or leisure. Thus, the prospect of going to sea on holiday was never as extraordinary or transgressive to Britons as it was to other landlocked nationalities, at least not for the ones who could afford travel abroad. It was just the way you travelled, no matter your destination or purpose. It took less conditioning of the British national psyche to become a seafaring tribe of holidaymakers than it did of a Central-European psyche, accustomed to going anywhere by land and perhaps somewhat intimidated by the sea. And while the Great Britain was small, the British Empire was huge!
The Imperial Century
At this point Britain was in the middle of its ‘Imperial Century’ (1815 – 1914), building to the peak of British imperial might by adding around 26 million km2 / 10 million sq mi of territory and roughly 400 million people to the empire. The countless resulting dominions, colonies, protectorates and territories around the world (and the maritime infrastructure that connected them) gave the Britons a global world view and ample and enticing opportunities to explore their new domains within the safety and comfort of ‘Pax Britannica’. Their collective world view spanned from Newfoundland to New Zealand, from Honduras to Hongkong and everywhere in-between and was fed by news, stories and impressions filtered back to Old Blighty by British media and travelers, in many cases eliciting curiosity and sparking wanderlust for other corners of the Empire – encouraged wholeheartedly (and even subsidized) by the British government in an attempt to encourage Britons to regard the world as ‘their domain’. Add to that the fact the most of the domains in the Southern hemisphere offered much better weather than Old Blighty and you have yourself an additional incentive to go and explore the Empire.
The Grand Inspiration
But while the technological advances of the Industrial Revolution enabled Victorians to travel far and wide, the impulse to do so, simply for leisure and discovery, was often inspired by a much older source; the time-honored tradition of the 'Grand Tour’. The Grand Tour was an educational journey undertaken by an elite of young men from the upper classes, typically sponsored by wealthy parents or other benefactors. The custom originated among British noblemen of the 17th century as a way to gain knowledge and appreciation of languages, art, history, politics, sports and more of 'Classical Europe' or - in some instances - as a convenient excuse for bratty snobs to go playboy'ing around Europe. By some accounts it was even the format that coined the word 'tourist'. Grand Tours could be truly 'grand' and take years involving entire entourages or be more modest with just a tutor / chaperone (a so-called 'cicerone') over a few months - the point was that it was an experiential 'must' for any aspiring nobleman or member of the elite and as such is was of course emulated by those with aspirations to be in those circles. So when an opportunity arose to swiftly and affordably visit many of the (coastal) highlights of Classical Europe and shipping companies outright labelled it a 'Grand Tour' in marketing, it was of course seized upon by aspiring elites and those who just wanted to know how the other half lived. In the mid-19th century industrialization and mass travel turned the format more popular and mundane (and thus less interesting to the elite) and enthusiasm for classic history waned so the tradition was discarded but the lingering appeal still helped drive many common holidaymakers towards sea travel and was actively used to do just that.
Sneaking Onboard
Cruising would not get its first designated vessel for many decades. It simply wasn't considered popular or profitable enough to dedicate an entire ship to a fledgling leisure travel fad that only a select few could afford. Instead it snuck onboard other passenger vessels, initially on the steamships of the British Royal Mail network - the maritime steamer network instituted in 1840 to keep mail, cargo and passengers flowing within the Empire - and operated as a sideline, a bunk-filler and possibly as a branding tool as the public interest in leisure travel brought the company name some much appreciated PR. The shipping companies were not even the first to think of it. They had merely noticed that more and more travelers boarded for leisure purposes alone and sometimes used the network as a hop-on-hop-off service to carry them around interesting and popular destinations and therefore decided they may as well advertise sailings as leisure voyages to drive more traffic onboard. Later on the phenomenon would also sneak onboard intracoastal supply routes (Norway and Alaska) or onboard cargo liner routes (Caribbean and Pacific) in exactly the same way - basically wherever scheduled commercial passenger service went that was worth seeing, tourists were sure to follow and shipping companies were quick to glom on to the ticket-selling power of leisure travel.
The Fun Vibe
While the shipping companies welcomed leisure travelers as an additional revenue stream, they made very few concessions onboard to make the (often) lengthy liner service feel like anything other than a lengthy liner service. There were few to no special provisions made for the catering, entertainment or comfort of leisure travelers - the only thing that distinguished leisure travelers from functional travelers was their purpose. But then again, the phenomenon wasn't even defined in the public consciousness and the word not even coined yet, so why would they be regarded as anything other than 'a different kind of traveler'. This is after all a blog about the emergence of the commercial leisure travel phenomenon of 'cruising' and this is where it started: with leisure travelers and functional travelers on equal footing. But I imagine the leisure travelers surely must have brought a different vibe onboard the mail steamers - after all they were out in pursuit of exploration, learning and leisure and would surely have been quicker to bond over their similarities than a random group of functional travelers going to different corners of the empire. They would have surely gone sightseeing together in ports to facilitate travel arrangements, discussed their experiences and passions and - in the absence of an official ship entertainment program - would have likely pioneered jovial and entertaining activities onboard with their Victorian fondness for parlour games, sports, talent shows and learned conversations. This is likely where cruising first grew the 'fun leisure vibe' it would forever be associated with.
The Dark Period
The period from the 1840’s until the 1880’s remains a relatively ‘dark’ period in terms of cruise business and one that I may have to re-visit in the future if more historical sources become available to me. It appears from occasional historical references in shipping company / vessel bios about this ship or that going on leisure cruises, that leisure cruising became somewhat of a ‘regular thing’ following the 1843 introduction though – frustratingly – I have not found any historical sources to shed light on the details, frequency or volume of said cruises. But the absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence. Maybe it's because these voyages were not logged in company records as ‘leisure cruise sailings’ but as regular line voyages that just happened to be advertised for leisure travel too, so for all we know there could be a massive volume of ‘early cruising’ taking place in those years. However, all things equal, it’s probably more likely that dedicated leisure voyages were rare and limited due to the exclusive nature (and price) of the product or else more references and historical evidence would have survived. Based on what little sources I have found, I can surmise that they were likely seasonal as the Mediterranean famously gets way too hot in summer for ships without A/C and people wearing layered Victorian clothing, that they likely remained an upper-class leisure pursuit – for reasons of cost and time alone, that they continued to operate on the royal mail steamer network of the British empire as a convenient bunk-filling sideline and that they were ex-Britain departures with a focus on Classical European and Mediterranean destinations as the primary marketing appeal of cruises was still the popular commercialization of the elitist ‘Grand Tour’.
Maritime Evolution
The ships also evolved significantly in these years – from wooden-hulled, auxiliary steamers with either side-wheel paddles or that newfangled invention, the screw propeller, to first iron- then steel-hulled, propeller-driven steamships. The introduction of the compound steam engine enabled bigger, faster, safer and more reliable and comfortable ships, the introduction of electricity and running water onboard in the 1870’s greatly improved passenger comfort and with the eventual disappearance of auxiliary sails, ships grew an actual superstructure with much more room for passengers and facilities. Passenger volumes increased from a hundred to the hundreds, facilities were expanded with more specialized lounges and leisure spaces and focus shifted from just carrying passengers to actually entertaining them (in the 'hospitality' sense of that word). For every technological advancement in ship design and operation, passenger shipping became faster, safer and more comfortable and enjoyable and – by extension – so did cruising. The appeal of going to sea for leisure grew considerably when you no longer had to endure spartan, rough and potentially unsafe conditions on fragile little wooden steamers, but instead could go on a voyage of discovery, leisure and relaxation on a much more luxurious, comfortable and safe iron-hulled ocean liner. The rise of the middle class, which was likewise driven mostly out of Great Britain, necessitated the expansion of onboard class structure, from a simple ‘Cabin Class’ and ‘Steerage’ configuration to the broader trinity of 1st, 2nd and 3rd class.
The Class Conundrum
While cruise operations gained popularity from the overall improvement of accommodation standards onboard, it had little use for the class system as only 1st class passengers could typically afford pricey leisure travel. Ocean liners were geared for mass transit of mostly the lower classes – with poor immigrants in steerage taking up most of the space and making most of the revenue by virtue of sheer volume – and 1st class really only making up a fraction of the accommodation onboard (though undoubtedly getting most of the PR). While cruise operations using only 1st class cabins and facilities were initially financially successful, commercially popular and a great branding tool, it surely must have irked many a shipping executive to send their massive ships out with this much unused accommodation and thoughts likely started stirring on how to tailor the product more to the clientele, i.e. creating a single-class leisure experience without all the ‘commercially dead space’ around it, but those thoughts would not amount to anything concrete for another couple decades.
The Mark Twain Cruise
Throughout these decades cruising remains a purely British leisure pursuit, save for a couple of notable exceptions; the first being that Mark Twain Cruise (oh, have you read Innocents Aboard? If not, you totally should!) The Quaker City cruise of the Mediterranean out of New York in 1867 is a fascinating one-off anomaly in cruise history. Coming right on the heels of the American Civil War (1861 - 1865) with aspirations of being a religious pilgrimage rather than a leisure cruise and cheerfully and cluelessly taking on the ungainly itinerary format of crossing the Atlantic twice at a time when such crossings took 2-3 weeks of mostly seasickness and boredom, it’s a wonder this cruise got off the ground.. or off the pier, as it were, and absolutely no surprise why it was never repeated. It is likely also one of the first (odd) pairings of religion and cruising, but far from the last - more on that later. We know a lot about this cruise from American author and journalist Mark Twain who joined it as a travel writer and built his reputation as Father of American Literature on the subsequent travel book, Innocents Abroad (widely recognized as a seminal work of travel literature and one of Twain’s biggest bestsellers). While the circumstances of the cruise were highly unusual and unique, the voyage format is what earned it a place in cruise history; a textbook closed-loop, all-inclusive group voyage with onboard entertainment (if dominoes and bible studies were your thing) to a string of destinations chosen for their historical / sightseeing value. The idea of such a cruise was planted far and wide in Twain’s readership but it would still take another decade or so before cruising operations from the American continent started to emerge in any significant way, partly because the American economy and psyche needed time to recover from the Civil War and partly because America had not yet experienced its own Industrial Revolution.
The Travel Books
And Twain was not the only writer to plant ideas of chasing the horizon in the minds of John Q. Public. In a time before blogging and selfies, travel accounts were the way you documented your travels to the world, be it journals, letters, travel descriptions or other formats, and many a Victorian writer got swept up in the leisure exodus of the late 19th century, resulting in a surge in popularity of travel books by prominent writers such as Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Henry Rider Haggard, Clement William Scott, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson and William Thackeray – old Bill T. actually wrote a travel book about one of the very first leisure cruises that he took on a P&O ship in the mid-1840’s (Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo) although that book tells you more about his staunchly conservative, reflexively racist and pronounced imperialistic mindset than about any factual details of the cruise. America grew its own set of travel writers too in addition to Mark Twain, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dudley Warner, Henry James and Nathaniel Bishop. Factual as well as romantic impressions of exotic world travel, frequently by ship, spread among the readership on both continents and inspired wanderlust and a yearning for adventures by sea.
Meanwhile, in the Fjords..
The second cruise-related development to come out of the 1870’s was a stirring in the Norwegian fjords. In the summer of 1875 Thomas Cook launches the first Norwegian coastal cruise, taking British leisure travelers on guided cruises through the stunning Norwegian fjords by piggybacking on the local costal steamer networks. Norwegian captains are initially bemused by this influx of ‘tourists’ and content to just charter their vessels / rent cabin segments out to the British but as they start to realize what money is being made on it, they quickly decide to reap it for themselves. Two major players, Bergen Steamship Co. and Nordenfjeldske Steamship Co., emerge early on and take the lead on developing Norwegian cruise tourism for the next 100+ years. In fact the Norwegian connection to the cruise business that started here grew much bigger and much more widespread over the decades than most people even know ... but you can know if you read the Norwegian Connection. The opening of Norwegian waters to cruising forced operators to grapple with some new conditions;
Firstly, the challenge of limited seasonality: Unlike Mediterranean itineraries that were accessible throughout most of the year, Norway was only navigable and enjoyable for about three months out of the summer. This introduced the concepts of limited seasonality and repositioning between regions, which in turn required operators to take into account and manage different destinations, markets, logistics, expectations, marketing etc. Selling and operating a leisure voyage to the Mediterranean Wonders was not the same as running one to the Norwegian Fjords, but lessons were learned and the cruise phenomenon took its first step towards becoming a more free-roaming and diversified leisure travel format. Disassociating a line ship from its fixed itinerary and in some cases from its permanent home port might seem a banal realization in retrospect but it was in fact the inciting incident for cruise ships becoming the kind of migratory fair-weather chasers they are today. Summer seasons in Scandinavia or Alaska and winter seasons in the Mediterranean or the Caribbean - that started here.
Seondly, the appeal of scenic cruising: By the late 19th century, the Grand Tour appeal was waning – the tradition was no longer practiced in higher social circles, public interest in classical culture was dwindling and the accessibility and advancement of rail and steamship travel was sidelining individual travel in favor of mass tourism. It was time to explore a new appeal to get people onboard and Norway seemed like a good bet. Norway was practically the antithesis of a Grand Tour experience: off the beaten track, decidedly rural and rugged, devoid of any cradles of classical culture but possessing an otherworldly natural beauty that turned the sheer act of just sailing through the country into an attractive and popular activity. In other words, this was the discovery of the kind of scenic cruising that can carry an entire cruise without marquee name ports - an aspect of cruising that would become widely embraced by the business, carry entire cruise regions to popularity and even - you can argue - become a foundational element of the entire branch of expedition cruising.
Thirdly, the emergence of mainstream cruising: the proximity of Norway to the main source market of Great Britain meant cruises could be shorter and consequently less expensive than the longer outings into the Mediterranean. You only needed to set aside two weeks for a Norway cruise as opposed to one - two months for a Mediterranean one. This opened the door to the development of a mainstream market where travelers from the less affluent classes could also afford to go.
If you want a more tactile impression of mid-19th century sea travel, visit the SS Great Britain in Bristol - the 3.400 ton passenger steamship from 1843, now museum ship, makes the past come alive, www.ssgreatbritain.org
Early Milestones
As we approach 1880 and the next instalment of the chronicle, we have a commercial leisure travel phenomenon that has found itself a market niche alongside regular passenger transport by sea. It is a luxury product from the get-go, not because of the high standards of onboard comfort and luxury (which even by contemporary standards were pretty basic) but by virtue of price and the amount of leisure time required to participate (with early itineraries taking months to complete). Even the advertising selling this as the ‘Grand Tour’ for the social climber on the go helps bolster this image and probably formed the earliest public perception of cruising as a leisure activity ‘for millionaires’ – a perception that has lingered for an incredibly long time, way past the emergence of mainstream affordable cruising. I suppose if we were to look at cruising in the format of a standard product life cycle curve we are still within the Introduction phase but with a noticeable incline towards Growth. But let's finish this era by recounting some of the milestones of the concept development that will become the foundations for further chronicling;
In the years between the first commercial cruise in 1843 and 1880...
Cruising became a regularly offered service with one or more shipping companies though we don't know the extent. It was likely infrequent and limited for reasons of cost and time requirements alone and likely seasonal as the main draw was still the Mediterranean. It would have made more sense for people to want to escape Britain during the dreary winter season, where temperatures in the Mediterranean were much more pleasant and bearable.
Cruising evolved from a fairly bare-bones and unrefined travel service on small, fragile paddle steamers to a more plush and enjoyable experience on large, spacious ocean liners with electric lights, running water and creature comforts approaching those of nicer hotels ashore. It was now no longer a luxury product in name (and price) only but truly an extravagant experience that delivered your moneys worth.
Cruising had spread beyond its original destination cradle of the Mediterranean. The discovery of Norway as a cruise destination that could work without the trappings of a 'Grand Tour' was the first real game-changer, untying ships from their fixed line services and opening up Northern Europe for seasonal cruising. Suddenly there was an enjoyable summer destination to go hand in hand with the Mediterranean high season and because it was next door to Britain, fares could be made considerably cheaper, thereby opening up a market for mainstream cruising.
Cruising remained a purely British pursuit, operating solely out of Britain, with very few exceptions. The unique mix of Empire, industrial revolution and a familiarity with sea travel set the Britons up as first movers on the cruise fad and few other nations would catch up with this particular cocktail of circumstances until the end of the century (although the Norwegians were already starting to nibble at the pie).
Despite all advances of the period cruising remained a vague, half-baked concept in the public mind. There simply wasn’t a designated conceptual format for what ‘cruising’ was as a product – it was basically just liner service with a different purpose. Things like official onboard entertainment programs, shore excursion programs or any of the conventions of present-day cruising only started to show up towards the end of this period - guests were largely left to their own devices to create their own travel experience and – to their credit - did so with all the Victorian zeal and ingenuity they could muster, in the process cultivating a fun leisure vibe that would become a foundational part of the cruise format and help distinguish it from more serious purpose-driven travel.
And the lack of format probably had a lot to do with the lack of proper name too. Cruising hadn’t found its proper name yet but merely went by any number of synonyms of the word ‘voyage’ and that’s a handicap to the human cognition. If I were to tell you; ‘I’m going on a cruise!’, you would immediately grasp the broader idea of what I am about to do; a voyage by ship, for fun and relaxation, to exotic / interesting destinations. But imagine how many more words you would have to use to describe your intent at a time when that word not only did not exist, but the entire idea of your undertaking was novel and foreign. Luckily the Victorian infatuation with the travel opportunities afforded by industry and technology was strong enough to drive people towards all possible leisure getaways, regardless if conceptually fleshed out or not.
Finally cruising hadn’t found a designated vessel of its own. It was basically just piggybacking on the passenger shipping industry, which embraced cruising activities as just another way of making money on their ships without having to do much else than tweak their advertising a bit. Despite its undeniable appeal no one seemed willing to bet big on leisure travel at sea and produce a ship (or at the very least customize an exiting one) exclusively for cruising yet. Cruise tourism was something that went on exclusively inside the passenger shipping industry and the only difference between practical travellers and leisure travellers was intent, which – coincidentally – is also why it is so darn difficult to separate cruise history from ocean liner history this many years after the fact. But as the 1870’s drew to a close and tourists kept sneaking onboard whichever kind of passenger service would take them to places of interest, things were about the change...
Next time we'll take on the last two decades of the 19th century to see how cruising grew, formalized, diversified and got a proper name. When is that going to be? 'When I get around to it' is probably the most honest answer. This blog isn't monetized and I have a family life and a work life to get on with as well, so it progresses in sync with whatever lulls and breaks the daily grind affords. Can't wait? Then tell me what you thought about this format or this blog in general. While I am perfectly content writing for my own enjoyment it always adds a little commitment and drive to the writing process when you know that someone else out there is appreciating the effort. So the lines are open, folks - if you like what I do here, let me know! There's a comment section riiight down below.
In the meantime, stay safe, stay curious and stay happy and a big thank you to any regular readers out there!
This is the twenty-fifth article in a series of historical retrospectives on the history of cruising prior to the industry formation in the 1960's. Although not academic papers, the articles are researched to the extent of my resources and ability and strive to be as historically factual as possible. If you enjoyed it, feel free to like, share or comment and follow me (or The Cruise Insider) for more instalments.
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