Florida Trips on Clyde-Mallory Lines

Ah, winter. Anyone who's reading this on the East Coast is probably wondering "what does this jerk from Indiana know from winter when we've got 3 feet of snow and they've got squat?" Fair question, I'd take the snow myself, but then I'm one of those weirdos who really love a good snowstorm. Here in Indiana winter's a time when the sun goes on hiatus and we roll out the gray flannel skies for about five months. Even though I do like the cold and get as excited as a schoolboy when there are predictions of snow, I can't help but let my mind drift southward when the wind is biting my ears. Yes, the holidays are done and it's time to think about retreating from the cold and, if you spring from the Midwestern blue-collar soil like I do, that probably means Florida.

The old saying goes "getting there is half the fun", but in our day and age the airlines have gone to extremes to punish anyone who goes about with thoughts of enjoyable travel. To fly to Florida we're goaded and prodded through security checks by TSA agents who were to inhumane to work at Guantanamo Bay. Afterward we are herded into holding pens while our flight is delayed so that the baggage handlers can work over our suitcases with blackjacks before evenly distributing them on planes bound for Eastern Europe and the Sudan. Eventually we trundle into steerage where we sit in seats designed by Joseph Mengele and fight for space with the UPS parcels. Eventually we're winging our way to Miami via New Jersey with a seven hour layover in Potsdam. Yes, modern convenience is a wonderful thing! Oh what fools our grandparents must have been. Why just imagine what a trip to Florida must have been like a hundred years ago! Okay, you don't need to imagine, I'll tell you.

In the January 1918 issue of Outdoor Life Magazine, the Clyde-Mallory Lines ran an ad for 5 and 12 day tours to Jacksonville, St. Augustine, Miami, Palm Beach, Key West, Tampa, and St. Petersburg with a full stopover in Charleston, SC. Passengers would depart from New York and enjoy meals in the ship's dining room, relaxing in the smoking lounges, dancing, music, and deck-side sports and entertainments as they made their way down the Eastern Seaboard to their final destination. Then they'd wend their way through Florida, eventually rendezvousing with their return ship

The 12 day tour went for $65.40 which, adjusted for inflation, roughly equates to $1065 round trip. However, considering the obscene excess of modern cruise ships, the amenities probably seem paltry. There are no all-night binge-bars, no casinos, no eight-story mezzanines, no in-pool movies, just three squares a day served on real china, the sea air, and the scenery passing by as you made your way southward. Something to be said for simplicity, the lack of screaming kids, not worrying about gaining 25 pounds just because you're exposed to 24-7 all you can eat buffets, and the time to write a letter or postcard or two. Yep, I think I'll trade the Mega-Giganto-Disney-Princess-in-your-bathroom Cruise and just enjoy the sea itself.

Shellbacks and Pollywogs

On this day seventy years ago a converted passenger ship named M. S. Bloemfontein crossed the equator at 153° 35’ west en route to the Admiralty Islands and while doing so, commemorated the occasion with a maritime tradition that dated back to at least the early 1820’s –The Crossing of the Line. The ceremony marks the first crossing of the equator for members of the ship’s crew, referred to as slimy Pollywogs, initiating these relatively untested seafarers into the shared hardships and triumphs that lay ahead. Tried and true Shellbacks who have seen southern hemisphere drag the Pollywogs before the most experienced member of the crew who, for the time being, is designated His Majesty Neptune. What follows is a session of hazing which can include being shaved bald, blasted with a salt water fire hose, getting smeared with axel grease or paint, or being forced to drink a dose of “medicine” concocted from ingredients such as Tabasco sauce, diesel oil, raw eggs, and pepper. All the while the Shellbacks hurl insults at the Pollywogs and the ceremony goes on until Neptune is satisfied the initiates have been properly humbled. Once the ordeal is over the Pollywogs are pronounced honorable Shellbacks, members of the Royal Order of the Deep, and awarded a certificate stating as much.

The MS Oslofjiord

Any of you who belong to a lodge probably recognize this sort of ad. It ran in the September 1938 issue of Rotary International. Two years later the Rotarians cruised from New York to Rio de Janeiro for the Rotary International Convention.

The Oslofjord was built by A/G Weser Shipbuilders, Bremen Germany for Norwegian America Line. She would strike a mine little more than a year after the Rotarians' convention and sink on January 21st/22nd, 1941.

Boating to the 2014 Olympics

Tonight the music will play and the games will open on an eastern stage as Sochi, Russia plays host to the games for the first time since the boycotted summer games of 1980. I did a little magazine archaeology on Sochi and turned up just about nothing with the exception of this.

In a 1937 issue of Popular Mechanics Magazine, I turned up a mention of a proposed high-speed ferry between the Black Sea ports of Sochi and Sukhum and in a 1940 issue of Popular Science Magazine...

It is done!

Now all Russia needs to do is get basic human rights, an honest judicial system, and an economy that isn't based on graft and corruption and they'll really have something!

I'll try to write something a little more Olympic during the games, I promise.

The Sunshine Belt to the Orient

With the bleak weather of winter bringing the first cold rains to town this week and the remnant of a heck of a cold still playing havoc with my system, I thought I'd kick off a new winter enterprise. The winter months have always been the favorite time to head for the tropics or, if nothing else, at least get out of town for a bit of rest and relaxation so I thought this year I'd air a few travel ads. The sort of stuff a fellow without means, a real George Bailey, would hang on the walls of his drafty house to take his mind off the leaky roof, old windows, and pressures of his job. So here we go, whirl-wind tripping around the world with nothing but a trunk and a dream as our passport.

We start off on the Sunshine Belt Route from aboard one of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company's steamers. Pacific Mail was founded in 1848 by a group of New York business men who had won a contract to transport mail from Panama to California from the US government. The California gold rush ushered in an era of profitability for the company and Pacific Mail played a key role in the growth of San Francisco.

In 1867 Pacific Mail began the country's first trans-Pacific steamship service between San Francisco, Hong Kong, Yokohama, and Shanghai. In 1925 Robert Dollar of the Dollar Steamship Company purchased Pacific Mail and, after Dollar was bailed out by the US government in 1938 the line became little more than an entity on paper. In 1949, after little more than a century of service, Pacific Mail Steamship Company went out of existence.

 I can't help hearing the sound of a steam whistle and envisioning black smoke curling from the stacks as the ship departs the quay and makes for open water when I see this ad. I see myself at the rail, staring out at the hills of San Francisco fading into the distance as the side-wheel churns. Ahead the mysteries of Japan or China await, behind lies an old life that'll be slowly forgotten, erased just like the fog erases the city. The gulls cry and I turn toward my cabin, leaving my memories to the Pacific's depths.

Death aboard the Seeandbee

Back in 1885 Morris A. Bradley established the Cleveland and Buffalo Transit Company (C&B). The company operated a popular steamship line from Cleveland, running passenger and freight service to Buffalo, NY aboard the liners State of Ohio and State of New York. With business booming, C&B added to its fleet, christening the City of Buffalo and eventually replacing the aging State of Ohio with the City of Erie which provided night service between Cleveland and Toledo.

C&B saw an opportunity in moving passengers and in the same year as the Titanic’s ill-fated maiden voyage, the Seeandbee joined the fleet and began making regular trips between Cleveland and Buffalo. In her day the Seeandbee held the title of largest and mostly costly liner on the Great Lakes. She was 485 feet from stem to stern and could accommodate 1,500 passengers with 510 staterooms and parlors over four decks. She had an elegant ballroom in which passengers could partake of music and dancing while making the crossing.

The Seeandbee operated from 1913 to 1938, maintain her reputation as the lakes as its most famous liner until, like so many Americans, she was called to war. World War II saw many civilian ships converted for military purposes, and the Seeandbee was no exception. She was converted to operate as an aircraft carrier and rechristened the USS Wolverine. Under her new name she saw service training carrier pilots for shipboard landings and takeoffs. The USS Wolverine operated out of Chicago on Lake Michigan until the end of the war and was decommissioned and scrapped in 1946.

All of this is interesting – well, at least to someone like me who enjoys digging through dusty magazines – but it’s not why I found the little ad for cruises aboard the Seeandbee so intriguing. You see, the ad comes from a 1935 issue of The Rotarian Magazine, a call for business-folk across the Midwest to spend their hard-earned salaries on a little shipboard frivolity, but on August 12, 1940 when the ship docked in Cleveland one of its passengers wouldn’t be disembarking.

Mrs. Benjamin Mozee, a retired teacher from Nome, Alaska, boarded the Seeandbee on July 24^th and, according to her sister, had in her possession a large amount of money as well as three diamond rings none of which were found in her state room. On July 31^st the battered body of Mrs. Mozee washed up on the shore at Geneva-on-the-Lake and, adding insult to the injustice that had been done to her, since there wasn’t anyone who could identify the body, she was buried in an unmarked grave.

The money and jewelry weren’t the only things that had disappeared when the ship docked. Mrs. Mozee had been attended by a maid while on shipboard. The maid was a member of the Seeandbee’s crew and had tended to her during the voyage. Investigators found that the maid had disappeared immediately after the cruise.

When Mozee’s body was identified there could be little doubt she hadn’t simply fallen overboard and drown. The body showed signs of a beating and grease on Mrs. Mozee’s palms suggested she’d been in the crew area of the ship. An FBI investigation followed, but there is no record of there being an arrest, trial, or conviction associated with the murder.