British Isles Cruise Part 1: The Aristocrats.

The Columbus at anchor dominates St Peter Port bay.

At the beginning of September the wife and I took a cruise round the British Isles with Cruise and Maritime Voyages (CMV). The ship was the Columbus, pictured above  dominating the Bay of St Peter Port in Guernsey (Channel Islands) after it had anchored. The ship was big by my standards, quite a bit bigger in fact than the Irish ferries' Ulysses which brought us back across the Irish sea after our holiday in Ireland.  Columbus statistics are as follows:

Gross Tonnage: 63,786grt

Registry: Bahamas, British Commonwealth

Passenger Capacity: 775 cabins (1400 passengers)

Re-built: 1997, 2003, 2010, 2015 & April 2017

Cruising Speed: 16.50 knots (Max 21.50kts)

Passenger Decks: 11

Lifts: 9

Electric Current:  220v

Stabilised & Air Conditioned: Yes

Officers & Crew: International

Cruise Staff & Entertainers: British & International

Dimensions:     

Length: 247m (811ft)

Beam: 32m (105ft)

Columbus' service and 
shopping mall

With Ulysses at a gross tonnage of 50,938 both ships are bigger than the Titanic's 46,328 grt which at the time was the largest moving object created by man (So I was told by a Belfast guide). Although Columbus is only middling by today's standards it seemed breathtakingly large to me. Looking down the well of the grand staircase induces vertigo. The cinema and reception mall wouldn't disgrace a small city. In fact the Columbus is exactly that, a small city. The realization of this starts to dawn when you think about all the infra structure, systems and personnel the ship needs to function: Electrical systems, sewers, hot and cold water, water distilleries, kitchens, refrigeration, air conditioning, laundries, restaurants, stores, shops, pubs, a theatre cum cinema, swimming pools, games rooms, gymnasiums, computers, communications, radar, library, rest rooms; the list probably goes on and on. As well as the crew involved in actually sailing the vessel there must be cruise directors, entertainments staff, cooks, waiters, bartenders, doctors and nurses, security people, cinema staff, maintenance staff, systems engineers, stewards, cleaners etc. And the whole caboodle moves in one direction. But since motion is relative and barely detectable even in a fairly rough sea, one may as well consider the ship to be a stationary frame of reference.

Cruising on a big ship must be the most comfortable form of travel ever devised: Our cabin on deck 10 was like a hotel room. During our trip there was little sense of motion and the feeling of being on a ship was at a minimum even when the swell was 3 to 4 metres at one point. For me the whole experience had a very unreal feel to it: The comfort, plus the relativity I've already alluded to, gives the feeling that the ports-of-call are actually travelling to you rather than the other way round. Moreover, for first time cruisers like ourselves the unreality of it all is compounded by the pervasive ship-board culture which is nothing like we've experienced before. The ship began to feel less like a small city than a small planet in some dimension we were temporarily visiting; the culture was alien in many respects. Add this to the sense of being in a strange vehicle that somehow, Tardis like, brings exotic venues to one's doors without actually having to travel, then the feeling of being in another dimension is only reinforced. No instincts told me that I was inside an earthly vehicle. 

The theatre/cinema

I have to admit that from the outset I felt rather dubious about the whole cruise adventure; not only am I not a good sea traveler but I wasn't at all sure that the cruising culture with its wining, formal dinning, gaming, and social chit chatting was something we would fit in with. In fact we didn't. We were travelers and not cruisers and we avoided the formal restaurant in favour of the well served bistro on deck 12 with its excellent views. The on-board variety entertainments weren't ever going to be our cup of tea either, although on the last day we not only enjoyed, but also came back down to earth with a bump when we watched Alan Bennett's film "The Lady in the Van".  Also, my wife enjoyed a lecture by - knock me over with a feather - an academic on the Vikings - very appropriate as we sailed down the east of the British Isles on the last day. I had refused to go to this lecture quite convinced that it would turn out to be some stand up comic cracking jokes about horny helmeted Vikings doing rape and pillage - well I was wrong and regretted it. I've got to hand it to CMV they do their best to cater for a broad spectrum of taste. Of course they aren't going to please all of the people all of the time, so you can't blame them.  

One of the swimming pools

For many cruising on the high seas is an end itself and may not even need the diversions of sailing into ports to break the monotony. Stage entertainment, games rooms, socializing, films, interesting port excursions etc are well defined pastimes which can be singled out as distinct categories and pointed to as something to be enjoyed. But I think there is a much more subtle form of enjoyment going on at sea which is less easily identified;  this is the gentle massaging of the ego that is all part of the ambiance of life on board a luxury ship. The formal bow tie dinners, the proactively courteous ship's staff who wait on the passengers hand and foot always leaving the impression they are there at one's beck and call,  all have the effect of quietly conveying to the passengers that they are some kind of high born aristocracy, born to be served. Also silently encouraging this flattering illusion there was a slight colonial air about it all, at least on the Columbus: The passengers were almost exclusively white, probably comfortably off senior Westerners, whereas the service staff were by and large relatively young and in the main came from the less rich ethnic regions around the world. For a week or two the passengers were in an immersive virtual reality that served a fantasy about being aristocrats waited on hand and foot by servants who relied on the generosity of their patrons to supplement their meager pay in tips. I personally find tips degrading: It reminds me of the rewards one gives to animals when they perform correctly. But then what choice do some people have.

Further reinforcing the immersive game play of being an aristocrat for a week or two was the stratification among the passengers themselves: The cabins tended to get more expensive with the deck number. We felt we were doing well on deck 10 with only passenger deck 11 above us where some of the "high class" guests had balconies. This stratification played a similar role I guess as once did the medieval aristocratic career structure provided by the linear stratification of titles which marks one's status. So instead of us having the titles of knights, baronets, barons, viscounts, earls, marquis and dukes, our titles were Deck 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. On Deck 11 we had Columbus' equivalent of dukes, but there were no kings among the passengers; that role was played by the captain and we were his worthy aristocratic guests invited to his mobile realm. In the restaurant there was even a captain's high table where specially  invited guests could dine with him.... all very reminiscent of the high tables in the castles and halls of the medieval  period. It is very difficult to resist the strong sense of flattery if one is invited to the captain's table. It is a fact that humans so often need some kind of social ladder, however that might be signaled, in order to fuel the aspirations and ambitions needed to motivate them.

Unlike the French the English never really did do away with their aristocracy in a revolution; instead the quirky history of England meant that all English people started to think of themselves as potential aristocrats. The constitutional monarchy hammered out during the seventeenth century, plus a trace of guilt that the population had committed regicide in beheading Charles I, gave the English aristocracy a reprieve and it was here to stay. Subsequently an increasingly commercialized Britannia got underway as rich yeomans (often of peasant stock) invested in business, moved into the cities, became rich, then moved out of the cities and purchased estates in the country, sometimes real castles, as they tried to ape the aristocracy. They even learnt the classics, purchased titles and invented heraldry for their families. Thus, every Englishmen was a potential aristocrat in the making; servants and slaves were largely a colonial thing. I have often wondered if one reason why the UK hasn't done as well in engineering as it clearly could have done was because it was thought of as a form of work not fit for aristocrats; after all, engineers are supposed to get greasy and dirty in engine rooms and aspiring aristocrats don't do that. There is a parallel here with classical Greek culture, a culture which the English upper classes studied avidly: The Greeks didn't excel as well in the sciences as one might have thought because in their slave society the masters weren't expected to do the kind of manual hands-on-work needed to do experiments.  But aristocrats can become, and often do, theoreticians and philosophers, because that kind of detached mental activity doesn't suffer the indignity of dirt and grime.

But the idea that there is such a thing as a contented feudal social stratification is an illusion as it always has been. On the Columbus some of the make believe aristocrats could be down right awkward: We heard of one case where a lady sent back her fried eggs three times because they weren't cooked correctly leaving the waiter nonplussed as to what was wrong. One night the restaurant opened late because, rumor had it, the waiters went on strike. We never found out why, but I can see it now.: On the one hand they had to interface with some demanding "aristocrats" playing the power game too hard; the fact that few of these passengers were real aristocratics may have meant they worked the fantasy for all it was worth. On the other hand the staff have their employers and managers over them; if these employers and managers don't give their staff all due respect and compensation in recognition that they too are very status conscious human beings, defection is no surprise. However, I have a suspicion that there is an assumption of privilege associated with the securing of these ship-board jobs and consequently staff are expected to be thankful for being offered a job whatever the conditions of employment.  The whole thing reeks of the feudal where the peasant was supposed to be thankful that his lord allowed him to work a strip of the lord's land. 

As I've already said the majority of the passengers were senior white people (So senior that even at 70 and 65 my wife and I felt like sprightly youngsters as we used the stairs rather than the lift) many of whom had probably done quite well for themselves. This fact upped the chance of coming across a phenomenon I have observed before; namely, the talkative opinionated male. Now, women are often accused of being too talkative but a talkative male is a lot worse. Males, especially if they've been in management, are far more dominating as they continue to habitually fill the role of an alpha male. Among the males on the cruise I also saw some sad sights: Men, who had no doubt had successful careers, now unmanned by the ravages of old age, but who were lovingly attended to by their wives. I saw one poor guy who had to otherwise use a frame to walk with no choice but to slowly climb, without the help of his frame, the very long gangplank needed to enter the ship. We were in Orkney at the time and a cold wind laden with rain blasted the old gentleman. As he had probably just come out of a coach he had no rain coat on and he became soaked all down one side. Surely there must be a more dignified way for "aristocrats" to enter a boat! In the warm luxurious belly of the ship I watched his wife attend to him as he recovered dribbling from his ordeal. Yes, I thought, that's what I may look like in a few years! (if I get there). I looked up and realised that one of the staff, a girl who was advertising some cosmetic service, had been looking at me looking at this old couple. She smiled but I was still engrossed in my grave thoughts so I'm not sure I smiled back.

As I turned my attention to this young lady my thoughts moved on. Like many of the young staff here she was offering a fairly basic trade. But what made all the difference was the environment in which she plied this trade. You might be a cleaner, a room attendant, a cook, a waiter or a manicurist. These occupations aren't particularly high up the status ladder, but in this case it is where you carry out your work which makes all the difference. I imagine that many young people, perhaps with not the best set of qualifications in the world, apply for work on a cruise ship because potentially it's a lot more than just employment; it promises the romance and excitement of an adventure on the high seas, exotic ports of call and a chance to meet a wide spectrum of interesting people you wouldn't otherwise meet. I suspect, however, that this exciting sounding life does, nevertheless, have its downsides as well; there are limited opportunities to get away from the ship's intimate social hot-house which you may well want to do if the naturally expectant relationships between young people become intense and/or awkward or if your employer is as authoritarian and demanding as a baron, not to mention the attitude of some of the pseudo aristocrats on board ship. Hopes and aspirations have no doubt been badly bruised on some of these cruise ships.

But for the wife and I there was plenty of opportunity to detach from the cruising social hot-house. We could look out to sea during meals and drinks and for us the ports of call the were the main rationale for the cruise; strange fascinating places that we wouldn't otherwise have visited. I'll hand it to CMV: They do bend over backwards to make the whole cruise experience as enjoyable as possible for as many people as possible, but they are only human and naturally they face the constraints and limitations of being human. And human limitations were to be plainly witnessed in the stories we found waiting for us at each port of call. People may wonder why I ever opted for Christianity, especially in view of some of its own grotty, tacky cultural aspects. But if there's a single answer to that it is this: It is because Christianity is (or is supposed to be) strong on self examination and self awareness of our human limitations, especially those that go under the archaic appellation of "sin"; although I must concede that looking at some Christian sects, you wouldn't know it. As we were to find out Christianity figured prominently in the history of all the ports and places we visited;  unless one is intellectually apathetic this encourages one to have some kind of engagement with Christian history.

The voyage was tracked and conveyed to our cabin