SLIDES 0357-0364
A day at the beach, August 1965, with "The Commodore" showing off his Speedos at one, rather alarming, er... point.
Well, this certainly has the air of the end of that particular holiday for my Grandparents and, I suppose, what better way to spend it than down on the beach at some place on Majorca (or, I suppose, "Mallorca") that has probably long since become one of the hotter and more overwhelmed tourist hotspots in the fifty or so years since these pictures were taken? This does appear to be the last day spent in the sunshine before those lucky cruisers began heading home to the grim realities of another winter in a damp and possibly quite dreary northern town, a place still waiting for the sixties to start swinging.
Perhaps my Grandfather had used up all of his supply of rolls of film, as he doesn't appear to have recorded much of the voyage back from the Med apart from that flapping flag at the stern, but it is entirely possible that the final part of the cruise was an overnight chug past Portugal, Spain and France, perhaps even out of the sight of land, and there was nothing much else for them to see.
Or maybe they were just getting drunk as skunks at some kind of "End-of-Cruise" party that has somehow managed to get forgotten in the mists of time...?
The last picture, I think, shows the docks at Southampton once again, possibly a last wistful look back at the mighty liner that had transported them so far, as my Grandparents second and final cruise aboard the SS Canberra came to its inevitable conclusion.
Either that, or it's still Palma and that's the passenger transfer boat to take people ashore in the foreground. It's really difficult to tell, and I doubt that I'll ever know.
Or maybe they were just getting drunk as skunks at some kind of "End-of-Cruise" party that has somehow managed to get forgotten in the mists of time...?
The last picture, I think, shows the docks at Southampton once again, possibly a last wistful look back at the mighty liner that had transported them so far, as my Grandparents second and final cruise aboard the SS Canberra came to its inevitable conclusion.
Either that, or it's still Palma and that's the passenger transfer boat to take people ashore in the foreground. It's really difficult to tell, and I doubt that I'll ever know.
There are other cruises on other ships that my Grandfather recorded with his trusty Voigtländer camera whilst they were still able to enjoy (or afford) the high life, but they are much further down the line in this rummage through his personal photographic archive.
As for that strange wooden box full of slides that we remain firmly embedded within, things are about to get rather random...
Nooooooo!
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