General Chat

I was going through my late uncles papers etc that my aunty sent last year. I found old photos of him on the RMS Oronsay, He left home at 16 to go and make a life in Australia. This was done through the scouts/big brother movement.

Anyway, I came across 3 menus. Each one showing breakfast, luncheon and dinner. The meals were amazing, luxurious in fact. Rib of beef, lamb, steak, seafood. kippers for breakfast etc he writes in a letter to my nanna, his mother that 2 thirds of the ship is for paying guests but they were in the "poorer quarters" but they got fed well.
The menus are in perfect condition from 1939.

Not sure if they are valuable at all?

Has anyone else come across this sort of thing in their family?

Florence in the hebrides

My brother worked for Cunard Line, mostly back and forth from Southampton to New York and chiefly on the Queen Mary. This was 1950s and early 1960s.
He had menus from that ship , which someone borrowed in later years and sadly that was the last the family saw of them

Sometimes when he docked, all he wanted for a meal at home was something 'ordinary' having had his fill of fancy food on the voyage.

My gran was a hoarder.
Having said that, we did lose 3 boxes of her stuff, which was probably for the best. :-(

We came over to the UK from Malta in 1961, on the MV Devonshire, when I was 4 - and somehow granny had 2 adult menus, one for dinner, and one for the 'Gala Dance',dinner, and 2 child's menus - one for tea, and one for a 'Children's Tea Party'.(same day as the Gala dance)
The menus are headed 'Bibby Line'.

She also had 4 menus from when my parents and elder brothers came back from Malta in 1951, on HMT Empire Windrush. These menus are for breakfast, lunch, dinner and 'Diner d'Adieu'. - and there was no smoking in the Dining Saloon.
I also have a telegram from my parents on the Windrush, saying they'd boarded the boat, and to 'check their end' for the arrival day - addressed to my gran at New Milton Laundry!

As it was 'only' 16 years after the war - the 'Devonshire' offers, on the children's menu, 'National dried milk cocoa' - YUM :-S :-
Actually, that menu is pretty weird all around - 'Roast & boiled potatoes', 'browned and boiled potatoes', 'plain or sweet omelets'
No wonder I was ill on the way home :-( :-( :-(

Probably - the menus were compiled for a whole voyage in booklet form. This would in turn determine the quantity of various stores that were loaded. (Tinned, frozen, chilled, etc)
But as things - especially the weather - do not often go as planned, the actual menu for a particular day might have been subject to change. After possibly a meeting the previous evening of the purser, head butcher, head baker but not the candlestick maker, had taken place the actual menu cards would be printed.

Gwyn...my dad may have been on the same trips as your brother, he was in the boiler room though.

That's interesting, Caroline.

Not sure exactly what he did, (he was a lot older than me ) but some sort of engineer after an apprenticeship as a fitter and turner in Portsmouth Dockyard.

I thought it was great when we had a chance to go on-board once, when the ship had docked in Southampton.