This week, I reserved a February roomette on Amtrak's "Empire Builder," a two-day trip from Seattle to Chicago. This completes my West Coast to Chicago "trifecta" -- following similar trips the past two years on the Southwest Chief from Los Angeles and the California Zephyr from San Francisco.
I have no particular objective in going to Chicago -- the reason for the trip being the train travel itself. I've often compared similar train rides I've taken to cruises for the average guy. They aren't particularly cheap, but certainly far less than a cruise ship.
The comparison to travel by ship brings to mind my first dreams of travel as a tourist. First, that is, not as part of family travel with my parents and planned by my parents. But travel planned -- if only in fantasy -- by myself. and travel to be undertaken alone.
I was 12 or 13.
I was a young kid in the early 1950s, just a few years after World War II, although that war seemed like ancient history to me at the time. My mother had somehow acquired a travel memoir by an American who had traveled by car up and down Great Britain in those first post-war years. He visited town after town, discussing each in loving detail. I was already primed by temperament to be an Anglophile. Reading his book converted that predisposition into a total love affair.
I wanted to explore England. I needed to explore England. I planned my own itineraries, based on the sights and experiences described by the author. [Both author and title have been lost in the shifting sands of memory, and my family no longer has the book.]
In another three or four years, I figured, I'd be old enough to rent a car myself in Britain. The question was how could I get there.
In the early 1950s, airline travel certainly existed, but it was prohibitively expensive for travelers with my resources -- or with my family's resources, for that matter.** The obvious way to get from America to Britain was by ship.
Travel by ship in those days differed from passage on cruise liners today. The ships provided often luxurious accommodations, especially for the two upper classes, but the objective was travel from Point A to Point B. The same objective as as that of passengers who traveled by rail -- to arrive somewhere as quickly as possible, not (primarily) to gaze at the passing scenery with a cocktail in hand.
Numerous ocean liners sailed down the Hudson River from New York Harbor, heading for Europe. I think I finally decided on the largest then afloat, Cunard Line's RMS Queen Elizabeth. The ship was divided into three classes, First, Cabin, and Tourist, and each class occupied its own portion of the ship, with its own dining and other facilities. Tourist class passage between New York and Southampton was, as I'm certain I recall, $165 each way. Far beyond my ability to pay, as a 13-year-old. But maybe by the time I reached 16 or 17? One could hope. One could dream.
I also was concerned about the preliminary matter of reaching New York from my small town in Western Washington. That would be solved by the three-day train ride from Seattle or Portland to New York. I don't recall the fare at that time, but a year later, when I was 14, I traveled round trip to Chicago by train for $90. Still pricey, but easier to contemplate. I'd be traveling in a coach seat the entire way, of course, not in a sleeper.
Today, looking back, I'm fascinated by the style of shipboard accommodations, even for Tourist class. That didn't interest my junior high school self at all. I just wanted to get to Britain as cheaply as possible, and an ocean liner was the ticket.
So did I eventually sail off to Britain on an ocean liner ? Nope. Just a kid's dream. But eight years later, I did find myself talking at the border to an officer of Her Majesty's Home Office, Immigration Branch. Not at Southampton, but at New Haven. Arriving by sea, but on a ferry from Le Havre, not a liner from New York. I had ended up on the Continent, months before I ever saw England, attending school in Florence. And I had arrived in Italy not by sea, but on my school's chartered Pan-Am DC-6. During our three-week semester break, I crossed from France to my childhood dream destination
The ferry was quite nice, but it wasn't the Queen Elizabeth. But England was England, largely the England I had dreamed of as a 13-year-old lad. Far more "England" -- still largely its pre-war self (prices still in traditional pounds, shillings, and pence! oh joy!) -- than the modern country millions of tourists visit today. I'm glad I saw it when I did.
But I'm sorry I didn't arrive on the RMS Queen Elizabeth!
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**NOTE (11-15-23): In the 1950s, minimum fares for all airlines were governed by an international body, the IATA. The IATA had refused to allow air travel that was not first class until July 1952. The minimum one-way air fare from New York to London was $711 -- in 2023 dollars, $8,255. But in 1952, Pan Am won the right to offer a "tourist class" level of service for $486 round trip -- $5,642 in today's dollars.
Still a bit steep, even for the day dreams of a 13-year-old
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