We’ve already seen a couple of the menus used on the 1926-27 world cruise, including the Valentine’s Day menu and Washington’s Birthday menu. Here are a few more.
Click image to view and download a PDF of this menu from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
The cover on the Christmas Day dinner menu is the same as on the 1931 Christmas menu shown here previously. Both also offered caviar as an hors d’oeuvre and roast turkey as a main course, though this one specifies chestnut stuffing in the turkey. For some reason, this one only has sole for the fish course; most empress menus offered a choice of two kinds of fish.
Click image to view and download a PDF of this menu from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
CP also used the same cover for New Year’s dinner as the 1932 World Cruise menu shown here previously. The two menus have a similar range of offerings except, again, the 1927 menu has only one kind of fish.
Click image to view and download a PDF of this menu from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
On January 27, the Empress of Scotland crossed the equator, which was cause for a Neptune’s dinner party. Unlike the above holiday menus, this menu cover wasn’t used in other years. The menu itself is quite creative. On the left side, the words “NeptuneDinnerDeluxe” are printed vertically. On the right side, the words “SSEmpressofScotland” receive the same treatment. The name of every menu item begins with the respective letter in “NeptuneDinnerDeluxe” and ends with the letter in “SSEmpressofScotland.” This would have limited the menu to just 19 items, but two dessert items were included on the last line.
Click image to view and download a 92.8-MB PDF of these sketches from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
Over the course of the trip, Canadian Pacific promised passengers more than 200 sketches, postcards, calendars, and other drawings that they could use for reference or mail home to friends. The Chung collection has three sets of these sketches. These sets overlap one another but each includes unique items not found in the others. The first set above is bigger and includes a number of postcards and other sketches not found in the second.
These sketches were done by a husband-and-wife team named Flora Nash DeMuth and Martin DeMuth, whose names are listed as “cruise artists” on many of the cruises. Martin is also listed as “lecturer.”
As described in this history, Flora Nash (1888-1976) was born in Pennsylvania and studied art at the Art Students League in New York City. Martin DeMuth (1885-1961) was born in Ohio but grew up in Portland and studied art in California. After serving in the Great War, he worked as an artist for the War Department, including stints in New York City in 1923 and 1925, where he met Flora. Between those New York assignments, he traveled to Asia as a roving artist for the War Department, which inspired the idea of working aboard a cruise ship.
They married in 1926 and talked Canadian Pacific into hiring them to draw sketches and other art at least 15 cruises. In addition to at least nine world cruises, they contributed art to cruises to the West Indies, South America/Africa, Mediterranean, and one called “Five Cruises in One.”
Although the art on the cover of the menu at the beginning of this post isn’t signed, I suspect it was also by Flora DeMuth. Cover art on another menu in a similar style has been attributed to her; I’ll show that menu in a future post. After CP’s cruise program was ended by World War II, Flora did art for several children’s books.
Click image to view and download an 89.3-MB PDF of these sketches from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
The second set of sketches doesn’t seem to have any postcards, but it includes six color paintings showing traditional dress in China, Egypt, Hawaii, India, Japan, and Java. These aren’t in the first set. Each painting has a small box with the initials “RM” (possibly RMc) so they weren’t done by either of the DeMuths.
Click image to view and download an 127.3-MB PDF of these sketches from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
Finally, the third set includes, in addition to sketches, more than a dozen issues of an on-board newsletter called the EMpress. This appears to have been published daily.