Canadian Pacific’s 1929-30 world on the Empress of Australia was 137 days, one day longer than the previous year’s, which had been the longest up to that year. The cruise left New York on December 2 and returned on April 17.
Click image to download a 29.6-MB PDF of this 112-page book.
The Chung collection didn’t have a booklet advertising this cruise in its collection, so I found one on line. I was surprised to find that it is a hard-bound book, as none of the previous booklets in the Chung collection appear to be hard bound. The front cover and spine are deeply embossed with “The World Is Round” title, which indicates this wasn’t some after-market binding. Canadian Pacific apparently earned enough profits on its world cruises that it could afford to publish its advertiser as a hard-back book.
Inside, someone has written “Duncan M. Halliday, January 1929.” Halliday’s name isn’t on the list of cruise members so he apparently acquired the book just for the vicarious pleasure. The date, which would have been in the middle of the previous year’s cruise, is intriguing. Unfortunately, I don’t have a list of members from that cruise, but it possible that Halliday was on it. What this really shows is how far in advance Canadian Pacific planned its cruises.
Click image to download a 7.6-MB PDF of this booklet showing decks and fares.
The lowest fare for any room on the ship was $2,000 per person, or about $35,000 in today’s money. Thirty rooms were available for that fare, some of them singles and some doubles. Most rooms were in the $4,000 to $5,000 range, and the most expensive suites were $12,600 per person.
Click image to view and download a 3.5-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
In addition to the above final list of passengers, the Chung collection has a preliminary list. The cover painting on the lists is signed F. DeMuth, meaning Flora Nash DeMuth, the artist described a few days ago who did many of the sketches and postcards on this and other cruises (the rest were by her husband Martin DeMuth). The Chung collection has seven sets of the DeMuth’s postcards and sketches from this cruise, including 17 postcards (9.2 MB), 20 memograms (sketches and pre-printed letters that could be mailed to friends, 9.2 MB), 91 sketches mostly from December, 36 sketches (40.0 MB) from Egypt & India, 69 more sketches (55.1 MB), and 71 more sketches (56.1 MB).
Click image to view and download a 5.7-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
Canadian Pacific entertained passengers with a variety of musical and dance programs. Seven such programs are described in individual folders in the above Chung collection file. The red-and-white checkered flag, the official flag of Canadian Pacific ships for most of its history, had been personally designed by William Cornelius Van Horne, the railway’s chief engineer and second president. More programs are included in this Chung collection file (7.7 MB).
Click image to view and download a 5.0-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
We’ve already seen covers of many of the holiday menus used on this excursion, including Christmas, New Year, Robert Burns’ birthday, King Neptune’s dinner party (when the cruise first crossed the equator), Valentine’s day, and George Washington’s birthday, and in a few days I’ll show St. Patrick’s day. The above menu was used for the last dinner of the cruise and features the Chateau Frontenac, no doubt to remind Canadian passengers that they can stay there during their rail journey home from New York.
The Chung collection also has shore excursion booklets for Bangkok, Ceylon, Egypt, Havana, Hawaii, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Java, Athens, Keelung, Manila, Padang, Palestine, Peking, San Francisco, Shanghai, and Singapore. Most of these are 2 to 3 megabytes.
Another Chung collection file (23.7 MB) includes more information about Athens, Bangkok, and Jerusalem, along with several menus used at hotels visited by cruise members. Finally, another Chung collection file (227 MB) has more than 100 editions of the ship’s daily newsletter, the EMpress Cruise News. Each newsletter includes one page of news with a back cover showing photos of hotels, Banff, and other destinations reachable by Canadian Pacific trains.