Canadian Pacific’s Mediterranean cruises included excursions to many of the same locations as the first part of its world cruises, including Madeira, Gibralter, Algiers, Cairo, Jerusalem, Naples, and Monaco, but the Med cruises also went to Seville, Constantinople, Athens, and Lisbon. Like the 1924 world cruise, the Mediterranean cruise was preceded and perhaps inspired by a 1922 Frank Clark cruise that chartered the Empress of Scotland. The Chung collection has a menu from that cruise.
Click image to view and download a 17.2-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
The 1924 cruise also used the Empress of Scotland, one of the ships originally built for Hamburg America and acquired by CP after the Great War. Though both were launched in the same year, Scotland was much bigger than the Empress of Britain, which CP used for its West Indies cruises.
The 1924 cruise left New York on January 14 and arrived in London on March 15. Fares ranged from $800 to $3,600 ($14,000 to $63,000 in today’s US dollars). This included a return trip to New York on some other line, bringing the complete cruise to more than 60 days. I suspect that, at the end of the cruise, the Empress of Scotland returned to trans-Atlantic duties to Montreal, so wasn’t able to take passengers to New York.
Click image to view and download a 22.1-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
The 1925 cruise booklet has an elaborate cover depicting a vulture representing the Egyptian goddess Nekhbet. The cruise left New York on February 9 on the Empress of Scotland. The above booklet doesn’t contain a detailed itinerary, but one can be found in this little booklet from the Chung collection, which also has a passenger list and a hard-bound book detailing shore excursions.
Click image to view and download a 49.5-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
The Chung collection doesn’t have booklets for 1926 or 1927, but the cover on the 1928 booklet is a flipped version of a painting used in the 1926-27 world cruise booklet. The cover painting on that booklet was signed Maurice Logan, but I’m pretty sure the interior paintings (which means this cover as well) were by either Charles James Greenwood or Gordon Fraser Gillespie. A small piece of the painting wraps around to the back, leaving lots of room for text which isn’t utilized on this cover.
Click image to view and download a 23.9-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
In 1929, CP was still using the Empress of Scotland but the cruise had been lengthened to 72 days, allowing for stops in Malta, Venice, and Jugo-Slavia, which is a spelling I hadn’t seen before. The extra length brought base fares up to $900 (about US$16,000 today), though the top fares remained $3,600. This unsigned cover wraps around to the back and enough is on the back that I’m showing both front and back in the above picture, but they don’t quite match up. The Chung collection also includes 89 memograms (83.2 MB) sketched by Flora DeMuth and given to passengers aboard the cruise.
Click image to view and download a 97.1-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
The Mediterranean cruises were so successful that Canadian Pacific decided to offer two cruises in 1930. The first, on the Empress of Scotland, left on February 3 and the second, on the Empress of France, on February 13. CP probably began planning each cruise two years before the cruise began, and couldn’t know that in 1930 the world would be entering one of the worst depressions in history.
To advertise the cruises, CP issued this hard-bound book, which is similar to the book used to advertise the 1929-30 world cruise. I actually have a copy of the Mediterranean book in my collection, but I am showing the Chung copy here to save me the time required to scan it. Since the ships had different deck plans, separate fare brochures were issued for the Empress of Scotland and Empress of France.
Click image to view and download a 13.8-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
In 1931, CP was back down to one Mediterranean cruise, this time on the Empress of France as the older Scotland had been scrapped the previous year. The above cover shows the mask of Tutankhamun, the pyramids, and the same vulture representing the goddess Nekhbet that was used on the cover of the 1925 booklet.
Click image to view and download a 8.9-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
The above cover was used on the passenger list for the 1931 cruise. The artwork isn’t signed, but the list indicates that Martin and Flora DeMuth were on board as cruise artists. This doesn’t look like Flora’s style so perhaps it was painted by Martin. The artist hand-drew the unusual cover font, as repeating letters like A, E, R, and S aren’t identical.