Canadian Pacific’s 1936 world cruise was little changed from the previous couple of years. Leaving January 9 aboard the Empress of Britain, the cruise visited 31 ports in 130 days.
Click image to view and download a 64.0-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
The cover painting on this booklet advertising the cruise shows a Chinese girl dressed for a holiday. This is a detail from a painting in the 1926-27 world cruise booklet and was probably by Charles Greenwood or Gordon Gillespie.
Click image to view and download a 48.0-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
The booklet distributed to prospective European passengers had a very different cover. It was painted by Ellis Silas (1885-1972), an English painter we haven’t seen before. Born in London, he learned to paint from his father, who was also an artist. He became known for his sketches of the Great War, then specialized in marine paintings, and after World War II he did posters for British Railways.
Click image to view and download a 5.0-MB PDF of this brochure from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
This brochure provides basic information about the cruise, including an itinerary but not fares. It is entirely in French.
Click image to view and download a 2.2-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
This short brochure mainly includes the itinerary for the cruise. Since the main advertising booklets stopped including itineraries a few years before this, these were often published in separate brochures.
Click image to view and download a 10.8-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
This brochure presents both an itinerary and fares in dollars. Most fares are the same as in 1935, but some of the premiere rooms and suites have seen prices grow by several hundred dollars. Fares for rooms on the top deck — called the sun deck in this brochure but the sports deck in 1935 — grew by $150 per person. The fares for the premiere suites increased by $300 to $500 per person. These small increases didn’t hurt the cruise, which attracted 14 more passengers than in 1935 (414 instead of 400).
The cover illustration is painted in the same style as the unsigned paintings in the 1926-27 booklet. This one is signed “Gillespie,” meaning, of course, Gordon Gillespie.
Click image to view and download a 12.4-MB PDF of this brochure from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
This brochure is entirely in French except that it lists fares in French livres, which used the same symbol and were worth approximately the same as British pounds. France had replaced livres with francs as a unit of currency, but just as some prices in England were still quoted in guineas, some in France were still quoted in livres.
Click image to view and download a 8.9-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
The passenger list used the same cover art as for the 1935 cruise. Among the passengers were Sir Kenneth B. Harper, Lady Harper, and their daughter Etta. Kenneth Harper was a cricketer in his youth but played “with no success whatsoever.” After serving in the marines in the Great War, he moved to India where he served in the legislature, then in 1936 became a director for Burmah Oil, eventually becoming its president.
Someone must have heard my complaint about not using the first names of married women in the passenger list. This list uses the first names of married women (or widows) who are traveling without their husbands. Married women traveling with their husbands are still listed only by their last name (meaning their husband’s name).
Click image to view and download a 1.9-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
One of the ports visited by the cruise was Chinwangdao, also spelled Chinglungchiao, and today spelled Qinhuangdao. After taking a boat three miles from the ship to shore, passengers boarded the Peiping-Liaoning Railway to go to Peiping. This is a menu that also provides some information about the trip.
Click image to view and download a 2.3-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
Here’s another menu from the return trip on the Peiping-Liaoning Railway. Both of these menus were designed and printed by Canadian Pacific.
Click image to view and download a 5.4-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.
No doubt Canadian Pacific had a full complement of booklets describing excursions at each of the ports, but the only one from this cruise in the Chung collection is for Kobe, Japan.