As noted yesterday, Canadian Pacific doesn’t seem to have held a Mediterranean from New York in 1939, probably due to European troubles. Instead, the company offered a summer cruise of major North American destinations, including Cuba, Panama, Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska.
Click image to view and download a 12.5-MB PDF of this brochure from the Chung collection. This file also includes a 1932 brochure about a Mediterranean cruise from Southampton.
For the cruise, the Duchess of Richmond left Montreal on July 1 and New York on July 6, returning to New York on September 3 and Montreal on September 7, thus taking a maximum of 69 days. Fares ranged from $595 per person (about $13,000 today) for an inside room on a lower deck to as much as $1,250 per person (about $27,000 today) for an outside room with a bath on an upper deck.
As shown on the above map, after leaving New York the cruise went to Jamaica, Panama, Los Angeles, and Honolulu. It them made several stops in Alaska, then returned via Victoria and Vancouver, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. It stopped in Acapulco and, on the opposite side of Mexico, Vera Cruz before going to Havana and then returning to New York and Montreal.
Most other Canadian Pacific cruises included a variety of shore excursions in the fares. This one asks $50 ($1,100 today) for sightseeing tours of Kingston, Balboa, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Juneau, Vancouver, Victoria, San Francisco, Acapulco, and Havana. These tours were by automobile or motor coach and did not include lunch or other meals except in Acapulco. Considering that most of the places visited by these tours were quite a few miles from the docks, these excursions were probably worthwhile.
Passengers also had the option of skipping the second passage of the Panama Canal and instead taking an overland tour of Mexico from Acapulco to Vera Cruz, including several days in Mexico City. Seven of the eight nights were spent in Mexico City, from which a variety of bus tours were included. The trip from Mexico City to Vera Cruz was by train. This tour cost an extra $100 double occupancy, $110 single occupancy ($2,200 to $2,400 today). Passengers who took this tour missed the Acapulco sightseeing tour.
Passengers were on their own during a day-long stop at Sitka, Alaska; a second day-long stop in Los Angeles; an overnight stop in Cristobal, Panama; and (for those who didn’t take the overland tour in Mexico) a 28-hour stop in Vera Cruz. Except for Los Angeles, these cities were small enough that a motorized sightseeing tour wasn’t necessary and, at least in Sitka, that’s still true.
As far as can be discerned from the items in the Chung collection, this tour was only offered in 1939. Climatically, the tour doesn’t make sense: while Alaska and the St. Lawrence Seaway were only accessible during a summer tour (and CP already had summer Alaska cruises), most of the other destinations reached by the tour were far more comfortable in winter than summer.
Click image to view and download a 7.6-MB PDF of this booklet from the Chung collection.
Despite this drawback, Canadian Pacific was able to attract a lot of passengers. The Duchess of Richmond was set up with 522 berths for this cruise, and the above passenger list includes 507 members, meaning nearly all of the berths were taken. None of the names on the list jump out at me as famous people, but I’m pleased to note that the list includes the first names of both married and unmarried women.