The booklet advertising the 1935 world cruise featured faux luggage stickers, likely drawn by CP staff artists. The largest sticker on the back cover is for Angkor Wat, the Cambodian ruin that was an optional exclusion in both the 1934 and 1935 cruises. Members took a train to the ruin which was limited to just 70 passengers. This option cost $232.75, which is about $5,000 in today’s money.

Click image to view and download a 62.4-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.

The Chung collection has two different booklets advertising the cruise. The above booklet is for North American passengers while the one below is for European passengers who would begin their trips in Monaco and end them in New York. As shown below, they could then continue to Southampton on the Empress of Britain. Continue reading →

Leaving New York on December 3 and returning on April 11, the 1932-33 world cruise was 129 days long, two days longer than in 1931-32. The first 20 pages of the booklet below re-introduces us to the new Empress of Britain, including some rooms not shown in the introductory booklets. A library had walls of Circassian Walnut (but no bookshelves; apparently it was more of a writing room than a reading room). A movie theater was fully equipped to show “talkies.” Turkish baths aren’t shown but, the booklet says, were “decorated in marble and silver.”

Click image to view and download a 73.9-MB PDF of this booklet from the University of British Columbia Chung collection.

The cover of the booklet is signed GFG, meaning Gordon Fraser Gillespie, one of Canadian Pacific’s staff artists. He first began working on commission for CP in 1913 and in 1948 was placed in charge for all commercial art for the railroad. At some point between those two years he began working for CP full-time. I’ve previously stated that I suspect he and/or Charles James Greenwood, another staff artist, contributed many of the paintings to the 1926-27 world cruise booklet without getting any credit. I’m glad he got credit for this one. Continue reading →

The introduction of the second Empress of Britain was so momentous in Canadian Pacific ocean liner history that I’m using 1931, rather than 1930, to divide the ’20s from the ’30s in these posts documenting the empress fleet. The Britain, whose maiden voyage began on May 27, 1931, was the largest and fastest ocean liner ever to regularly serve Canada and, when she went on nine world cruises, she was the largest ocean liner to visit most of the ports she visited, including Los Angeles.

Click image to download a 34.8-MB PDF of this 28-page booklet. I redid the Chung collection’s PDF of this booklet to restore the colors and make pages correctly oppose one another. Click here to download a 63.5-MB PDF of the Chung collection’s version from the University of British Columbia library.

CP issued the above booklet early in 1931 to publicize the ship before photos were available. The cover painting — which wraps around the back; click here to download a 2.6-MB PDF of the full front- and back-covers — as well as thirteen interior paintings are by a then-unknown English artist, Frederick Griffin (1906-1976), who was only 24 years old at the time. He later did many travel posters for British railroads and airlines. Continue reading →