Here’s another Alaska steamship dinner menu whose cover, like yesterday’s, has more to do with the Caribbean than with the North Pacific. Barbados was claimed by the Portuguese in the 1500s but then abandoned after they enslaved most of its population and the rest fled to other islands. This menu glosses over that fact, saying the Portuguese left behind some pigs but otherwise “left the island in all other respects, as they had found it.”

Click image to download a 860-KB PDF of this menu.

According to this menu, the British then discovered and claimed the unpopulated island in 1605. Wikipedia says it was 1625, though that may have been when the English first started to settle the island. In any case, many of the “settlers” were indentured servants or African slaves, so the English do not look much better in today’s eyes than the Portuguese.

This menu was used on the Prince Rupert on June 28, 1934. The menu offers the possibility of an eight-course meal (nine including the ending demitasse). Four of the courses on this menu would classically be called fish, entrée (in this case calf sweetbreads or lamb cutlets), joint (in this case prime rib), and roast (in this case turkey).

I suspect many people on board the Rupert would eat only one or two of those courses. On the other hand, the trip up the Inside Passage was slow and could be boring at times. Eating a lengthy meal was one way to relieve that boredom.