Question: What was the crew accommodation like?
Disgusting. That it really was, I mean, if you were lucky you
had a cabin with a porthole and you used stick an iron shoot out
there to get the fresh air to come into the cabin because there was
no air-conditioning. There is forced air in there which was
more trouble than it was worth really, they'd blow it all around
the ship. That was the only means of air you had in the ...
you know, and sometimes the cabin used to be about 12 or 13, 14
people in the bloomin' cabin, you know. Enormous big cabins
with steel double beds in and you had a wooden locker on there and
a wooden table on … on steel legs and you used to have a blanket, a
bedspread with a Cunard white star seal on the bedspread. And yet
again you see it used to have a person on it called the glory hole
steward. You see and this glory hold steward would have make
to sure that everybody in his section was up. And if you paid
the glory hole steward, the glory hole steward used to whip round
these cabins in the morning, make the bed for you and bring you tea
in the morning. That was a glory hole steward. But he
only used to do that because he used to make money out of it you
see. And he used to keep the alleyways clean, the crew
alleyways and the crew stairways, which were big steel stairways
going down in the alleyways.
Now on the Queen Mary, you were a bit more fortunate on there
because our accommodation, the bellboys’ accommodation, was on B
Deck. It was just in front of the tourist class cinema. So we
used to come out of our cabin and there used to be an emergency
exit to the tourist cinema. We used to nip round there, take
the bolt off this emergency exit door, wait ‘til the film started
and you used to open this door and nip in quick and you found
yourself behind this screen. All the passengers'd be out
there and the screen would be up here and you used to sit behind
the screen but you could still see the movie although any writing
used to be around the other way (laughs) sort of thing you
know. We used to sit there and watch the movies, you know,
and it was quite good.
Question: Was there anything else you could do, did you
have any leisure time?
Oh yeah, yeah, we used to finish about 7 in the evening, something
like that unless of course you were in the restaurant, you used to
finish later, you used to be finished around about 7 in the
evening, of course that's when you used to start getting into all
the mischief, or I did, and a couple of buddies I had, a few
others, I was always a bit of a tearaway I suppose, but we used to
get dressed up in black balaclava helmets and bow and arrows that
we bought to New York (laughs) because we had all the money we used
go up there playing Commandoes around the deck you know, and of
course we used to kick up havoc. People used to start
complaining and we'd jump around up there and make a noise like you
know, people started complaining. I remember one occasion
that we were up there skylarking around and shooting bloody arrows
around all over the place about five of us, and they switched on
all the lights on the Queen Mary, all the outboard running lights
and all the ship suddenly lit up and of course we had these
officers on the bridge, come down off the bridge looking
(laughs)...I remember I was always in between the you know the
funnel housing and the next port housing they had a gap which...I
was always good at walking up the wall, putting my back to one wall
and walking up, going up that, and you know what I mean. You
could go up the wall and I remember doing that and I remember these
officers of course underneath me (laughs). None of them
looked up or they would have seen me but...uh... they were all
running round there looking for these kids running round with these
bows and arrows kicking up havoc on board the Queen Mary
anyway.
