Friday, 6 May 1955
Storm photo taken on a later North Atlantic crossing on the Bremen
Rough weather, rough seas, medium swells, just off Newfoundland. Ruth out on deck in the morning, came back to our cabin with her face badly wind burned. She says she looks like a very old baby. Cold and raw. The usual listening later to the dull three-piece orchestra, definitely not the Nat King Cole trio. There was a captive audience for the movie, The Glass Slipper.
The ship is really pitching and rolling. Around midnight a drunken Dutch woman at the next table cracked her head on a bulkhead when she came to the bar to accuse someone, anyone, of stealing her $18 compact that her son had given her.
There are no laughs with the stewards, who to a man are aggressive about hustling tips. They look like hoodlums, heavily into slick pompadour hair styles with what's known in Boston as a "duck's ass look."
We beat a hasty retreat and are awakened around 4 AM when everything slid off the dressing table and the chairs began dancing. Lots of crashing to be heard in nearby cabins followed by loud groans and barfing, then hilarity from someone when china is heard crashing to the deck. Gripsholm is only 12,000 tons and very vulnerable to high seas.
The Cunard Line slogan, “Getting There is Half the Fun” immediately comes to mind.
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