Travellers' tales

Holiday romances can last forever!

This message was received from a visitor to the site who has chosen to remain anonymous:

Thank you for this website. I was a passenger on the Caledonien in 1968 and met my future husband on the ship! We are still happily married today and have fond memories of the voyage from Sydney to Marseilles.

A message from a crew member

J'ai decouvert votre site qui est tres bien grace au ancien des messageries maritimes j'ai nvigué au MM et j'etais a bord (je travaillais au bar des 1ere ) quand la photo au iles marquises a ete prise felicitation encore pour votre site amities.

From Mazzoni Ange.

Three stories from a 1958 passage

My father, Jacques Nalpas, was a purser for the MM: in 1956 he was sent to Australia to serve two years on the Polynésie. The family followed. We all came back in May 1958, on the Calédonien, and we went from Sydney to Marseilles. I was only eight years old, but for us it was a fantastic adventure. Here are three short stories I guarantee happened during that trip.

The lifeboat

One afternoon, halfway between Noumea and Tahiti, a rumour spreads across the ship: a lifeboat has been spotted on the horizon, the ship is changing course to rescue the survivors of a shipwreck. All the passengers rush down to their cabins to fetch binoculars and cameras, and they run back to the highest decks to have a better view. As we draw nearer, the image becomes more clear: those using binoculars describe what they see to the surrounding crowd. The lifeboat has capsized - some of the survivors have managed to climb back on the hull, clinging to the keel. After a few minutes, the excitement grows: we can see the people on the boat waving their arms to their rescuers. The sun is low on the horizon, the sky is turning orange, the sea is absolutely flat, no wind, no waves.

The Calédonien has slowed down. All of a sudden, here and there, cries of surprise: it is not a lifeboat, it is a large timber fallen from a cargo in some storm, with big seabirds perched on top, opening their wings to the declining sun. Frightened by the approach of the big ship, they flap their wings, but none of them has flown off, which would have immediately shown us our mistake. The Calédonien describes a large circle around the timber, salutes the birds with a blast of her siren, and resumes course to Tahiti.

The line of date change

The course of the ship is followed by the passengers: every day, bets are made on the number of miles in 24 hours; every four days or five days the clocks are moved by one hour. At the time of the French Colonial Empire there was always a priest among the passengers, travelling between Europe and French Polynesia or New Caledonia. So every Sunday passengers and crew would dress up and gather for the mass celebrated in the first class smoking room. On the ships going to Madagascar at the same period, the statues decorating the smoking room had two faces: one would represent a saint or a prophet, and once the mass was over, you could rotate the statue on its base, and a more prosaic figure would appear ... I do not remember this was the case on the Calédonien. Going to the mass has never been very exciting, especially for young children. One Monday morning, my mother urges us: dress up quickly, we have to go to the mass. I complain indignantly 'But it is Monday, there is no mass on Monday!'.

No, today it is Sunday again. For kids below 10 years old, it was difficult to grab the explanation of the line of change of date. And we had to assist to the same mass as the day before, but even the priest seemed to take it more lightly than usual: the sermon was shorter, people were less attentive, and still today I can feel the frustration of having to go to the mass twice in two days, for no good reason.

The encounter with the Tahitien

The Tahitien and the Calédonien were two sister ships, nearly identical. One morning, the word goes around the boat: today, we will cross the course of the Tahitien! At the time there was no GPS, encounters at sea not too frequent when you travel across the Pacific Ocean, and meeting a ship from the same company, meeting the sister ship, was a unique experience.

By radio, the company could inform the captains at sea of the position of the nearest ships and a meeting could be arranged, the boats steering towards one another using the instruments. Before the time of the encounter, people start to scrutinize the horizon: at last, a black dot with a trail of smoke, gradually a ship becomes visible, growing quickly: 15 meters above sea level, the distance to the horizon is only 10 miles, so the maximum distance you can see the smoke of another ship is about 20 miles, and the combined speed is close to forty knots. So in fact, it takes hardly 20 minutes before the two ships come alongside. The bow waves of the two ships, identical and parallel, rush towards one another, and when they meet, the water leaps in the air, and the waves continue their course, splashing the hulls of the two ships. The Passengers and crews salute the other ship, yelling, clapping their hands, each representing the future and the past of the other: those coming from Europe going to their future, which was the past of those coming back from Australia or New Caledonia.

And all of a sudden, it is over, the Tahitien is on its way to Noumea and Sydney, the Calédonien to Papeete.

From Dominique Nalpas with thanks.