A Postcard History of the Passenger Liner
by Christopher Deakes 6 Nov 2023 18:34 PST
The great liners through the years - a very different way to travel, steeped in a rich imagination and full of atmosphere © Globe Pequot
From around 1880, for almost a hundred years, shipowners commissioned a wealth of paintings that depicted their magnificent liners as well as the routes they travelled, their exotic destinations, and life onboard. These paintings, rich in imagination and atmosphere, appeared on postcards and posters of the day and were used to advertise the companies and their ships; and so was born a whole genre that produced tens of thousands of paintings which formed a wonderful record of the great era of the Passenger liner.
In 1900, there were over thirty shipping companies operating passenger liners across the North Atlantic. Other oceans were similarly served. But now, with just a few exceptions, the companies and their liners have disappeared along with the art they once inspired. Little remains to recall this aspect of our maritime past except the postcards; and they tell an evocative story of the vanished world of elegant ships and leisurely travel, of social and political times much changed by the history of the past century.
Here, brought vividly to life in more than 500 colourful postcards, are the ships on which so many of our predecessors sailed—as emigrants, soldiers, administrators, or simply as tourists—in days long past. These cards, which are now highly collectable, show how steamships developed over the years, but they are also a fine tribute to the artists who painted them. This volume also includes a glossary of some 170 illustrators, which forms an important reference section, and advice on collecting.
Excerpt from A Postcard History of the Passenger Liner
Preface
This book is about ships and paintings – in particular, it shows the development of the passenger liner through contemporary paintings issued as postcards.
I have tried to sketch the development of the liner – its design, routes, the passengers it carried – from 1880 to about 1980, and the postcards featured here reflect some of the enormous changes that took place during this time – in technology and trade, politics, society, in design and advertising, and in art. There are already many fine books available about this period of maritime history, and so the information about shipping given in these pages serves really to set the scene for the pictures themselves. Here, the artist’s use of colour instils each scene with more imagination and a greater sense of atmosphere than a photograph might allow, and the result is a lively and personal view of the life and times of the great liners.
Although many of the ships depicted in these pages are well documented, this is not the case with most of the artists who painted them. Comparatively few are mentioned in art directories, and when they are, information is often lacking or uncertain. It seems unjust that these artists and illustrators who recorded maritime history and have given so much pleasure by their paintings should simply be forgotten. I hope this book will rectify this omission to some extent, for I believe that many of the facts about them appear here for the first time in a publication of this nature.
Introduction
‘Here She is – the anchor is being weighed – Goodbye.’
There must have been countless last messages like that one – sent on a postcard on a November day in 1913, the coastline of Britain slipping steadily away behind the liner as she turned towards the Atlantic. It is hard to imagine the mixture of emotions that such a sender would have experienced – excitement mingled with apprehension at the journey now under way and the unknown adventures that lay in wait for him, and sadness as he thought of those he loved whom he had left behind. And yet, at this moment of turmoil, the sender could draw attention to the picture of the ship on which he was sailing – ‘Here she is.’
Liners were big news. They were the fabulous beasts of their time, roaming the oceans. Their pictures and stories about them and their passengers appeared in magazines; newspapers carried reports of their progress around the world, and shops sold jigsaws, postcards and toys that featured them.
Shipowners had always wanted paintings of their ships, and as their companies grew, they commissioned pictures of their latest passenger liners, which they displayed in their boardrooms, in their agents’ offices, on the ships themselves. As the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth, such paintings began to be used for posters and postcards to persuade the public to travel on the passenger ships depicted. Famous artists like W L Wyllie and Hans Bohrdt, the Kaiser’s court painter, as well as leading poster designers such as Henri Cassiers and Dudley Hardy, and other artists who are now quite unknown, were paid by the steamship owners to paint these ship portraits.
In 1900, across the North Atlantic alone, over thirty shipping lines were running regular passenger services. Now there is not one with a full-time transatlantic schedule. A similar story can be told for every ocean. With just a few exceptions, the companies that owned the liners have gone, and with them the wealth of art created for them. The ships, the agencies, the magnificent head offices have almost all disappeared. Of the tens of thousands of ship portraits that were painted, it seems only a few remain in private offices or museum vaults. It is as if this whole aspect of our maritime heritage has vanished.
And the passenger liner, the reason for almost all these paintings, has also gone. The liner reflected the history of the time, evolving to meet the needs of nations to carry emigrants, soldiers, colonists and administrators to a rapidly expanding world. For a while it was the most powerful creation known to man, symbolising the self-confidence of an era whose people foresaw no challenge to their lives and beliefs. Then, within a space of about twenty years, everything changed; and less than a century after its arrival the passenger liner became a legend of the past.
Yet there remains a particular glamour surrounding the liner, as if something unique had evolved which we cannot let go. These ships generated a sense of wonder, of excitement, that still lingers. But time has moved on, and they have gone.
The portraits of these wonderful ships may have gone, too, but there still remain postcards made from many of the original paintings. They alone can show how contemporary artists viewed the passenger liner’s development over a period of a hundred years. This collection reveals artistic excellence as well as quite rough work; it illustrates famous ships and others scarcely heard of; and throughout, the messages of those who sent the cards present a glimpse of a different social world, which has also now disappeared.
About the Author
Christopher Deakes worked for many years as a shipping agent in the Far East and different parts of Africa. He carried out research for this book with the help of many different organisations, including embassies, museums and libraries, auction houses, art galleries and dealers, universities and shipping lines, both in the UK and abroad, and his remarkable collection of postcards forms the core of this work.