Arcadia - myth or reality?

Morning Coffee Sunrise today.

Good Day Everyone,

We are now on our fourth sea day on our Atlantic crossing to Barbados - and it is beautiful day with perfect weather and sea conditions! With the clock going back one hour for the past couple of days I was awake this morning at 05:15! I looked out and to my absolute amazement the dark sky was lit up like a Christmas tree with white lights blazing. I have never seen so many stars twinkling in my life - it was really awesome. You just never know what you are going to see next on a cruise. Thanks for all your messages, I was serving on board Canberra for her final season and many memories of the last cruise and the decommissioning, perhaps I will write more one day.

Ken Vard pictured above, is our Guest Lecturer on Maritime History and I was delighted when he said he would write an article for my blog. Here it is..............

ARCADIA

Is Arcadia a myth or a reality? In ancient folklore, Arcadia was a land of beauty & perfection but did not in fact exist.

I know Arcadia exists, but it is not of the earth, ARCADIA is of the sea, ARCADIA is a ship,

There have in fact been 4 P&O ships named ARCADIA (the first one built in 1887) and I have sailed on 3 of them & not, I may add, on the first one. Each in their own way a beauty and each with her own strong character & personality.

First let me introduce myself and tell you the reason for this short appreciation of the vessel I am now sailing on. My name is Kenneth Vard I am a ‘ship buff’ and for the past 20 years I have had the privilege and pleasure of sailing on many ships in the P&O Cruises Fleet. I am now working as a story-teller weaving a tapestry of words into lectures for the passengers.

My subject is the story of great ocean-liners. During the last 20 years I have met and known many people who live their lives working as crew on the ships. As the years rush past I have seen that young comis-waiters are now Restaurant Managers; Junior Officers are now Captains and Captains have become Commodores. First Engineers then become Chief Engineers, while young men and woman who were working at the Reception Desks have now become Executive Pursers.

One of whom, James Cusick, is now the Executive Purser of the latest ARCADIA, on which I am currently sailing. James and I have known each other since the 1980s, and his laughter and good humour is, and has been a source of delight to all who have come to know and sail with him. James asked me to contribute a few words to be included in his blog which he publishes on the World Wide Web and I am delighted to have the opportunity to do so here.

I was born and brought up in Belfast, almost within the shadow of the great cranes and gantries of the Harland & Wolff shipyards. It was there that I learned about the building of great ships. Those vast shipyards became my fascination as a schoolboy. The ships built there were incredible examples of human audacity created from steel and they were a source of wonderment to me. I loved the look, the romance and the very smell of ocean-liners from those far-off days until the present day over half a century later.

It was in the year 1954 that I and my sister were taken by our parents on our first cruise. I was 17 and the ship was the brand new ARCADIA. In those days she was a two class, ocean-liner built for the Australian passenger service. She was the largest in the P&O Cruises Fleet at almost 28,000 tons; a white yacht-like vessel with her name emblazoned in lights at the base of her huge yellow, black-topped funnel. We travelled in the first class section and to me she was the height of luxury and romantic elegance. My cabin did not have a private bathroom, (few ships did in those days, even in first class). There was no air-conditioning in the cabins or public rooms, only the restaurant & Deluxe Suite had it then. Some years later the entire ship was fitted with air-con, but at the time of my voyage my porthole would be open and the sea breeze would waft into the cabin and the sound of the ocean would lull me to sleep. I fell in love with ARCADIA during those magical 14 days to the Mediterranean. P&O Cruises and their fabulous ship with her Asian crew and exotic flavour of the East captured me and I became a fan forever.

Ken pictured here with his Mother on board SS Arcadia in 1954.

In later years I sailed on other ships of the line; CHUSAN from Long Beach to Vancouver; IBERIA to the Canary Islands and of course the beautiful CANBERRA carried me on many great voyages all over the world. I watched Canberra being built in Belfast, and I was at her launching in 1961. I worked aboard her as a lecturer on her final cruise in 1997. Her replacement was the next ARCADIA in re-launched in 1997, a purpose built cruise-ship that had originally been built as the STAR PRINCESS in 1987 and taken over by P&O from Princess Cruises. At almost 64,000 tons she was, I thought, huge! Eventually she was transferred from the company to become the OCEAN VILLAGE. She brought me to Sydney and at that time she was the largest ship ever to have sailed under the harbour bridge to her berth at Darling harbour.

As these few words are directed at the ships with the name ARCADIA I will not go into the voyages I have taken on others including both the ORIANAs or SEA PRINCESS
(later VICTORIA) or AURORA, ARTEMIS, ADONIA or OCEANA all of which I have a soft spot for.

Each of those great ships has brought me to the far reaches of the world’s oceans.
I have had the delight of living the good-life on them and have been safely delivered to the Americas, Australasia, Asia, and the Baltic and around the Mediterranean. Each port is in its own way, more interesting and more beautiful than the next over the horizon.

The passengers and crew aboard those ships have all added to the sum total of my life’s great memories and now I am once more on the greatest and newest ARCADIA of them all. As I write she has just departed from her first port of call, Madeira, on this her 2010 circumnavigation of the planet. Sadly, I will not be aboard for the entire voyage. This time I am sailing only as far as San Francisco some 3 weeks away, with the Caribbean islands, Panama and Mexico to savour before I disembark.

Quietly elegant would be the way I would describe this ship; spectacular in an unspectacular way; sleek and majestic in her lines with soft colours predominating in her decor. There is nothing brash or flashy about this ship. The art-works are contemporary and can be found lurking in odd corners of the ship, as well as full frontal in the main rooms! Glass sculptures, ceramics, paintings, fabulous ship models, and two giant Faberge-like mirrored eggs stand guard at the entrance to her huge theatre. The Palladium Theatre soars to the height of 3 decks. The ship is emblazoned with art-deco carpets; soft furnishings in exotic fabrics; deep enfolding chairs in a plethora of lounges and bars. The Meridian is a vast double-decked restaurant, which competes with those other restaurants more intimate in character where fine dining with soft lights can be had for a mere pittance as an extra tariff. One of these restaurants is the Arcadian Rhodes Restaurant which is under the auspices of Celebrity Chef Gary Rhodes. The other fine dining restaurant, The Orchid, is in a panoramic position giving diners the opportunity to delight in an Eastern Fusion menu while gazing at the passing seascapes.

Arcadia’s open decks are measured in acres and her swimming pools seem Olympic in their dimensions. All in all, this 83,781 ton beauty is a worthy carrier of the name ARCADIA, a place of myth that transcends her reality as a ship. This is a ship of great beauty, character, friendliness and charisma.

To her and her fabulous Ship’s Company and those fortunate enough to sail the seas on her as passengers, I wish fair winds, calm seas and magical ports over the limitless horizon ahead.

To me this is ARCADIA, and she is not a myth.

I wrote my book "Liners in Art" as a tribute to the age of ocean-liners and to those ships that had, and still do have, an uncanny affinity with the humanity that create them.

AFFINITY

As a ship will seek shelter in its harbour, so too will you.
It nuzzles the dock
Its presence is felt
It becomes as one with its space, and settles into familiarity.
It takes in its lifeblood, moving slowly and restlessly, till the time is right.
Then it is gone and suddenly it seems as if it were no-more and never was.
You too are as real and as fleeting as a ship.
Touching and leaving the harbours of your life.
With nothing to prove you were there, other than the reality of your being
As remembered by others.

KV

My thanks to Ken Vard. I hope you enjoyed this article, I certainly did.


Morning rush hour Arcadia Style!

Arcadia sails on towards the Indies, next port Barbados. Everyone is so happy now that the sunshine is here! I hope to get myself on a sun lounger this afternoon to give me a glow for The Portunus Parties this evening in The Crows Nest! Lovely thought......



Until the next time, all good wishes,

James.

The greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.

Jonas Salk