A Tribute to the Swedish American Line The White Viking Fleet 14 Years on the Internet
.
.
.

On board the Kungsholm, Autumn of '68
By Lars Hemingstam

The MS Kungsholm sailed from Göteborg, Sweden, bound for New York on Friday, August 30, 1968, on the same day that The Beatles' single Hey Jude was released. I was newly employed as a junior purser (in Swedish 3:e kontorist, i.e. 3rd clerk), and it was with mixed feelings of anticipation and concern that I left Sweden. The Soviet Union had invaded Czechoslovakia just ten days earlier, and no one could know for sure what was going to happen next in Europe. I remember staring a long time at the lighthouse on the island of Vinga, an image I had grown up with at home, as my mother had made an oil painting of the island thirty years earlier.

I had sent a letter to SAL with a job application and was offered a career as a dish washer. At that time I was a technology student in Stockholm (KTH) and Captain Torkel Tistrand at the SAL personnel office assured me that I would be in good company as there were several civil engineers and Ph.D.'s working in the galley. I declined the offer. Then Captain Tistrand called back a few days later and asked if I could type. I sadly replied noooo, and he said I had a week to learn. They needed a clerk on the Kungsholm that was to sail for New York about ten days later.

I stayed on the Kungsholm for six months, and made four Atlantic crossings, a Cruise Around South America, a Fall Cruise of Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as a Christmas and New Year’s Cruise of Northern Africa, the Canary Islands, and Madeira.

My place of work was the purser’s office, midship on Upper Deck. We were four young men, all under 30, working in the office; in order of rank: the Cashier, the Information Officer, a 2nd clerk and myself, the 3rd clerk. We worked next door to the Chief Purser’s reception room.

We had different tasks, but a common concern for the office staff was to prepare the passenger manifests for the ports of call. Every port had its own form for the manifests, demanding information of every passenger’s full name, passport number, date of issue, occupation, home address and in some instances, mother’s maiden name. There were about 450 passengers and we used electric typewriters. The forms were supplied in advance by the SAL local agents in the ports. If there were any mistakes in the passenger lists, there would be trouble with customs and immigration authorities, and the passengers could be delayed going ashore. This had to be avoided, as the passengers had a tight schedule with shore excursions and were eager to leave the ship as soon as the gangway was secured. On one Atlantic crossing we had to retype the passenger manifest 3 times, as we discovered that we had got the alphabetical order mixed up.

My salary was SEK 1,400 (Swedish crowns) per month, with a uniform supplement of SEK 4,20 per day. This pay was very low, even for 1968, but as the crew worked every day of the week (Sundays and holidays included), a substantial amount of compensation (vederlag) accumulated during the time at sea. This compensation could be obtained in cash or used as shore leave when the ship returned to Sweden, making it possible for the crew to take long periods of leave and spend months with their families at home.

Highest in rank on the ship were the ship's officers on the bridge and the other merchant marine officers who had a formal education giving them authority to run a passenger ship on ocean trade; the Commander, the Chief Officer, the Chief Engineer, the First Radio Operator, and so on. The Chief Purser, the Ship’s Doctor and the Ship’s Chaplain also belonged to this category, giving them the right to dine and mingle with the cruise passengers and the first class passengers on the Atlantic crossings. They dined in the passengers’ dining room. Of course the most prominent passengers were seated at the Captain’s table. Seating the passengers correctly in the dining room was a tricky business, entrusted only to the most experienced head steward and the SAL cruise management staff from the New York office.

The category second in rank were the Deck officers, also with formal navy education, who had their meals in the officers’ mess.

Invitation to officers' party, 1968 In the next category, to which I belonged, were what we could call the "hotel management staff", such as the head stewards, the staff of the purser’s office, the nurses, the hair dressers, the gift shop's attendants, the ship’s photographers, the musicians, having our meals in our own mess (intendenturmässen). Then we have the rest of the crew, the hard working professional seamen, the engineers, the cabin stewards and stewardesses, the dining room stewards and the deck stewards, and the galley crew, the carpenter, the tailor, the laundry workers, who all had their meals in the crew’s mess. There was very little fraternizing between the different categories on board. This was not questioned in public, it was the way that such things always had been at sea. The members of the staff of the Purser’s Office lived in outward single cabins on B-deck, separated from the passenger area, only accessible via a "crew only" stairway from A-deck. Our cabins were equipped with a berth, a sofa with a table and a writing desk with a chair, a small wash basin and a wardrobe. Showers and toilets were at the end of the corridor. The Deck officers and the staff of the purser’s office had the right to socialize with the tourist class passengers on the Atlantic crossings, and we had our meals in the tourist class dining room. We were not allowed to be in the passenger area on the cruises, nor the first class area during the crossings. However we had the privilege to join the passengers’ shore excursions when the ship was in a port, if there were empty seats on the buses. This way I went on excursions in Lima, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Bridgetown, Casablanca, Nice, Monte Carlo and the island of Capri.

Invitation for cocktails, 1968 We had a lot of time off in all the ports, as the purser’s office was closed until about an hour before the ship’s departure. When at sea, we worked every day, Christmas and New Year included. I crossed the equator on the 29th of October, being splashed with food colors, having to kiss the foot of King Neptune’s Mistress, the Queen of the Seas, (one of the cabin stewardesses), and thrown into the crews’ pool. When I had showered, put on dry clothes, and joined my colleagues for a drink in one of the cabins, a hunting party of crew members ran into our corridor, and were, of course, told by my friends that I hadn’t been dipped. Fortunately we met friendly people along the way as I was being dragged back to the pool, and I was saved by an inch from having another set of clothes ruined. The second day of the Kungsholm's stay in Rio de Janeiro, we woke up and saw another ship with the Swedish flag next to us. It was Lion Ferry's Prins Hamlet, on charter for cruises in this part of the world. The Kungsholm's cashier persuaded the Brazilian customs officials to lend him a cap, and joined the authorities when they boarded the other ship. He behaved like a fool, demanding to be served whisky at 9.00 am, which was illegal, as the liquor stores always should be sealed in port. Before his real identity was revealed, he had instructed the Information Officer on Prins Hamlet to order the Captain to hoist the quarantine flag. Another memorable event occurred in the South Atlantic when the fire alarm went off, fortunately being a false alarm. While the elderly passengers were gathering anxiously at their life boat stations, convinced that the ship was about to sink, the ship’s photographer ran from one passenger to another, begging them to settle their accounts with him. At sea, I had only a fragmentary insight into the daily lives of the cruise passengers, the bridge games in the card room, the lectures, the cha-cha lessons, and - the cocktail parties being arranged with the assistance of the cruise staff - to which the passengers invited each other and sent invitations in return in an intricate social web. The cruise around South America offered 44 days of life in luxury, and the cruise to Europe and the Mediterranean was for 40 days. The average age of the passengers was about 65. I remember one first class passenger saying on an Atlantic crossing, that the best way to travel was to have a first class stateroom, and go to the tourist class lounge in the evenings to have fun. On the cruises, the majority of the passengers were very well to do, and there were "repeaters" treated like royalty, but some were very ordinary senior citizens who had saved money for many years to spend the vacation of their lives on the Kungsholm, "the happy ship with a happy crew". Read about Lars Hemingstam's experience of SAL here. Also, see the Bridge & Crew Pages