Meals on board

[Stefan Christiansson]

I know the dinner in the first class dining saloon was included in the ticket price, but what else was included? Were all meals included except for the a la carte restaurant? Were coffee ,tea and snacks free? How about drinks in the smoking room?

 

[George Pastarmatzis]

Hi! Were additional things also charged within one's ticket? For instance, taking your meals in your cabin or personal service (helping you to dress, fix up the room etc.)? Were such things regarded as an opportunity for tipping a steward? Thanks?

 

[Jeremy Lee]

>>personal service (helping you to dress, fix up the room etc.)<<

Would stewards help you to dress? I don't think so..... but I think you could tip them for any 'extra services' they did.

 

[Lee Gilliland]

If you had no valet (or maid, for the ladies) a steward or stewardess helped you dress, and laid out what you were to wear the way you liked it - in ANTR Lord portrays Stewards Alfred Crawford and Henry Samuel Etches helping their charges into the lifebelts, as an expected service. Tipping was encouraged - my grandmother had this little book that showed you the precise amount you should tip in various travelling situations, written by Emily Post, so I imagine that kind of thing was well-established.

 

[Nichole Tamayo]

I'm coming onto this thread a few months after the point, but hey, better late than never, right?

Stefan,
Everything on the ship was included in the ticket price except for the A La Carte Restaurant. Coffee, Tea and biscuits and even soup were served to your room or out on deck as requested (tipping was appropriate and appreciated for these services), same with the drinks.

Jeremy,
Most families would either bring their own servant or use one of the ship's to help organize and set out their attire. As you know, women needed help with their corsets at this time and would have one of the ship's stewardess's help them.

Hope this helps somewhat

Nickey

 

[Bob Godfrey]

Hallo, Nickie. Actually, alcoholic drinks were not included in the ticket price. First Class passengers were provided with a list of charges, records were kept of any drinks or tobacco products ordered, and accounts settled at the end of the voyage. There were a number of other services also which cost extra, like the use of the Turkish bath or the racquet court.

 

[monica e. hall]

Nobody has ever included wholesale free drinks in a ticket price. You have to make a profit after all, and this is one of the best ways of doing it. Besides which, free drinks tend to impact on people's behaviour - and such a policy could have led to the loss of the entire first class - slumbering peacefully throughout the whole episode. Though that might have been better than being alert and sober on the deck at 2.00 am...

 

[Bob Godfrey]

By 2am the drinks were free - in honour of the special occasion. At other times they certainly were profitable - beer for instance was sixpence a bottle, at a time when the standard charge in pubs onshore was twopence or threepence.

 

[David F. Smith]

Don't forget that you could get a $25 discount on your ticket if you opted to take all your meals at the Ala Carte restaraunt.

 

[Lee Gilliland]

"...free drinks tend to impact on people's behaviour - and such a policy could have led to the loss of the entire first class - slumbering peacefully throughout the whole episode."

Good point, Monica. After all, look what happened in exactly the opposite circumstances on the Morro Castle - the vast majority of that tragedy could be directly linked to alcohol.

 

[monica e. hall]

Good Lord, Lee!
I've heard of the Morro Castle, but didn't know the details until I looked it up just now on the Net - what a dreadful shambles. I've never seen such a catalogue of culpable disaster. Dead Captain, idiotic Chief, drugs and illegals smuggling, drunken crew and passengers, Radio operator later accused of murders .. you couldn't make it up. Amazing things happen at sea. What was that fairly recent one, that was videod and shown on TV, where the crew were last seen zooming over the horizon in the boats - ostensibly to 'fetch help' - leaving the entertainments staff to muster the passengers and keep them calm until they could be winched off the sloping decks by helicopter?

 

[Dave Gittins]

I recently saw a TV program in which a survivor of the Estonia disaster attributed his survival to the fact that he was awake and sober. On the same program, a member of one of the Scandinavian rescue services said that he considered the drunken state of many ferry passengers to be a serious risk. In some areas there is a great deal of cruising and boozing, especially if duty=free booze can be bought. Of course many inshore accidents to small boats are alcohol fueled.

 

[monica e. hall]

Odd, isn't it? The only place I ever drink now is in my own home - quite a reversal from twenty years ago (I'm doing it now, after teaching nightschool!). But it seems safer. Having a (probably irrational) fear of Ro-Ro ferries in the English Channel / Bay of Biscay, I have never drunk anything on them - I was also always in charge of my young children, and usually battened in a cabin below the car deck (arrggh!) - but I was always surprised to see how many of the passengers were pie-eyed. I think they regard it as the start of a holiday or something. Most unwise!

 

[Lee Gilliland]

And yet from what a lot of my friends have told me, drinking and eating are the two main entertainments on cruise ships these days. Ah well, get to find out for myself next year I guess - I know the drinks will be far from free!

 

[Inger Sheil]

Nobody has ever included wholesale free drinks in a ticket price.

Lol! I've been on dive liveaboard boats where there's an open bar and a vast freezer filled with soft drink, fruit juice and alcoholic drinks with a 'help yourself' policy. However, they're on to a pretty sure thing there, so it wouldn't really be open slather...having paid to travel half-way around the world to a remote tropical paradise (in one boat I was on, for example, Palau), no one is going to risk the associated problems of dehydration and increased risk of decompression illness by writing themselves off. Some boats operate a policy of 'if you're seen with a beer in your hand, we assume you're done diving for the day'. There have been tragic episodes, however, of folks partying too hard on the last night out, leading to dive accidents the following day.

Given that I like to dive fairly hard-core (four - five dives a day at reasonable depth) when I'm on one of these vessels, I wouldn't dream of imbibing more than a couple of drinks. It can be many hours - and sometimes days - to the nearest decompression chamber. Still, one or two on deck under blazing tropical stars with the gentle rock of the boat, after dinner and the night dive are done, watching what comes up to the surface of the sea to feed in the boat's lights, is an exquisite pleasure.