1960 The Grace Line Sisters

We flew to Port Everglades to board the ship to Venezuela.  My dad went with us.  I remember being amazed at how the houses in Port Everglades all seemed to be on canal with a boat at each house.  After my dad got us all settled on board, he was going to fly to Caracas and be there when we arrived a week later.  Turning my mother, my sister, our dog, and me loose on a cruise ship was probably not the best idea he’d ever had.  My mother immediately developed a mad crush on the purser.  Oddly enough, the purser’s office was almost right around the corner from our cabins (we had 2, one for my sister and me and one for my mother).  Velvet was installed in the kennel on the upper deck but he always got out and finally the captain decided it would be easier for him just to stay with us.  I was in charge of him, which was wonderful, because all I did all day was wander all over the ship with him in tow.

The second night out, we had dinner at the Captain’s table, and he told us he would take us on a tour of the engine room if we wanted.  I was ecstatic.  My sister didn’t come; it was just Mother and me.  I couldn’t believe how huge everything was and how amazing clean, and noisy.  We could actually see the bottom of the hull.  It was incredible.   We pretty much ran wild for the whole trip.  Mother was ‘preoccupied’, so we just caused as much havoc as possible.  

We docked in Haiti; I’ll never forget how beautiful it was.  We took a taxi to the top of a mountain where there was a restaurant where we had lunch.  My dad had left his Zeiss-Ikon camera with me and I took a ton of pictures.  One of the things I remember the most about Haiti was that as soon as the ship was docked, canoes filled with little kids came out alongside the ship, and they kids called up for money.  All the passengers threw coins down and the kids would catch them or jump out of the canoes and go diving for them.  I remember the water was really dark green.  Haiti really made an impression on me, probably because I had heard about voodoo and I kept looking for traces of it like snakes hanging from trees, etc.  We were only there for one afternoon and evening.  We had to be back on the ship that night to leave early in the morning.

We also stopped in Curacao, which I loved. It reminded me of Holland.  The ship had to make a sharp turn to get into the harbor and the dock.    

We took the Santa Rosa one way, and the Santa Paula the other way, but I don’t remember which was first.

The trip home about 9 months later was not half as exciting.  Velvet stayed in the kennel.  There was no handsome purser or running through the hallways at midnight.  We stopped in Aruba.  It was nothing but a big rock in the middle of the sea.  We tied up at a barren dock and were driven to a small restaurant.  We took a taxi and drove around the island a little, but there was basically nothing there but some oil facility buildings.  It’s hard to believe it’s the same Aruba as one sees now.  

We also stopped in Jamaica and there was a Russian submarine docked there.  It was amazing to see that.  I loved submarines and ships and anything to do with them.  Standing on the deck looking down at that little submarine, and hearing Jamaican music playing was surreal.  There was a big storm in the Caribbean, which was why we went to Jamaica instead of the Dominican Republic, as had been originally planned.