I am not sure where this little print came from – no doubt it was part of some job lot of old photographs I bought. It shows the crowded deck of a boat, and must have been taken at some point in the 1920s. It could be a ferry, but the people seem a little too well-dressed to be crossing the Mersey, or even the Solent. The other possibility is that it was taken on a cruise ship. Cruising isn’t just a modern phenomenon: cruises to Europe and even more exotic locations, were popular during the 1920s (last year I published a little book – “Heading North” – based on a collection of photographs taken on a 1925 cruise to Scandinavia).
It would be too much of a coincidence for this photograph to come from the same cruise as the one featured in my book, but as I focus on the individual faces, I see the same styles, the same features, the same times.
That has always been one of the real delights of collecting unknown, old photographs: cruising through the faces, looking for stories. Is the man looking over his shoulder to the past? Is the young woman with the long hair seeing the future? We can only imagine.
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