John Delach

Introduction and Part One

In 2011, I self-published my fifth and final anthology of pieces I had written from 2001 to 2010. I gave it the title, The Big Orange Dog and Other Stories. Shaun Clancy, the salon keeper of Foley’s NY Pub & Restaurant located on 33^rd Street offered me the opportunity to have a book signing in his sports bar.

Shaun asked me would I be willing to record and transcribe his father’s life-experiences, an amazing collection of extraordinary stories.

Of course, I agreed.

At times, it was like pulling teeth, but we finished our mission in 2013, when we published: Never Say: I Can’t.

 When John finished school, his father set him up to move to London and become an apprentice at a pub in London. Too young to serve alcohol, he was relegated to being the lowest of the low in the pub’s hierarchy. Essentially, he fell into being an indentured servant who was treated like a dog. Once he turned, 18, John made his escape by signing on as an ordinary seaman in the British Merchant Marine. Unfortunately, his choices were few and he picked an old dog to be his first assignment, the  SS Otronto. This passenger ship was built in 1926 and had been relegated to becoming aa immigration ship carrying failed Brits to Australia, only to return those Brits who failed in Australia back home again on return voyages.

John made three voyages between Australia and London as a steward because of his experience apprenticing in that London Pub. He was promoted from the Otronto to the modern Orcades, the Orient Lines first post-Second War liner completed in 1948.

John Clancy joined the Cunard Lines in 1957, first as a steward on the RMS Mauretania. Eventually, he was assigned to the RMS Queen Elizabeth.

RMS Queen Mary and the Elizabeth were two sister ships, that while different in appearance, were similar in size. The Queen Mary went into service in 1936 with a tonnage of 81,237 and a length of 1,019 feet (310 meters) while the Queen Elizabeth, which went into service in 1940, was 83,673 gross tons with a length of 1,031 feet (314 meters) that went into service in 1940, both Queens were converted to troop ships for the duration of the Second World War. When the war ended they were refurbished and returned to trans- Atlantic service. 

Cunard Lines demanded the same degree of service from the staff on both vessels. The Queen Elizabeth was the flagship of the Cunard fleet and its designation of RMS stood for Royal Mail Ship. All of the transatlantic mail was carried on the Queen Elizabeth and its sister ships which heavily subsidized the cost of operating them. This was a double-edged sword because the line was restricted in the amount of the profits they could make so long as they held these mail contracts. It was only when the contracts ended that the ships made serious money for the owners. But by then the two Queens were gone and the newer ships were mainly cruise ships and not transatlantic liners.

The service on board the Queens was unbelievable. The First-Class dining rooms had a restaurant manager, a station captain at each table who took all of the orders and a wine steward who, funny enough, had the title “Baths and Wine.”  In addition to being the wine expert who would describe the different wines and offer samples to the passengers, he ran the baths. Back then the Queens didn’t have showers or bath tubs in the cabins, even in First Class. The passengers had to share the baths and, to reserve a bath; they had to book it with this steward.

“We had to be experienced and well-trained to qualify to be First Class waiters. The menus were all in French, believe it or not, but we didn’t have to take the order; we had to serve the food. We would have to carve the roasts and serve all of the ingredients. The greatest number of guests we would have at the table would be 10 people. Each table would be served by a station captain, two waiters and a busboy.   

“The food was wonderful. Before we set out to sea on a new voyage, we would arrange a grand display of food in the dining room for the passengers to review. All kinds of fresh fish were set out displayed in ice flanked by ice sculptures carved into the images of mermaids and other creatures. Every type of food you could think about was displayed.

“Lunch was special too in the First-Class Dining Room. A passenger could order anything they wanted at lunch. If someone asked for Irish stew or something like that, you’d have it. It was the same at dinner. The chef would come into the dining room at 3 pm every day to meet with any passengers who had special requests so that he could start the process of preparing their special meal for that evening. There were also two restaurants for the first-class passengers as good as any top-rated restaurant in New York, but the passengers had to pay for these meals and they were quite expensive.”

To be continued