IF ALL THE WORLD WAS PAPER AND ALL THE SEA WAS INK: SHIPS’

PRINTERS AND PRINTING 1890-1960

by TERESA BREATHNACH

INTRODUCTION

Tourism, travel and print are bound together. Printing at sea,

of course, connects with this in two ways: it is literally

travelling print, but it is also involved with the creation of

tourist and travel experiences. This subject is enchanting,

but there has been relatively little in-depth consideration of

printers and printing at sea generally. Some exceptions

include those that focus on naval printing of the eighteenth

and nineteenth centuries1, a deeply poignant account of

printing on board the Titanic2 and some interesting online

discussions.3 Others have considered the production and

consumption of texts on board ship, including ships’

1 E. Hoag, ‘Caxtons of the North: Mid Nineteenth Century Arctic Shipboard Printing’, Book History, VOL. 4, 2001, pp.81-114; V.H. Roberts, ‘Publishing and Printing on Board Ship’, Mariners Mirror, VOL. 75, 1989, pp.329-333.2 B. Richardson, ‘Titanic’s Printers: Their Legacy Endures’, Voyage: The Journal of the International Titanic Society, Issue 34, 2000, pp.55-59.3 See for example: http://www.titanichistoricalsociety.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=103&t=133; http://liverpoolhistorysocietyquestions.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/printers-at-cunard/; http://www.caronia2.info/ephem00.php .

newspapers, in relation to a variety of audiences and locales.4

All of these bring valuable insights to the field. This paper

focuses on printing on board the great ocean liners between

the late nineteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries.

Printed images and words have long been central to the

re-making of people and place to meet the gaze of the tourist.

By the early twentieth century, shipping companies had become

adept at anticipating and creating passenger expectation –

amongst the tools used to do this were an impressive array of

brochures, pamphlets and other printed matter. These were not

read in isolation, but operated as part of a circuit of

culture that both drew on and created webs of meaning about

ocean travel. Articles that appeared in printing journals

participated in this. It is this material that partly allows

us to document the development of printing at sea during this

period. But these small books and articles also indicate the

meanings invested in this occupation by different groups.

4 See for example Bell, B. ‘Bound for Botany Bay; or What did the Nineteenth Century Convict Read?’, Against The Law: Crime, Sharp Practice And The Control Of Print, ed. R. Myers, M. Harris and G. Mandelbrote, Newcastle/ London 2004 and ‘Bound for Australia: Shipboard Reading in the Nineteenth Century’, Journeys Through the Market: Travel, Travellers and the Book Trade, ed. R. Myers and M. Harris, Newcastle and London 1999, pp.119-140. See also R.A. Atwood’s Handwritten Newspapers Project at http://handwrittennews.com

Ships’ printers and printing were viewed through the lenses of

novelty, modernity and occupational identities.

PRINTING AT SEA: AN OVERVIEW

It is possible to identify at least two broad categories in

the history of printing at sea. The first of these pertains to

naval printing, initially in France and then in Britain

between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries -

this included printing undertaken during the American

Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars and on arctic expeditions. It

was perhaps this that partly influenced the practice of

publishing a ships’ newspaper on board passenger ships from

the 1850s onwards, particularly those of James Baines’ Black

Ball Line clippers, en route from Britain to Australia. Of

course naval printing continues long after this with the

position of ship’s printer becoming an established member of

the crew, and expeditionary printing continued to make use of

presses: Shackleton’s expedition of 1908, for example, carried

printing equipment. A second major phase occurs from the tail

end of the nineteenth century onwards, in the golden age of

the ocean liner, when printing offices became an expected

feature of passenger ships. It is this second phase of

printing at sea that forms the focus of this paper.

A series of technological and socio-economic factors had

driven the development of the ocean liner. State subsidy and

international competition saw these ships become emblems of

national pride, evidenced indeed by their frequent appearance

in popular print media. From the end of the nineteenth century

onwards, the use of steel in ship-building led to lighter

hulls, better stability and larger ships. These could now be

propelled by more powerful steam engines to travel at higher

speeds. Furthermore, the development of leisure and tourism

had seen the growth and standardisation of commercial services

and amenities. As an extension of this, the services being

offered to passengers on board large ocean liners were

transformed. Printing offices, now occupying newly available

space, could meet their requirements for passenger lists,

notices, menus, programmes and a whole host of other items.

The use of print for menus, for example, was more efficient

than the use of manuscript versions as ships and their

populations became larger. Cunard had certainly made the

transition from pre-printed menus with details of the day

filled in by hand5 to fully printed menus on some of their

ships by 1900.6 More than this, the use of print perhaps

signalled a higher class of experience: by 1912, one steam

ship company official felt that handwritten menus were

‘slovenly’ compared to the printed alternative and that all

‘decent’ ships should have a printing office installed.7 These

ships had become, after all, the new cathedrals of

consumption.8

As a rule of thumb, items comprised of text or simple

images that were printed in one colour, usually black, could

have been produced entirely on board. For example, log

abstracts were often printed on the back of postcards

featuring the ship in question on their front – the log

abstract would have been produced entirely on board, whilst

the image of the ship could have been produced either on board

or pre-printed on shore [insert Fig. 1 here]. Material featuring

visual matter in colour was certainly printed in two 5 1882-014, The Buttolph Menu Collection New York Public Library [hereaftercited as NYPL]6 1900-2917, NYPL

7 F. Steel, Oceania Under Steam: Sea Transport and the Cultures of Colonialism c.1870–1914 [hereafter cited as Oceania Under Steam], Manchester 2011, p.538 B. Reiger, Technology and the Culture of Modernity in Britain and Germany 1890-1945 [hereafter cited as Technology and the Culture of Modernity], Cambridge 2005, p.162

operations using a variety of technologies [insert Fig. 2 and 3

here]. Large numbers of ‘blanks’, with a generic illustration,

were produced by shore printers. Details of the day, voyage or

ship were then printed on board using letterpress. It would

seem that by the 1960s, many ships carried a fuller range of

coloured inks to be used with letterpress work. Quantities

could be immense – in larger ships for example, enough menus

for up to three meals across two or three separate classes of

passenger might be produced every day. There was variety in

the ephemera printers dealt with. Class distinction was

asserted in the material space of ships and this is also

visible in ephemera, but these differences often pertain to

the initial ‘blank’ in terms of image, paper or print quality

– decisions made outside of the ship’s print-shop. Such

distinctions are made more complex by factors within it, like

the printer’s expertise or the nature of his equipment and

materials. Printing workshop facilities certainly ranged in

extent and quality across ship and shipping line. At the very

worst, they could be cramped and ill-equipped, poorly

situated, lit and ventilated. In smaller ships, one must

remember that the population was smaller, space limited and

weight was handled carefully. At best, print shops could be

relatively large and equipped with the latest technology and

facilities.

It is possible to track technological development over

time - the production of ships newspapers is an important

factor in this, both in terms of our being able to track such

advances and in terms of the motivating forces underlying

them. As mentioned above, there are reports of newspapers

being printed from the 1850s9 onwards, but this had become more

commonplace by the 1890s.10 It is the application of wireless

technology from 1899 that really drives their development:

indeed, the one sheet American Line’s Transatlantic Times was

printed specifically to mark this advance.

Cunard made much of their relationship with the production of

a newspaper. Their first newspaper, the Parthia Evening Post, was

printed on board the Parthia in 1882.11 Their first newspaper

9 These included the Eagle Herald 1853, the Lightning Gazette 1854 and the Marco Polo Chronicle 1854. The printed ships newspaper built on a long established tradition of manuscript newspapers also produced in that context.10 Manchester Times, 22 January 1892

11D42/PR12/5/35, Cunard Archive, Special Collections and Archives, Sidney

Jones Library, University of Liverpool [hereafter cited as Cunard Archive]

to be produced using wireless news, The Cunard Bulletin was

produced in 1903 [insert Fig. 4 here]. The following year, they

achieved regularity with The Cunard Daily Bulletin which was first

printed on board the Campania [insert Fig. 5 here]. The

Campania’s printers appear to have used a table-top Model

press [insert Fig. 6 here]. The model press was marketed for both

jobbing and amateur use, and much was made of the ease with which it

could be used. This does not seem to be very different to the

People’s Printing Press, advertised some forty years earlier, just

at the height of the first phase of printed ships newspapers. One

advertisement reads: ‘Everyman his own printer: The Peoples

Printing Press…For the use of authors, amateurs, the Army and Navy,

Missionaries, Colonists, Banks…Railway and Steamship Companies,

Professional Men, Merchants, Druggists, Theatres and Music Halls.’12

However, it is unclear from both visual and verbal evidence

whether this was the only press in operation there or not.

This could only have printed a sheet size of 6 inches x 9

inches, and so might well have been used to print menus and

other ephemera as well as the first version of the Bulletin, a

single sheet of 5 ¾ inches x 8 ¼ inches folded in half to make

four pages. However, by the time it was being printed on a

12 North London News, 16 January 1864, p.1

daily basis, the paper had increased to a size of 6 ¼ inches x

9 ½ inches and incorporated multiple sheets. Press reports

that its printers were using a ‘platen printing machine of the

latest type, driven by an electric motor…’ which was able to

print 800 copies in an hour13 may or may not have been

accurate. In a rather understated article, the Caxton

questioned the suggestion that it was the Model press that had

been motorised14, and commented elsewhere that British printers

were in fact lagging behind their American counterparts in the

application of the individualised motor more generally.15 An

illustration of a ship’s print shop, possibly the Etruria, of

about 190616 shows two treadle presses, similar to ‘Arab’

presses, but they do not appear to be motorised – the

illustration concerned could, of course, be inaccurate, or

produced at an earlier date than its publication. By 1908 13 Evening Post, 23 May 1904, p.614 Anon, ‘Marconigraph Newspapers at Sea’, Caxton Magazine, April 1903, p.41415 Anon, Caxton Magazine, June 30 1904, p.572

16 N.J. Quirk, ‘Floating Cities and Their News Service: The Print-Shop on

the Sea’, The Island Printer, VOL. 38/No. 3 December 1906 accessed at http://www.gjenvick.com/VintageMagazines/Maritime/1907-FloatingCitiesAndTheirNewsService.html#axzz2yOpFYzuG on 20 January 2011

however, the Mauretania’s printers were certainly using

machines driven by electric motors,17 and a photograph of an

unidentified print shop of about 1910 seems to confirm this as

a standard – this print shop shows three printers and at least

one motorised press.18 There also seem to have been

differences between shipping companies or individual ships. In

contrast to the print shops already discussed here, a Union

Castle line ship of about 13,000 tons built in 1910 carried a

single printer, a Chandler Price platen press and two frames

of ‘well worn’ type.19 The difference here may have been that

some produced a newspaper, but others did not.20 Differences

between shipping companies might also be indicated in an

account that appeared in New Zealand’s Truth newspaper in 1914.

This describes the experience of one compositor on board the

Navua, a ship built in 1908 and owned by the Union Steam Ship

Company of New Zealand, who had boarded the ship ‘to find the

print shop in a lovely state of intoxication, technically

17 C.J.Clarke, ‘Electricity and the Modern Liner: Wonders of the Mauretania’, Pall Mall Magazine, September 1908. 18 A. A. Hopkins, ‘Daily Onboard Newspapers and Stock Reports ‘, Handbook of Travel: The Scientific American, New York 1910, p.3219W.J. Pearce, ‘Printing at Sea’, The Clarendonian, New Series VOL. IX, 1955, p.820 Ibid The Union Castle Line did not publish their newspaper The Wireless Mail until 1912, after this print shop was installed, although it was still operating in the 1930s

called pie. The hand press was rusty. There was no machine oil

or oilcan, and no benzene to wash the three menu forms which

were baked with dry ink. There was a rusty stick, a bald type

brush and a planer, but no mallet.’ After considering his

options, this compositor swiftly remembered that ‘he had an

important engagement ashore.’21 At the other end of scale to

the Navua were the print shops of much larger, later ships. By

the 1930s and 40s, the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth’s five

or six printers operated a Bremner Demi-Cylinder Wharfedale

and three Bremner platen presses in a combination of crown

folio, imperial octavo, royal folio or foolscap sizes [insert

Figs 7 and 8 here].22 By the 1960s, a Thompson British Automatic

Platen was in use.23Like all other ships’ print shops, there

were also the required type cabinets, imposing surfaces, and a

variety of other equipment, materials and places to store it,

alongside the printing machinery itself.

21 Anon, ‘Ships Printer: A Comp’s Complaint’, New Zealand Truth, 2 May 1914, p.222 C.A. Pulham, ‘Printing at Sea: The Printer Afloat’, The British Printer, September 1937, p.6523Correspondence from Jacki Fanzo, Attractions and Archive Manager at The Queen Mary, Long Beach, California to the author, 4 April 2011.

Typesetting machines such as the Linotype were introduced

on passenger ships after the first world war24 – within Cunard,

this occurred when the Daily Mail began to produce the Daily Mail

Atlantic Edition in 1923 on the Berengaria, Aquitania and

Mauretania.25 An illustration of the print shop on board either

the Berengaria (formerly the German Imperator26) or Aquitania

shows a Model 4 Linotype machine, driven by direct geared

motors and fitted with electric metal pots [insert Fig. 9 here].

The original plan had been to install the scrapped

Mauretania’s Linotype on board the Queen Mary during her

fitting out.27 However, in the end, Cunard accepted a new Model

48 free of charge from Linotype themselves.28 The use of

mechanical typesetters on board large ships was not very

unusual by the 1930s: many larger Cunard liners carried them,

24 There is some suggestion that the first Linotype to be installed on board ship was a Model 15 linotype in 1915, on the American naval ship Wyoming, see W.J. White, ‘Fourth Estate Aboard American Ships’, American Notes And Queries, VOL VII/No. 1, April 1947 25 Anon, ‘The Fleet Street of the Atlantic’, The Linotype Record, April 1923, p8. 26 New York Times, 19 June 1913, p.1-2 As the Imperator, this ship had a well-fitted out printing workshop, and was equipped to produce a daily newspaperon board prior to the war. It underwent a re-fit before being given to Cunard to become the Berengaria.

27 B/Cun/3/6/4/1, Merseyside Maritime Museum Library and Archive, [hereafter cited as MMM] 28 B/Cun/3/6/4/1 , MMM

as did the American Matson Line ships, where Model 9s were in

use.29

Large, heavy equipment was installed by crane as the ship

was being built, put in place as each deck was fitted out

progressively from lowest to highest. Safety was paramount at

sea, and machinery was initially supported by a cradle of

ropes or later bolted to the deck. Rare primary documentation

pertaining to the Queen Mary indicates that chief printers

were involved in planning the print shop, their main concerns

being efficiency and safety. Mr Puckering, chief printer on

the Aquitania (who went on to work on the Queen Mary) and Mr

Andrews of the Berengaria made detailed recommendations to the

ship’s architect and builders in relation to the fittings and

layout of the workshop. A wooden platform surrounding the rear

of the Linotype that had been included by the architect was

seen to be unnecessary by the printers given that a metal step

was included in the framework of the machine itself; a single

type frame for use with newspaper headings on the left of the

office was to be removed as only three or, at the very most,

four cases of heading type were usually used; the guillotine

29 W.J. White, ‘Fourth Estate Aboard American Ships’, American Notes And Queries

VOL. VII/ No. 1, April 1947

was to be bolted to the work bench on the right of the print

shop entrance and facilities for the storage of printing

rollers in three sizes were to be installed on the wall above

the bench; a small imposing surface was to be mounted on a

stand and moved to the right of its central position to be

closer to the Octavo machine so that one half of it might be

used for the storing of galleys of lines for private dinner

menus. The latter would allow ‘the man working on these

private dinner cards to have similar facilities as obtained in

the Berengaria…and, in a modified way, in the Aquitania, which

have proved so successful and enable the work to be

expeditiously carried out’.30

They also suggested the positioning of lighting and

commented on the provision and location of forme racks. These

were to include an Octavo rack running the full length of the

deck on the right of the room (approximately seven and a half

feet), and a rack to hold one row of Octavo and two rows of

Crown forms. Octavo chases, only be used occasionally, were

stored in a central rack here, whilst similar Crown Folio

chases were to be stored in a rack to the left. It was felt

30 B/Cun/3/6/4/1, MMM

that this re-arrangement of storage would provide better

access to the appropriate machines. Mr McConnell, who became

the chief printer on board the Aquitania, supervised the

installation of the machinery at the builder’s yard. As might

be expected, the manufacturers and suppliers of the machinery

also sent representatives at this stage of the process.31 By

this time, planning certainly seems to have involved the tacit

knowledge of printers and was cumulative in nature.

PRINTERS AS THE OBJECT OF THE GAZE

The material that allows us to track the physical and

technological development of on board print shops also

contains a second level of information. This indicates some of

the themes that underlie how printing at sea was constructed

to meet the gazes of both prospective passengers and members

of the printing industry on shore. How were printers and

printing at sea presented to these groups, and what influenced

their portrayal?

Although the technological developments that had occurred

in the shipping and shipbuilding industries of the late

31 Ibid

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had improved

passengers’ experiences, shipping companies still had to

overcome the deep-seated and profoundly negative image that

sea travel had. Travel by ship, particularly perhaps travel

across the North Atlantic, was viewed as something to be

endured rather than enjoyed. Sea-sickness was inevitable and

the idea that disease might spread from steerage caused

anxiety. The danger of shipwreck was very real. This was even

interpreted as a metaphor for the precariousness of the human

condition.32 Specialised and well-financed publicity

departments were active in developing promotional strategies

to counteract this.33 They produced alternative narratives that

re-constructed the ship as a symbol of national identity,

luxury lifestyles and a modern marvel that would not only

deliver one safely to one’s destination but would prove to be

a destination in itself.

It is within this context that descriptions of ships’

printers and printing became a part of the image presented to

prospective passengers. In addition to this, accounts of

printing at sea that appear in the printing industry’s own

32 B. Reiger, Technology and Modernity, p.16133 See B. Reiger, Technology and Modernity and F. Steele, Oceania Under Steam

publications offered the shore printer a vicarious travel

narrative, a glimpse of how their life might be at sea. Criss-

crossing over one another within these sources are strands of

meaning that locate ships’ printers as novelties, as icons of

modernity, as skilled and mysterious craftsmen, and as men of

the sea. These, I would argue, key into wider conceptions of

technology, gender and national identities that had developed

over long periods of time and in different spheres.

BETWEEN NOVELTY AND NORMALITY

Novelty, in one form or another, is a key theme in almost all

of the sources that form the basis of this paper. It must also

be acknowledged that this theme is evident over a long period

in accounts of printing at sea. From the 1850s onwards34 the

printing of shipboard newspapers was certainly spoken about in

these terms. Almost a century later, the position of ships

printer as a novel one was still articulated in the title of

the Pathe film Queer Jobs Afloat (1930)35 in which the Berengaria’s

34 See for example Paisley Herald and Renfrewshire Advertiser 8 July 1854, p.2; DundeeAdvertiser 24 November 1862, p.2; Essex Standard 2 November 1877, p.5. See also B.Lubbock, The Colonial Clippers [hereafter cited as Clippers], Glasgow 192135 http://www.britishpathe.com/, Queer Jobs Afloat, 1930

Linotype operator appears alongside a gardener, a pharmacist

and a gym instructor. This connection between ships printing

and novelty may even partly underlie the souvenir status of

ships’ ephemera and consequently the nature of archival

collections of it where it was deposited in small bundles of

personal memory and meaning. This oddness remains a factor in

the present day promotion of cruising36 and one might even

suggest that such novelty appeal might be an element in the

undertaking and reception of historical research such as this.

The focus on the oddness of the ship as a printing

environment is a very strong feature of accounts written for

shore printers. Details like port holes being kept shut to

avoid machinery rusting were highlighted, for example.37

Although very dramatic movement was unlikely as most workshops

were located close to the ships’ centre of gravity, it is

often discussed. Both The Daily Mail and The Linotype Recorder recount

how the operation of the Aquitania’s Linotype could be

guaranteed in rough seas following a novel testing technique –

both machine and operator had been placed ‘on rollers with the

36Anon, ‘Princess Cruises Offers Rare Behind-the-Scenes Access to Ship Operations with ‘Ultimate Ship Tour’’, http://www.princess.com/news/backgrounders_and_fact_sheets/factsheet37 D42/PR4/46/37, Cunard Archive

operator lashed to his chair’ while ‘four men gave a vigorous

imitation of a ship pitching.’38 Another source suggests that

whilst many things might disrupt work on shore ‘few would

expect…the collision of a type cabinet and a linotype

machine’, as had apparently occurred on board the Queen Mary.39

This aspect of printing life at sea is almost absent in

passenger publicity. Generally speaking, it was comfort and

safety, rather than danger and discomfort, which were

emphasised. Shipping companies delighted in popular phrases

like ‘floating town’, drew attention to décor that was

specifically designed to detract from the sense of being at

sea40 and depicted the very conquering of the sea in

promotional posters that picture the ship as a huge, all

powerful monarch reigning over nature. In relation to Cunard

specifically, this built on an association with reliability

and safety that the company had encouraged since its

inception.41 In this context, the production of a daily

newspaper itself created the illusion of ‘normal’ life on

38 Daily Mail, 23 April 192339 D42/PR4/46/37, Cunard Archive 40 A. Wealleans, Designing Liners: A History of Design Afloat, London 200641 C. Smith and A. Scott, ‘‘Trust in Providence’: Building Confidence into theCunard Line of Steamers’, Technology and Culture, VOL. 48/No. 3, July 2007, pp. 471-496

board, again emphasising mans’ ability to overcome the force

of the ocean. Rather than underlining peril in the print shop,

a publicity brochure produced as late as the 1940s calmly

describes the production of Cunard White Star’s Ocean Times when

the ‘… the gentle rocking of the waves, so soothing to

passengers’ simply demanded care on the part of printers ‘for

the even spreading of the ink and legibility of the

impression’.42

This tendency towards the depiction of shipboard printing

as a sign of normality rather than novelty can also perhaps be

seen in the changing design of the mastheads of ships’

newspapers from the late nineteenth into the mid twentieth

centuries. These demonstrate change from earlier papers which

drew attention to their production at sea to the later

replication of mainstream newspapers. The masthead of The City of

Rome Express printed in 1890 reads ‘edited by Father Neptune’

and shows an image of a scallop shell surrounded by tridents

and marine flora, fauna and other motifs. From their inception

in 1903 and 1904, the mastheads of the Cunard Bulletin and Cunard

Daily Bulletin still employed imagery that focused on the novelty

42 D42/PR12/5/24, Cunard Archive

of modern telegraphic communication across the sea in the

depiction of the relaying of messages, but used a black-letter

font for the title itself in the tradition of daily papers

ashore. By the time the Daily Mail Atlantic Edition appeared in 1923,

the look of the ships’ newspaper had become an extension

rather than an imitation of shore based newspapers. This was

continued, by Cunard at least, well into the 1960s and beyond.

It would seem then that the material focused on

passengers still sought to counteract any residual negativity

regarding sea travel, whilst shore printers were encouraged to

consider those elements of the job that made it novel to them,

an example perhaps of how the printer, as vicarious traveller

through print, sought out elements that set the object of

their gaze apart from the everyday.

MODERNITY AND MYSTERY

Ships newspapers could be regarded as both novelties and a

sign of normality at sea. The advent of wireless technology

and the consequent technological developments in on board

printing workshops at the turn of the century were to see new

strands of meaning become entwined with these. In some of

these accounts, the print shop and its output became icons of

modernity. Elsewhere, they are constructed as mysterious

places, rooted in tradition.

The principal developments in what was widely referred to

as ‘ocean journalism’ occurred between 1899 and 1904, when the

production of news at sea was heralded as a miracle of

science, a modern wonder. The relationship between news,

newspapers and modernity had already been firmly established:

the relaying of news regularly, quickly and across increasing

distances became a symbol of a modern world in which time and

space had gained new meaning.43 An image of constant innovation

continued to be associated with ships’ newspapers and their

production long after the initial, principal advances had been

made. This image can be understood to have been linked almost

entirely to attitudes towards wireless technology or

newspapers themselves. When the first Cunard Daily Bulletin was

printed in 1904, it was hailed as a ‘marvel’, and a ‘triumph

of electric science’.44 Although the physical form of a

43 See D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, Oxford 1989 and T. Rantenan, ‘The Globalisation of Electronic News in the 19th Century’, Globalisation and Culture Vol 1: Globalizing Communications, ed. P. James and J. Tulloch, London 201044 C.J.Clarke, ‘Electricity and the Modern Liner: Wonders of the Mauretania’, Pall Mall Magazine, September 1908

promotional brochure regarding the Cunard Daily Bulletin that was

produced in 1912 follows that of a personal scrapbook, perhaps

acknowledging the role of ships newspaper as souvenir, the

news-cuttings it reproduces focused on factors that defined

the very concept of a modern universal newspaper[insert Fig. 10

here].

For many commentators, the ships’ newspaper was

understood as a vehicle through which the traveller could

remain connected to life ashore. This certainly placed it as

an emblem of modernity, but some earlier accounts view this

relationship as problematic. One source wrote that ‘Amongst

the advantages of Ocean travel has hitherto been reckoned the

absence of the morning paper but the progress of science bids

fair to rob the traveller of this boon’.45 Another observed

that passengers had until then been ‘secure from the metallic

tick of the stock tape, the political quarrels of nations,

baseball news and the latest morsel of society scandal’ and

invoked other images of modernity when he went on to comment

that ‘Even yellow journalism penetrates the traveller's

retirement and though lacking red, blue and ‘yaller’

45Anon, The Graphic, April 25 1903, p.55

headlines, it is none the less a chip of the old block so

popular with the masses in our cities’.46 For others the

production of ‘the ubiquitous newspaper’ at sea would have

adverse consequences for the modern politician, who ‘seeking

rest from the cares and anxieties of office on a sea voyage

will have these still served up to him day by day’ and the

member of the Stock Exchange ‘fleeing from the maddening chaos

of figures and prices’ who would ‘suffer the same fate. There

will be no escape.’ For this writer, the ships’ newspaper

produced with the immediacy of Marconi’s ‘terrible invention’

would exacerbate the effects of modernity on the soul, so that

one might never flee ‘the din and clamour of the world that

have become almost intolerable…’47 In contrast to this vision

of the availability of hot news at sea, initial references to

the ships print room after the advent of wireless news seem to

focus on its quaintness. Readers who feared the advances being

made might have been comforted by descriptions of the print

shop as one of the ship’s ‘most interesting corners…a little

place, with a few founts of type’ and ‘a hand-press…’ This

46 N.J. Quirk, ‘Floating Cities and Their News Service: The Print-Shop on the Sea’, The Island Printer, VOL. 38/No. 3 December 1906 accessed at http://www.gjenvick.com/VintageMagazines/Maritime/1907-FloatingCitiesAndTheirNewsService.html#axzz2yOpFYzuG on 20 January 201147 Anon, Linotype Notes, VOL. 6/ No 64, January 1903, p.10

contributor went on to give a sense of the personal, human

nature of the space rather than its connection with progress

by describing a ‘display of job works and photographs on the

walls’48. Not so different in tone was The Caxton’s comment that

the first ocean ‘daily’ (The Cunard Daily Bulletin) ‘was born

in a little hut on the boat deck…’49 Even by the 1920s some

preferred to think of a single ship’s printer working at his

craft. 50

Later in the century, however, access to news was

accepted as being essential for the passenger and descriptions

of its reproduction focus on the industrial modernity of the

enterprise. A daily newspaper on board ship was seen as an

absolute necessity for ‘modern minds’ which ‘must have news’

to remind them that ‘they still belong to this world…’51 The

Aquitania’s print shop was described in the early 1920s as not

just ‘an ordinary hand-press affair for the mere production of

menus and programmes, but...an up-to-date printing plant with

power presses...’52 Later accounts, particularly those directed

48 Anon, Gloucester Citizen, 28.12.1895, p.349 Anon, Caxton Magazine, June 30 1904, p.572

50 Anon, ‘The Spell of the East’, Brisbane Courier, 08/08/1924, p.651 D42/PR12/5/24, Cunard Archive. 52 The Linotype Record, April 1923, p.8

at the printing industry, focus on the modernity of the

physical conditions that printers experienced in their work on

board ship. The interest in brightness, cleanliness, order,

technology and functionality is quite at home in contemporary

accounts of the modern interior or workplace. The Queen Mary’s

walls and ceiling were coated with white enamel that

‘glistened’, reflecting ‘generous’ electric lighting.53 The

Queen Elizabeth’s lighting was ‘well-planned and effective’

and her dust-free equipment contributed to the print shop’s

impressive cleanliness and order.54 Such depictions may well

have had a special resonance for some shore printers who may

have been working in cluttered conditions closer to those

described a century earlier as having ‘ceilings as black as

printer’s ink with the candle smoke of two or three

generations’55.

Certainly by the time the Queen Mary was being built, the

organisation of working spaces and the use of new materials 53C.A. Pulham, ‘Printing at Sea: The Printer Afloat’, The British Printer, September 1937, p.65Much was made of ships being equipped with the ‘latest thing’: aside from the printing equipment itself, the installation of telephones to allow communication between the print shop and the rest of the ship in the Queen Mary and an air purification system on the Queen Elizabeth were worth reporting.54 Anon, ‘Q.E. Printshop’, The Caxton Magazine, November 1946, p.24155 C.M., Smith, The Working Man’s Way in the World, London 1967 (Reprint), pp.242-243

and technologies had become carriers of values associated with

modernity. Even before this, ideas about progress, speed,

hygiene and efficiency were materialized in ‘sparkling’

interiors that used tiles, glass, aluminium and stainless

steel.56 This use of the print workshop and its output might

also be understood as a way of fitting the concept of

modernity into Cunard’s promotional image more broadly. Their

image had adhered to notions of convention, stability and

safety since the inception of the company. I would suggest

that descriptions of Cunard print shops and their newspapers

played an important part in making Cunard modern if not

‘modernist’.57

At least one account written for a non-professional

audience seems to define the printers and print shop as being

special and impressively mysterious rather than either novel

or modern. The idea that the process of print is a mystery to

the uninitiated is one that printers themselves had protected

56 N.P. Maffei and T. Fisher, ‘Historicizing Shininess in Design: Finding Meaning in an Unstable Phenomenon’, Journal Of Design History VOL. 26/No 3, 2013,p.23457 This contrasts with the Orient Line’s ship Orion (1935) whose designer,Brian O’Rourke, had been commissioned by Sir Colin Anderson. Her designwas considered to be entirely modernist in style and conception. Andersonalso commissioned modernist artists such as Edward McKnight Kauffer todesign aspects of the interior, graphics for this ship and the Orient Linecompany more generally.

over a long period of time, becoming a part of their identity

as a fraternity, one of their ‘foundation myths’.58 The author

concerned suggests that the production of a ship’s newspaper

is ‘a magical thing’, and alludes to the ‘marvels’ of the

Linotype machine as being akin to ‘the work of a magician’. We

are given a sense of the printing workshop as a hidden space

and its machinery as being industrially sublime when the

author asks us to imagine ourselves going ‘deep down in the

Aquitania’ where we will find ‘machines clamped to the deck

with great bolts…’. He goes on to describe in story-book style

how the Linotype on board the Aquitania is ‘…a mechanical

typesetter and it works more than four times faster than the

fastest hand compositor who ever lived.’ This pen picture is

juxtaposed with an explanation of hand composition in the same

text which says ‘You have probably all stood at the window of

a little printer’s shop on land and watched the man pick up

his type letter by letter…the method which Caxton used when he

first brought the art of printing to England.’59 The author

here calls on his readers to link the composition of type at

58 E. Eisenstein, Divine Art, Infernal Machine: The Reception of Printing in the West from First Impressions to the Sense of an Ending, Oxford 2011, p.1 59E.G. Diggle, The Romance of a Modern Liner, Oxford 1930, pp.129-136. Courtesy of Joseph Bernard Rayder

sea to both an ancient craft and to mechanical progress. Both

are described in mythical terms. This sense of print as a

mysterious medium is also echoed in some articles meant for

shore printers, albeit in a more mundane way. They must have

identified with the ship’s printer who wrote of his

frustration at having to explain his work to an interested

Purser who did not grasp the processes involved, and his

amusement when a passenger requested ‘a picture of the setting

sun’ for a last minute fancy dress costume.60

PRINTER, SAILOR OR SERVANT?

Class and status were certainly important in the definition of

what it meant to be both a printer and a sailor61 during the

period under discussion, and this is perceptible in both the

verbal and visual culture that surrounds them.60 C.A. Pulham, ‘Printing at Sea: The Printer Afloat’, The British Printer, September 1937, p.6361 For printers, see C. Cockburn, Brothers: Male Dominance and Technological Change,London 1983, p.23 Cockburn argues that from the late nineteenth centuryonwards printers were ‘…being formed as a distinct class stratum’. Forsailors see Q. Colville, ’Jack Tar and the Gentleman Officer: The Role ofUniform in Shaping the Class and Gender Related Identities of British NavalPersonnel 1930-1939’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Vol 13, 2003, pp.105-129; L. Tabili, ‘A Maritime Race: Masculinity and the Racial Division ofLabour in British Merchant Ships 1900-1939’, Iron Men and Wooden Women: Genderand Seafaring in the Atlantic World 1700-1920, ed. M. Creighton and L. Norling,Baltimore 1996 and A. Millar, Dressed to Kill: British Naval Uniform, Masculinity andContemporary Fashions 1748-1857 [hereafter cited as Dressed to Kill], London 2007.

As already discussed, the ships’ printer had become an

established profession at the turn of the century when they

emerged as a part of the growth of the ocean liner as a

floating hotel. As such, they are most often listed as part of

the victualing or catering crew, so akin to cooks and stewards

for example. Indeed, smaller ships sometimes saw ships’

printers doubling up as stewards, and perhaps listed as that

in crew lists. Some shipping lines regarded their printer as a

‘leading hand’, dining with the master at arms and bandsmen,

being served by a waiter with his choice from the tourist

menu.62 As skilled workers with a degree of responsibility,

ships’ printers on board the Cunard ships of the early 1920s

sometimes show them in lounge suits with collar and tie whilst

later they are reported to have worn ‘natty’63 uniforms,

complete with brass buttons and crested caps.64This sense of

the printers as being higher rather than lower in the social

hierarchy of the ship is perhaps replicated in more

generalised descriptions of a shipboard ‘Inky’ or ‘Prints’ as

being the fount of all sorts of knowledge including ‘who

62 W.J. Pearce, ‘Printing at Sea’, The Clarendonian, New Series VOL. IX, 1955,p.863 G. Hanley, Irish Times, 1 December 1934, p.37 64 Anon, ‘Q.E. Printshop’, The Caxton Magazine, November 1946, p.242

Chelsea are playing next week, or the time the Bournemouth

Limited leaves Waterloo’, or being asked to become an

arbitrator in arguments arising about the spelling or

pronunciation of a word or even to repair watches. He was

regarded as ‘the very personification of wisdom’.65

Visual imagery can sometimes struggle to place them in

the complex community of the ocean liner. Promotional material

relating to the Mauretania and Lusitania66 shows them in a

category of image that focused on the ship as a giant that

utilised acres of people and goods in the service of the

passenger. Printers are clearly depicted in their

characteristic aprons, but are in the far distance alongside

other positions not usually expected on board ship like lift

attendants, telephone and wireless operators. Although more

numerous than the more traditional deck crew, newer

engineering or catering departments to which printers belonged

are given less prominence in the image generally.

Class identities were often made material in occupational

dress codes both on shore and at sea: that is between those in

65 C.A. Pulham, ‘Printing at Sea: The Printer Afloat’, The British Printer, September 1937, p.6366 D42/PR1/48, Cunard Archive

‘clean and well-starched collars’ and those in ‘shirt

sleeves’.67In photographs for publications meant for either

shore printers or passengers, printers are usually shown in

uniform before the 1930s. After that point they are most often

shown in civilian clothes, usually casual trousers and a

shirt. In either category, they can be depicted wearing the

long white aprons associated with this skilled occupation. In

all cases, imagery shows them to be extremely clean and free

of the dirt or mess associated with working with ink. This may

be the real result of a job which both required men who were

careful and methodical when working with dirty materials to

produce a clean end result: in fact a survey of photographs of

shore printers over a period of time in one printing journal

showed most depicted in pristine condition68. Another

influential factor may have been that on board ship, space was

at a premium and roles were less demarcated than on shore –

printers and their environment may have been less inky to

facilitate a change of role or to guarantee the work being

kept clean in a limited space. Another possibility in

67 A. Baron, ‘Masculinity, The Embodied Male Worker, and the Historian’s Gaze’ International Labor and Working Class History, No 69, 2006, p.14868 This view is tentative and based on a survey of the photographs publishedin The Caxton Magazine between 1899 and 1905

interpreting this aspect of imagery of ships’ printers is that

such photographs were taken on days when no work was actually

being conducted. Any or all of these may have been the case.

Nevertheless, the term ‘gentlemen printer’ does not seem

entirely out of place at least in relation to the reception of

such imagery. Of course, printers had traditionally occupied a

relatively high position in the hierarchy of labour more

generally because of the need for literacy in the job and the

attainments of high levels of skill through the apprenticeship

system: in other words, only clever boys who graduated from a

rigorous training could become printers. When this skilled

status was challenged with the introduction of mechanical

typesetting and the spectres of female or foreign labour,

printers were also very active in protecting their image by

recalling these ‘special’ or distinctive aspects of their

identity. The way in which they are represented may also

relate to the assertion that publicity of the shipping

industry ignored images of the hard labour underpinning the

actual functioning of the ship – the ‘dirty gang’ of firemen

and trimmers for example.69 Indeed, although surviving block

books as well as promotional ephemera in the Cunard archive 69 B. Reiger, Technology and Modernity, p.173

show many images of officers and some members of the crew,

there are very few images of the men that fired their engines.

One might suggest that cooks, stewards, wireless operators and

printers became the acceptable face of labour as skilled

workers or visible servants, recalling the drive by the

shipping industry to recreate the ship as an extension of land

rather than as a sea going vessel. Akin to photography in

other touristic contexts, photographs of ships’ printers as

workers seem to ‘seek out the solidity of a predictable

character’ rather than a unique image.70

Other descriptions of ships’ printers, particularly those

written to appeal to the printing fraternity, also locate them

as archetypal sea-going men. One correspondent comments that

‘On entering the print shop, it is quite noticeable that you

are not in a normal works. Men of the sea are trained in

tidiness and orderliness.’ This he describes as ‘a splendid

habit…a definite characteristic of sea-going men.’ These

printers had ‘a sailor’s way of looking at things’ and were ‘a

distinct type’.71 More than this, one brochure described them

70 A. Ramamurthi, ‘Photography and Commodity Culture’, Photography: A Critical Introduction, ed. L. Wells, London 1996, p.236. See also D. Nye, Image Worlds: Corporate Identities at General Electric 1890-1930, Cambridge Mass 198571 Anon, ‘Q.E. Printshop’, The Caxton Magazine, November 1946, p.241

as ‘capable, quiet voiced and dependable…accustomed to rise

calmly to every emergency.’72For men like these, discipline was

apparently, ‘pleasurable rather than binding’.73 This idea was

also circulating in the wider press. George Jenner, the

printer on board the P & O liner the Egypt, perished when she

sank in 1922. According to newspaper reports, Jenner had given

his life-jacket to a female passenger saying ‘Here you are

madam, this belt is yours. I don’t know how to swim but I will

take my chance with the others.’74 Some reports go on to

describe this courageous act as that of a gentleman, both

linking it to Captain Oates’ gallant death at the Arctic75, and

setting it against the behaviour of the non-British members of

the crew who ‘completely lost their heads.’76

The images being projected in these visual and verbal

descriptions of ships’ printers align with some of the ways in

which seamen generally were perceived throughout the

nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries. In

turn, these were affected by a complex interplay of specific

72 D42/PR4/28/218, Cunard Archive73 Anon, ‘Q.E. Printshop’, The Caxton Magazine, November 1946, p.24174 Anon, ‘The Lost Liner’, The Cornishman, 24 May 1922, p.575Anon,’ The Dover Printer Hero’, Dover Express 2 June 1922, p.7. See also Anon, ‘A Very Gallant Gentleman’, The Times, 24 May 1922, p.17

76 Anon, ‘The Lost Liner’, The Cornishman, 24 May 1922, p.5

historical circumstance in the shipping industry and

discursive formations formed over a long period of time. From

the mid-nineteenth century, technological and social changes

had seen the identity of the British mariner, particularly the

merchant mariner, becoming contested ground. Following the

repeal of the Navigation Act in 1849, the shipping industry’s

employment of foreign labour generated significant fears that

their acceptance of lower wages would affect the prospects of

British born sailors. For their part, ship-owners argued that

it was the absence of discipline amongst British seamen that

necessitated this77. This discourse was still current in the

later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when anxieties

over the possible lack of British born merchant seamen to fill

the ranks of the naval reserve prompted the establishment of

the Navy League. In addition to this, the massive

technological changes that had been essential to the rise of

the ocean liner both as a means of transport and as a site of

leisure also challenged the identities of mariners.

Mechanisation transformed the nature of seamen’s work, and

77 Tabili, L., ‘A Maritime Race: Masculinity and the Racial Division of

Labour in British Merchant Ships 1900-1939’, Iron Men and Wooden Women: Gender

and Seafaring in the Atlantic World 1700-1920, ed. M. Creighton and L. Norling,

Baltimore 1996, p.174

increasing numbers of new types of ‘sailor’ were required on

board modern ships to serve its needs as a floating hotel. The

stoker or fireman, trimmer, steward, wireless operator or

printer, for example, were equipped with very different skills

and attributes to those of more traditional crew members. The

demise of traditional maritime skills was widely lamented, and

the worthiness of these new crew members as ‘sailors’ was

questioned, particularly within gender, class and racial

parameters.78 Of course, these ideas were also being formed

against the backdrop of a whole set of concerns about

masculinity in occupational settings more generally,

79including that of the print-shop, mentioned previously.

Throughout this period the influence of these factors can

be seen in the adoption of naval themes and the archetypes of

both the gentleman officer and jolly Jack Tar in material and

print culture.80 By the late nineteenth century, mariners were

presented as ‘rugged but respectable models of imperial

78 Ibid p173

79 A. Baron, ‘Masculinity, The Embodied Male Worker, and the Historian’s Gaze’ International Labor and Working Class History, No 69, 2006, pp143-160. Regardingmariners, see M. Conley, From Jack Tar to Union Jack [hereafter cited as Jack Tar],Manchester 2009, p152 and D.B. Dennis, ‘Seduction on the Waterfront: GermanMerchant Sailors, Masculinity and the Brucke Zu Heimat in New York and Buenos Aires 1884-1914’, German History, VOL. 29/No 2, 2011, pp.175-20180 See M. Conley, Jack Tar and A. Millar, Dressed to Kill

manhood,’ celebrated for virtues of ‘professionalism,

discipline, intellect’, and interestingly in this context,

domesticity.81 Cleanliness and order were also promoted as

being qualities associated with men of the sea and were

perhaps seen as outward signs of other attributes like

discipline.82 This archetype of the mariner and its connection

to British national identity had begun to be formed by the

1820s.83 Qualities of bravery, humanity and resourcefulness84

were extended to include those associated with personnel on

the naval expeditions of the early to mid-nineteenth century

including ‘perseverance and endurance, humane treatment of

indigenous people, and impeccable seamanship…’85 such qualities

were later applied to common seamen as well as officers.86

During the inter-war years publications were to romanticise

the age of sail87, and the shipping industry itself also

81 M. Conley, Jack Tar, p123-4. Similarly, an analysis of testimonials accompanying applications for work in New Zealand’s merchant navy suggests that the attributes of being ‘attentive, strictly sober, painstaking, reliable, capable, competent, trustworthy and steady’ were highly prized, see F. Steele, Oceania Under Steam, p.7482

83 A. Millar, Dressed to Kill, p.60. In the eighteenth century, popular literature such as The Post-Captain: A View of Naval Society and Manners depicted navalofficers as honest and manly but rough. 84 A. Millar, Dressed to Kill, p.9 85 A. Millar, Dressed to Kill, p.7686 M. Conley, Jack Tar, p.15187 See for example B. Lubbock, Clippers and F.W. Wallace, Wooden Ships and IronMen: The Story of the Square-Rigged Merchant Marine of British North America, London 1924

sometimes adopted this view of the mariner and his world

within their promotional material88 and other ephemera. In an

arena like sea travel that was inevitably embroiled in the

expression of national identity, these qualities were to

become associated with a very British masculinity.

Interestingly, the sources that speak of the ships’ printer in

this vein seem mainly to date from post-world war one when the

ideal type of the British mariner was widely invoked as part

of the celebration of wartime heroism.

Elements of this image are extended to include one

drawing on the archetype of ‘loyal British servant’ or

‘artisan’ in literature aimed at passengers. Major shifts in

the composition of passengers had resulted from changes made

to U.S. immigration laws in the early 1920s, the traditional

steerage passenger being replaced by a new generation of

‘tourist, third class’. The increased need to attract business

on return routes combined with the growth in amount and range

of Americans seeking to travel to Britain saw a heavy emphasis

88 L. Tabili, ‘A Maritime Race: Masculinity and the Racial Division of Labour in British Merchant Ships 1900-1939’, Iron Men and Wooden Women: Gender and Seafaring in the Atlantic World 1700-1920, ed. M. Creighton and L. Norling, Baltimore 1996, p.186

placed on this market89 and the tone of promotional literature

change. The need to attract foreign business placed new

emphasis on national identity as a theme in tourism promotion

more generally during this period and in response to a sense

of national decline, British promotion for the home market

produced images of ‘a warm and welcoming…England that had

retained its charm’ and an ‘English way of life’.90 Similarly,

concepts of heritage and tradition came to the fore in their

promotion for the American market.91 The concept of service in

the tradition of the English country house was conjured up

when Cunard advertising aimed at that market described how

crew ‘share the same heritage, service to them is a life-long

career, carried on through successive generations.’92

A similar tone is adopted in describing printers’

behaviour when a serious problem with the Linotype might

89J. Beckerson, ‘Marketing British Tourism: Government Approaches to the Stimulation of a Service Sector 1880-1950, The Making of Modern Tourism: The Cultural History of the British Experience 1600-2000, ed. H. Berghoff, B. Korte, R. Schneider and C. Harvie, Basingstoke and New York 2002, p.14190 A. Medcalfe, ‘What to Wear and Where to Go: Picturing the Modern Consumeron the Great Western Railway 1921-1939, Trains, Culture and Mobility: Riding the Rails, ed. B. Fraser and S. Spalding, New York and Plymouth 2012, pp.71-7391 J. Beckerson, ‘Marketing British Tourism: Government Approaches to the Stimulation of a Service Sector 1880-1950, The Making of Modern Tourism: The Cultural History of the British Experience 1600-2000, ed. H. Berghoff, B. Korte, R. Schneider and C. Harvie, Basingstoke and New York 2002, p14192 F. Walmsley, ‘Pragmatism and Pluralism: The Interior Decoration of the Queen Mary’, Interior Design and Identity, ed. S. McKellar and P. Sparke, Manchester 2004, p.166

result in all printers, even those not on shift, being

required to ‘set like mad until the appointment with the

breakfast table’ was kept.93 An ex-ships’ printer asserted that

the Queen Mary’s population could not ‘sit down to a meal

without expecting newly printed bills of fare and the morning

newspaper before it.’94 There is even perhaps a hint of

heroism in the idea of printers furiously working behind the

scenes to ensure that passengers’ needs were met. We might

suggest that this combination of skill, service and heroism is

echoed in the approach taken in a brochure that juxtaposes a

photograph of a compositor at work with an illustration of

passengers at ease, reading the Ocean Times, the product of his

labour [insert Fig. 11 and 12 here]. In this context, it is also

interesting to note the differences between the earlier image

of the Aquitania or Berengaria’s printers in the 1920s with an

altered version of the same photograph [insert Fig. 13 here].

The first image, used in the Linotype Recorder, shows all four men

gazing out at the reader – they are either posing for the

photograph self-consciously or have been caught by surprise.

The second version of the same image, used in The Romance of a

93 D42/PR12/5/24, Cunard Archive 94 C.A. Pulham, ‘Printing at Sea: The Printer Afloat’, The British Printer, September 1937, p.65

Liner by Captain Diggles and probably altered originally for

promotional pieces by the company itself or by the Daily Mail for

their own use, shows all except one man ‘at work’, dutifully

concentrating on the job in hand, unaware of either

photographer or tourist. It seems to me that this image places

the reader in the position of tourist on what we would now

call a ‘backstage tour’, seeing the secret miracles of the

wonder-ship and the diligent crew at their disposal at first

hand. The ocean liner had become, after all, both a means of

travelling to a destination and a destination in itself:

ships’ printers had certainly become the object of the tourist

gaze.

CONCLUSION

This paper set out to present an account of ships’ printers

and printing on board passenger liners from the late

nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.

It traced the roots of this field to the use of printing

presses on board naval ships from the eighteenth century

onwards and also to the advent of printed newspapers on board

the merchant clipper ships of the mid-nineteenth century. The

position of ship’s printer had become an established one by

the early twentieth century. This was as a result of the

growth in the number of passengers being carried, the space

made available for new kinds of facilities and rising

expectations of travel experiences. It would seem that print

was not only seen as an element that contributed to the

efficient running of the ships, but also as an indicator of a

higher status of ship and better passenger experiences.

Contemporaneous accounts of printing at sea, written for

prospective passengers and the printing fraternity, were

contained in short reports or articles in newspapers and

periodicals as well as publicity items issued directly by

shipping companies. My analysis of these suggests that the

advancement of printing facilities themselves mainly occurred

between the early and mid-twentieth century. It is during this

period that printing presses with individualised electric

motors, demi-cylinder presses and mechanical typesetters were

introduced. Early advances seem to have been driven by the

publication of shipboard newspapers, particularly after the

application of wireless technology to the field. However, it

would appear that such development was uneven, responding

perhaps to the size and needs of the ship in question and also

to the priorities of specific shipping lines. Within Cunard at

least, the practical experience of senior printers was

instrumental in the planning of some print shops.

As well as allowing us to plot the advancement of

printing at sea, the verbal, visual and material sources that

form the basis of this study indicate the interconnecting

threads and loops of meaning that became attached to the

subject. The ships’ newspaper is central here too. I have

suggested that these meanings drew on longstanding discourses

underlying sea travel and print culture ashore, as well as

responding to contemporary contexts in both the printing and

the shipping industries. The interplay of these factors saw

the ships print shop, its workers and its output constructed

as both novelties and as signs of the normality of life on

board ship, as symbols of modernity and ancient craftsmanship

and finally as emblems of British masculinity in the form of

printer as stoic mariner and loyal servant.

This account has begun to extend the tradition of

studying the print culture of particular places to the

community of the ship. It has also, perhaps, offered a view of

some of the concerns of the printing world ashore through the

lens of these floating towns. Should surviving data allow it,

a more widespread study both backward and forward in time,

across ship and shipping company, by route or nation could

lead us to even deeper narratives. Indeed, it is surely time

now to record the memories and observations of the generation

of printer sailors who worked on board these iconic ships

towards the end of their heyday before their experiences are

forever lost at sea.