Sailing to France

1922

After the First World War, Americans travelled to France in ever increasing numbers. Five menus from the steamship Lafayette in 1922 illustrate the perceived romance of a transatlantic crossing.1 The trip began when the great ship was nudged out of her berth and pointed downstream toward the Atlantic. “Gentle vibrations tell you she is under way,” wrote one voyager of the era. “Small craft dip flags and toot as they go by; the Statue of Liberty, the shores of Staten Island, the flat back of Sandy Hook run past as though wound on rollers; the pilot goes over the side with a bag of farewell letters; a pursuing tug comes up and puts a tardy passenger aboard. Then, suddenly, like a sleep-walking dragon that wakes up, the liner shakes herself; her propellers lash the sea to suds; a wedge-shaped wake spreads out behind her, and the voyage is on in earnest.”2

Warren G. Harding, Teapot Dome, Prohibition, all of the things that make home sweet, lie astern. You are on your way to gay Par-ree! Still, it took nearly a week to reach Paris, and the North Atlantic could be treacherous, even during the relative calm of summer. In fact, the Lafayette encountered a severe storm in July of that year and had just returned to service after three weeks of repairs. Even the first-class passengers on the upper decks faced debilitating bouts of seasickness and long stretches of boredom. The menus on the Lafayette, however, added a touch of glamour to what might otherwise have been an ordeal. 

The menus in this series appeared in two basic designs that were employed for only a short period of time. For those travelling to France for the first time, the meals aboard the Lafayette may have been their introduction to French cuisine, which was a top priority of the French Line.  

On the last day, the ship briefly docked at Southampton before crossing the English Channel for Le Havre, where the remaining passengers disembarked and caught the boat train for Paris. 

Stay tuned for what happened next. 

Notes 

1. Layfette was a relatively small steamship, measuring about 550 feet in length. Launched in 1914 as Île de Cuba, and renamed in 1915, Lafayette served as a hospital ship during the First World War, and as a troop ship in 1919, before entering transatlantic passenger service. It was renamed Mexique in 1928, when the French Line launched a larger ship named Lafayette.  The menus in this essay may have come from eastward and westward crossings.

2. Julian Street. Ship-Bored, New York: John Lane Company, 1912.