Name/Title
1936/Mack: Dinner menu, Empress of BritainScope and Content
Empress of Britain, 1 July 1936, dinner menu.
The Macks - Kathleen, RJ and their nine-year-old daughter Daphne - are dining with James I Miller, a very close American business associate in the tobacco trade. The ID of Mr W H Lewis is to be confirmed.
This menu is from the return journey to the UK after the family had travelled out to the USA on the Queen Mary on her maiden voyage of 27 May 1936.
"The Queen Mary departs Southampton at 4:33 p.m. on her maiden voyage, arriving in Cherbourg, France at 8:47 p.m. and departing at 12:39 a.m. the following morning. Arrival at Pier 90 in New York at 4:20 p.m. Crossing time: 5 days, 5 hours and 13 minutes." (https://www.queenmary.com/, last accessed 17 April 2026.)
Of Kathleen's children, only Daphne was taken on the trip, probably because she was pretty and well-behaved. Peter (who was an attention-demanding show-off as seen in the family videos of the 1930s) resented his exclusion for many years. Monica would have been nearly seventeen years old, and perhaps she or her parents thought her too old to go.
From the eulogy at Daphne's funeral on 15 May 2024:
"[Her parents] took her on the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary to New York when she was nine; as the second-youngest onboard she was asked to speak on the BBC World Service, she was told to say 'I like the fishes in the tank, I wish I could feed them'."
