Cunard Days

The Cunard Princess docked weekly in St. Georges, Grenada, which is where this photo was taken, I reckon, back in the 70s, whilst we were there. Our marina was a quarter of a mile to the right of the bow of this ship.
We watched her come in and watched the tourists throwing coins over the side for the locals kids to dive for, this would go on whilst the ship was manoeuvring to moor alongside the dock, and the kids made a fortune. It was banned in later years due to an awful accident waiting to happen, happening to one of the boys.
Every Wednesday during the school holidays, my brothers and I would brazenly stroll along the dock mingling with legitimate tourists and walk aboard along the gangplank and in through a hole in the side of the ship, as if we were tourist kids with purpose and family. (Yeah, like we looked like pale and sunburnt tourist kids).
Very quickly we discovered the fresh water open-air pool on the top deck and even better, discovered that the poolside burger bar had a ‘free’ day on Wednesdays and dished out burgers, hotdogs, apples and fresh orange juice to anyone.
Surely the staff must have sussed that we weren’t tourists, especially as we would return for several weeks on the trot, but if they did then they didn’t let on.
We would stuff ourselves on these weekly treats, swim, read, sunbathe and act responsibly in the pool so that we didn’t attract attention to ourselves.
Then we wandered all over the ship, trying out the lifts up and down the decks and following the corridors just to see where they led. We’d be on the ship for hours, but also always mindful of the time, so that we could then stroll off before the ship sailed at 4pm.
I was the eldest at 10-11’ish then, and mum didn’t have a clue where we were, because as long as we were back for dinner daily, then we had total freedom to roam, well, anywhere really.
Imagine if we had judged it wrong and sailed with the ship? It doesn’t bear thinking about as a parent, but as kids we did it cos we could, and just didn’t tell mum what we got up to.
We knew the Cunard Adventurer and the Cunard Countess pretty well too.