Planning some home leave from Shanghai this summer? I’d recommend Messageries Maritimes who can whisk you off to Marseilles via Hong Kong, Saigon, Singapore, Colombo, Djibouti (perhaps stay on-board for that one!) and Port-Said. Sailing this month and next – in 1937 anyway.
I’m going to return to Port Said briefly after having mentioned it before. Port Said, like Alexandria stands at the entrance to the Suez Canal. The Canal opened in 1869 making travel From Europe to Asia much quicker and saved the long voyage round Cape Agulhas (the Cape of Good Hope). Port Said is the northern terminus of the 119 mile long canal. You spill out of the Canal into the Red Sea. Actually, rather like the Channel Tunnel between England and France, the Canal (in its modern form) was first suggested by Napoleon Bonaparte, after he conquered Egypt in the 1790s, proving once again that Boney had some good ideas as well as some really bad ones.
The picture left is a Messageries Maritime ship (their home port was Marseilles). The Messageries Maritime steamers sailed from France to the Far East where their Asian home port was Saigon. The picture, used on a postcard lists Issac Behar as the photographer. I’ll try and post more on the Messageries Maritime steamers to the Far East later.
Port Said was a popular stop and the town had grown up, in part, to accommodate the flow of traffic east and west through the Canal. The postcard of the Port Said Post Office (published by the Cairo Postcard Trust) is sweet as it’s probably where you both bought the card, filled it out and then posted it.
This second postcard is of the harbour and the architecture reveals a sort of modern Eygptian/Mediterranean/French influence in the architecture. The card was published by Lichtenstern and Harari of Cairo.
