On the whole, the food during the trip was edible. I could not eat the bacon or the beef. I did not try the eggs. The tea was vile and usually not very hot. The coffee was vile. But the bread, served in individual loaves, was most palatable. The Swedish bread was excellent. The oatmeal was edible, even with the wretchedly thin condensed or dried milk. We had herrings and at another time sausages, and both were fair. The potatoes were always excellently boiled and good of their kind, but the browned potatoes were invariably overcooked and not fit to serve. The cold meats for supper could be eaten. The boiled rice was insipid. The stewed prunes and stewed apricots were palatable. I had very good baked beans and navy beans, good pea soup and fair broth. I had no complaints to make of the food. I never decided whether it was butter or margarine, but I ate it willingly. It certainly had not that callously metallic taste that margarine used to have.
The service was on bold, wholesale lines. Twenty sat at each table, and there were two equipments of bread and butter, sugar, salt, pepper and vinegar. A disconsolate plant decorated each table. One steward took charge of each ten people. I sat at a different table practically every time, and most of my companions were delightfully obliging and unaggressive. Only those who so wished had to stand up and harpoon their bread roll. There were a few tiresome people who damned the food and failed to pass the salt. The stewards were elusive, or rather that one-tenth part of a steward who was your share. I regretted on one occasion to discover egg shells in my dessert, and the next day I was pained to find a knob of beef in my stewed apples. My sympathetic steward remarked: “Puts you a bit off, don’t it?” It do.
From about five in the morning till eleven at night these stewards are working. Work is a good thing. It is strange that the stewards look unhealthy and fatigued. It is due to the inherent inferiority of stewards.
Queenstown was the distraction for several hours on the first day out. The Cunard and White Star Lines have just discerned that the harbor is unsafe for big boats. At what point of profit, I wondered, would Queenstown harbor suddenly and miraculously become safe again?