Posts

Showing posts from January, 2019

Bon Voyage: Our TransAtlantic Crossing

Image
Over on Chapter1-Take1, I shared a French-dubbed trailer  for the movie Brooklyn starring Saoirse Ronan. In the film, Ronan’s character, Eilis, emigrates from Ireland onboard an  ocean liner in the 1950’s . That’s how they rolled in those days. Er, that’s how we rolled in those days.   We came to North America on an ocean liner too, sailing across the Atlantic Ocean from Liverpool on the R.M.S. Sylvania in the middle of winter.  It was during the last days of trans-Atlantic ocean crossings; the Sylvania was the final ship built by the Cunard Line before the whole world took to the skies, leaving ocean liners to the pleasure-seekers and cruise-goers. Unlike Brooklyn’s Eilis, who landed at Ellis Island in New York, we landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It was February 1960 and I was five. We’d already moved from England, where my brother and I were born, to Libya, then in ’57 to Turkey where my sister was born, and back to Libya. And now we  were leaving the shores of Tripoli w