The Voyage East II - Port Said

As a long term project I've been working on recreating a voyage to Shanghai from London as it would have been undertaken around the turn of the century (1900 that is). I posted previously on the state of the old Port of London departure dock for passenger liners to the east - Gallion's Reach - previously. Boats also sailed from Liverpool and Glasgow.

I recently dug up this postcard (above) of Port-Said from around that time in a stall on London’s Portobello Road and just got around to scanning it in. This is the Quai François Joseph and you can see the Thomas Cook’s and the Eastern Telegraph companies offices advertising ‘Telegraph Anglais’

Ships stopped at different locations, the first being usually either Marseilles or Gibraltar and then often Malta. But most stopped at Port-Said in Egypt, more than 2,000 miles from London. Port-Said was definitely a sign you were moving east, as one traveller wrote in their diary in 1900 – ‘There we moored and visited the city of Cairo with its famous Kahn El-Khalili bazaar. Here was the Orient we had longed for: the cries of shopkeepers in enchanting tongues, the hammering of carpenters and cobblers, the exotic fragrance of spices, the smoke and the teas. Later, we mounted the electric tram along the Pyramid Road to Gizah. We climbed the first stone of the Great Pyramids and had tea at the Mena House.’

The Voyage East I - Gallions Reach: Where the Journey Began

The Voyage East III - Alexandria

The Voyage East IV - Through The Canal
The Voyage East V - Suakim, Port Sudan
The Voyage East VI - Resupply at Aden
The Voyage East VII - Gibraltar
The Voyage East VIII - Suez- You Rather Hoped Not