Travel trunk
Travel trunk, 1930s T.2005.129
'When my mother-in-law was 16, her aunt in Johannesburg asked for someone to come out to help …It was on this voyage, on the Durban Castle, that she first used her sea-trunk.'
David Elliot
Comment by Gerry Holland
Your luggage has to be able to be handled by one person these days, so it’s suitcases instead of trunks. And most people fly to the seaport so what you can take needs to meet the air travel and air carriers’ restrictions. For normal people, that is. The very rich can make alternative arrangements, like having their luggage sent to the liner by courier.
From: Gerry Holland
Comment by E. MacIntosh
My Aunt met a Canadian while he was over here during the war, and returned with him to Canada where they married and had 2 children. In those days travel was difficult for my Mum, Dad, Aunt (her sister) and Grandma to visit them so it was a major step for her. We maintain contact with our Canadian cousins, though my Aunt died last year. When we went to Canada last, we went to Halifax where she entered the country through their pier 21, and we found that quite moving
From: E. MacIntosh
Questions by Glasgow Museums
What's your most memorable journey with a suitcase? And did your luggage end up in the same place as you?
Eyewitness by David Elliot
My mother-in-law often spoke of sailing back to Scotland from South Africa in 1940. Peggy wanted to get back to the UK to join her fiancé, John Cameron. She was delighted to discover she’d be travelling on the Windsor Castle - the ship where she’d met John a few years earlier. During the voyage home German aircraft attacked them. The ship was hit but thankfully the bomb didn’t explode. When they entered the Clyde all the ships sounded their horns in tribute to the Windsor Castle and the jagged hole in her side.
From: David Elliot
