Master and commander

Oct 4 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

As the QE2 bids farewell to Liverpool, Peter Elson hears about Capt John Treasure Jones, who was king of Cunard’s first Queen liners

AMONG the prerequisites that every bride wants for her wedding is a memorable reception.

Susan Tennant was presented with a venue which nobody had used before – the Cunard flagship, Queen Elizabeth.

Of course it helped that her father, Capt John Treasure Jones, had just retired from the former Liverpool-based shipping company.

Capt Treasure Jones was an internationally-known figure, as the year before, in 1967, he delivered Queen Mary from Southampton to Long Beach, California, via Cape Horn, to become a tourist attraction.

The story is related in John Treasure Jones’s memoirs, describing his fascinating career from Pembrokeshire farmer’s boy to commanding the world’s greatest ships.

After collating family papers and trawling attics and old trunks to discover further lost material, these memoirs have pieced together and edited over the last three years by his son-in-law, Dick Tennant.

They are now published as Tramp To Queen, by Capt John Treasure Jones. The title, coined by John, refers to starting his sailing career, aged 15, on tramp steamers for four years as an apprentice. The Depression put him back on the farm for five years, and he only got back to sea after stevedoring in Liverpool.

He gradually rose through the ranks (officially noted as showing “exceptional” ability) to captain Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, then the world’s largest ships.

With Cunard now sailing more regularly into Liverpool than ever before in the last 40 years, thanks to the new Cruise Liner Terminal, the book’s timing is perfect.

Recalling their wedding, Dick, a retired chartered accountant, says: “John commandeered the Queen Elizabeth for our wedding reception, which he was keen to make happen, and Cunard was agreeable.

“It caused a national sensation. Nothing like this had happened on this side of the Atlantic.

“We got married on a Tuesday to fit in the liner’s turnaround.

“There was great excitement when we left the church for the ship, with a dock police escort, sirens blaring, blue lights flashing and outriders on these massive Harley-Davidson motorbikes.

“The police later told me they had all this stuff left to them by the Americans after the war and this was one of the few excuses to use it all. We made all the national newspapers, including the back page of The Sun! It was a superb reception, the shame was we had to leave early to go on honeymoon.”

Susan Tennant adds: “My father and Cunard really did us proud. He organised all this and obviously it was marvellous to have our reception aboard the Queen Elizabeth.”

Publishing the memoirs in a sense is returning the favour.

Such is their potency that Susan and her brothers have found them emotionally stirring.

She says it was initially quite strange to have her father’s life in the public domain, but knew he’d be “chuffed to bits” by its publication.

“My father was quite a private and modest man. When we were children, he was an exotic and extraordinary character who suddenly arrived and told us terrific fairy stories about scrubbing whales’ backs, but did not talk much about himself.

“So I was fascinated reading the chapters on the war years. We knew he’d been torpedoed and this book brings those times alive. I’m very proud of him.

“I also had huge admiration for my mother, Belle.

“She was an exceedingly capable woman doing a difficult job bringing up four children, largely on her own.

“There were several occasions during the war when my father

was reported missing at sea and she had to cope with that and keep it from her young family.

“Once my brother asked me the identity of the man walking up our path, and I resolutely replied that I’d never seen him before, only to be told that was my father.”

Dick adds: “The general problem was being a captain, lord and master of all they survey and then coming home to a wife, who is very competently running a household, while he still wants to be commander.”

On one occasion, Belle was unhappy with the state of Susan’s room and mentioned it to him when he was on leave.

Then he made an edict that there would be a Sunday inspection – but he backed down when Susan told him that, if he did, she’d move out to live with a friend.

“On board Mauretania, after Sunday church service, John would have a coffee and then give any department 30 minutes’ warning before his inspection in white gloves,” says Dick.

Family frictions apart, JTJ, having come up the ranks, had the common touch and could speak as easily to engine room greasers as Park Avenue millionairess passengers.

“After we’d done Queen Mary 2’s maiden crossing, in April, 2004, we decided to look at his cuttings and found a pile of typed Cunard stationery.

“We thought they’d be interesting for the grandchildren. There was only one missing chapter after his apprenticeship until the war.

“I reconstructed this from a letter, which looks like a press summary after he was given command of the Liverpool liner Media.

“Also, some material was about his Royal Naval Reserve side and being aboard HMS Glorious during a serious collision. That’s a fascinating period.”

The book is a roll-call of the most famous mid-20th century Cunarders: Ascania, Britannic, Carinthia, Caronia, Lancastria, Media, Samaria, Saxonia, Sylvania, the first two Queens and John’s favourite, the Cammell Laird Birkenhead-built Mauretania II.

There are great anecdotes like taking Sylvania out of Montreal for Liverpool during a tug strike unaided, and John giving the tugmen’s union leader a V-sign after succeeding in very difficult manoeuvres.

Incidents are described like fighting through a Canadian coastal icefield with Saxonia and Carinthia in tandem, or reversing Media out of Liverpool docks in fog and missing Britannic by a few feet. As he said: “Just polishing the rivets!”

TRAMP To Queen, Capt John Treasure Jones, Tempus, £19.99.

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peter.elson