This vintage home movie dates from about 1960 and was filmed aboard a small liner from the Lloyd Triestino line called the Lloyd Triestino Africa.
The film was part of a new batch of about 30 films which I bought from eBay recently. I can be fairly certain of the date because the film has a 'develop before' date of April 1961, and someone - presumably the photographer - has written on the front of the standard yellow Kodachrome box, '1960'.
It was possible, with a bit of detective work to find out that the ship shown in the film is the Lloyd Triestino Africa, although I had to do some google work to find out some more information about that shipping line since I'm not familiar with ships and shipping. I found from this page, that the Lloyd Triestino Africa was one of the larger liners in the Lloyd Triestino line, at least one of the larger in the line that was operating at the time the film was made.
It seems, not unremarkably considering the name of the ship, that this liner was used for trips around Africa from its home port of Trieste.
Film of the Lloyd Triestino Africa
The most remarkable scenes in the film from my point of view are shown in the sequence from about 1:30 into the film when people are dressing up to perform some sort of ceremony. In the first scene there is a character holding a trident which I assume is meant to be Neptune talking to the captain of the boat, and a line of people behind him dressed in various other costumes. After a lot of toing and froing various people are thrown into the swimming pool on the ship.
I asked my Brother to comment on this since he was in the merchant navy for many years and he thought it was possibly the ceremony which takes place when the ship crosses the equator and people who are 'first timers' at the equator are judged by Neptune and summary judgement passed on whether they should receive punishment or not.
I had heard of this ceremony from a book I read as a boy, but had always assumed it was a fictional ceremony. It seems not however!
We took the Lloyd Triestino ships, the Africa and the Europa from Mombasa to Trieste back in the late 1950/early 1960’s and I have a Certificate signed by King Neptune to confirm I had ‘crossed the Lines, being the Equator. The Ceremony was always pretty scary to my sister and I and we kept well back to avoid being thrown in the pool. The most memorable part of the trip was the Suez Canal, but we thoroughly enjoyed these journeys and the gallant Italian crew. It was all great fun with plenty of activities, as well as parties and Fancy Dress competitions, etc. My mother’s wardrobe had to be extensive as one could not be seen in the same dance dress too often. I remember waiting for a day for our turn to go through the single vessel part of the Suez and on shore we saw the back of what looked like a huge screen. My father who had a great sense of fun, put it about that we would all disembark that night and watch a film on the giant screen. It didn’t happen of course and the next day, as we passed the screen, we saw that it was a giant poster ‘Fly BOAC. It’s faster!’. How everyone laughed.
If you want more memories, do contact me.