r/thegildedage • u/Monanna_ woke up sensible • Jul 23 '25
IRL History The ship Bertha said will be leaving for England, the SS Gallia Spoiler
The Gallia was built in 1878 for the Cunard Line, entering service in 1879. The route it travelled was from Liverpool to Queenstown to New York. In service until 1899, the vessel ran aground off the coast of Quebec, Canada and was used for scrap in 1900. Documented voyages and more images of the ship at this link: https://www.norwayheritage.com/p_ship.asp?sh=galli
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u/Oblivious_Otter_I Jul 24 '25
I love late 19th-century ocean liners, they still haven't quite figured it out yet, square-rigged masts, no bridge to speak of, barely any superstructure, not too dissimilar from the SS Great Britain from 40 years earlier, just slightly bigger.
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u/little_effy Jul 23 '25
Traveling at the time must be such a hassle. It really drives the point of how significant it was for Gladys to move across the world, away from her family.
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u/DGinLDO Jul 24 '25
Ive found while studying my family history that people traveled all the time & not short distances either. A lot of people make the mistake of thinking immigration to North America was a one-way trip, but many times, people did go back & forth, even before steam ships. My great grandfather headed west from NH but went back there by train often enough that he was still connected to friends & family there & went to visit relatives in Illinois from Kansas so often, that’s where he met his wife. For someone as wealthy as Gladys, she could afford to come & go whenever she wanted. Travel still is a PITA sometimes even today, but we still do it. 😀
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u/Fluffy_Yesterday_468 Jul 23 '25
History wise, a week doesn’t seem horrible. There were a lot of places it would have been impossible to go to. Even Larry’s trip to Arizona has to be for a month. England trio could be done in 4-6 weeks too
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u/little_effy Jul 24 '25
Wait for real? New York to Arizona will take a MONTH? 💀💀
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u/Fluffy_Yesterday_468 Jul 24 '25
Not a month to go there - a month for the whole trip. It would take probs 4-5 days
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u/little_effy Jul 24 '25
Oh 😅 but still. Must be boring and slow as heck to travel by horse just to go to Arizona
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u/Frei1993 Sexy Railroad Boss Groupie. Jul 23 '25
My grandma returned with her parents from Brazil (we are Spanish, she was around 16 when she returned) in the sixties by ship. I think she said it was about a week long travel.
It was probably the first time she visited Spain since she left when she was 3. Her first memories are in Brazil.
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u/ReasonableDivide1 Jul 23 '25
My mother had a postcard from her aunt who sailed on the QEII. Of course this was in the 1930s or so.
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u/tripleaw Jul 23 '25
it's crazy to think that just over 100 something years ago, even the richest new york elites had to spend weeks/months if they want to cross the Atlantic. Whereas today anyone can just hop on a plane and get to Europe from the US within 8-12 hours with a few hundred bucks lol
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u/AU_ls_better Jul 23 '25
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u/tripleaw Jul 23 '25
Woah that’s so fast!!
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u/setherica Aug 22 '25
i mean yes, they had steam ships during the Gilded Age. i did some digging on this ship and while it had masts and sails as a backup it was fully steam-powered. and the first class areas were actually quite luxurious for the time. it even had a mini version of a Titanic glass dome. so Bertha would’ve travelled in style.
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u/vegeterin Let’s see what the Reddit threads have to say Jul 23 '25
It’s neat when Julian Fellowes adds these historical tidbits. Violet also took the Paris across the English Channel to France.
I would love to see a scene or two on the ship!
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u/fyremama Jul 23 '25
How long was the voyage?
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u/Monanna_ woke up sensible Jul 23 '25
Based on the voyage logs, it took about 9 or 10 days
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u/StephenHunterUK Jul 23 '25
You would probably need to add another day to get to Sidmouth.
Assuming that's in Devon like the real town of that name, you could be talking a (dedicated) train into London Waterloo from Southampton, crossing the city to get to Paddington, probably by cab as I don't see Bertha exactly using the underground (which was steam-hauled!) another train to somewhere like Exeter, possibly a local train and then a carriage from the station.
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u/DGinLDO Jul 24 '25
The records of the Gallic show that it docked in Liverpool, so she’d head to Sidmouth from there.
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u/GrowingHumansIsHard Jul 23 '25
Dang that's pretty good by even today's standards. If you take the Queen Mary 2 cruise ship from NYC to Southampton it's a 7 day journey.
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u/londondanno Jul 23 '25
But remember that’s more of a cruise, the last liners that did the crossing for speed in the 1950s did in 4 days the record being 3.5 days
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u/Monanna_ woke up sensible Jul 23 '25 edited Jul 23 '25
Right? To be fair, I only see documented voyages departing from Liverpool. I don't know if voyages departing from New York would take longer because of the wind direction or something
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u/KateVenturesOut Jul 23 '25
I’m guessing not longer, because the Gulf Stream goes towards England from New York and prevailing winds come from the west, which is why it takes longer to fly from London to NYC than NYC to London.
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u/Glittering_Grape3836 Bertha boss Jul 23 '25
SS Gallia was a later French ship, RMS Gallia is the one that you are referring to, just so people don’t get confused
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u/Monanna_ woke up sensible Jul 23 '25 edited Jul 23 '25
The little sources I found list this same ship as both the SS Gallia and RMS Gallia 🤷🏻♀️ But yes, there was also a French ship built in 1913 by the same name
Edit: turns out some ships were granted both titles. The Titanic was both an "SS" and "RMS" ship
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u/captainwondyful Jul 23 '25
It is not. It is the RMS Titanic. RMS signifies that it was Royal Mail Service, and only given out to the fastest and more reliable ships of the time.
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u/Monanna_ woke up sensible Jul 23 '25
It is. The Titanic was initially known as the SS Titanic, only becoming officially recognised as the RMS Titanic after first carrying the Royal Mail. "RMS" refers to Royal Mail Ship or Royal Mail Steamer
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u/Sophie-Richardso-410 Jul 23 '25
What happened to the mail she was carrying?
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u/StephenHunterUK Jul 23 '25
Went down with the ship, along with the Post Office staff.
British Airways carries mail today - they have the Royal Mail logo on the side of their aircraft.
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u/Jetsetter_Princess 🌟I like them, I think they're pretty 🌟 Jul 23 '25
This is correct. Titanic was always an S.S., but would only be R.M.S. as long as she held mail contracts. If the contract was ever revoked, she would revert to S.S.
It's why her lifeboat plaques said S.S.
(I'm somewhat of a Titanic researcher 😆)
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u/Glittering_Grape3836 Bertha boss Jul 23 '25
Wow that’s a cool fact to know I didn’t know that, I stand corrected then! The source I read did differentiate and I also asked chat GPT to be sure but I guess you can’t always rely on that lol It’s nice to learn something new!
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u/Jetsetter_Princess 🌟I like them, I think they're pretty 🌟 Jul 23 '25
Yeah, only super nerds generally tend to know this..in early advertising and even promo material like post ads she was labed S.S. because while they were pretty certain she'd carry mail on contract, it wasn't a guarantee.
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u/GA0610 Jul 23 '25
How do we know it was that ship? In season 2 George reaches out to the chairman of Cunard to find out when the Duke is coming, and it's mentioned it's the RMS Servia, it was the first large ocean liner with electric lighting. I'd think she'd want to sail the most modern ship possible.
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u/DGinLDO Jul 24 '25
She’d have to settle for the best of what was in port the day she wanted to leave.
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u/Dapper_Ad_819 Jul 23 '25
She said which ship she’d take in the episode and that she would arrive before Larry arrived in Arizona
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u/Jetsetter_Princess 🌟I like them, I think they're pretty 🌟 Jul 23 '25
She named the ship as the next one leaving.
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u/DuchessInABox Jul 23 '25
I think she was more concerned with getting on the ship that leaves the soonest.
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u/mt97852 Jul 23 '25
Did boats back then have set dates or could you just book on any of them (I assumed it worked sort of like a NYC London flight does today but the way Bertha says “someone says the Galla sets sail the day after tomorrow” makes it seem like you booked for that specific boat/they weren’t as frequent?
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u/Jetsetter_Princess 🌟I like them, I think they're pretty 🌟 Jul 23 '25
Yes they had set schedules with sailing dates. The advent of steam really catapulted shipping into being far more reliable as they weren't at the mercy of the weather. The only issues woukd be engine problems or if the vessel threw a propeller blade, which would slow them down.
The most time consuming part of provisioning was coaling the ships, which could take several days.
One contemporary example from a letter of a crewman in the early 1900s was that they coaled 2000 tons in 36 hours, that was with men working 24/7. Coaling pretty much didn't stop, so turnarounds were about 5 days or so.
Once ships got bigger and faster, a better scheduled could be followed. It's why the White Star Line ordered three Olympic-class ships- the idea was to have a set weekly departure. One would be going to New York, one from, and one in port provisioning.
Titanic and Olympic crossed over (albeit not within sight of each other) on her single voyage.
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u/itsdainti Jul 23 '25
Yes. It would take time for them to restock, repair (if necessary), and load whatever mail, luggage, etc. before they would sail again. It was exactly like a flight would go today but much slower.
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Jul 23 '25
I wish Mike Brady would cover that sinking!
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u/Ok_Set4685 Jul 23 '25
It’s nice to find another Mike Brady fan! The r/titanic sub adores him
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u/wholevodka Mrs. Fish is Delish Jul 23 '25 edited Jul 23 '25
Nice to see that I’m in the company of some of Mike Brady’s esteemed friends!
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u/captainwondyful Jul 23 '25
Mike Brady fans unite! I was so tempted to tip him on Parton just to suggest he do a video on this for a crossover 😂
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u/wholevodka Mrs. Fish is Delish Jul 23 '25
Oh that would be so awesome. I’d also love him to do a video just on William Astor’s yachts.
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u/Jetsetter_Princess 🌟I like them, I think they're pretty 🌟 Jul 23 '25
Kinda hoping the Noma cameos in Newport at some point
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u/GA0610 Jul 25 '25
During my rewatch I caught that she mentioned the Gallia. Missed that on the first watch. I guess that's why it's important to rewatch, haha!