“Let’s Go Cruising”: Pilgrimage Cruises from Ireland to the Mediterranean in the 1930s

Abstract

This article explores the 1930s phenomenon of Irish pilgrimage cruises which visited a range of religious destinations, but most frequently travelled to Lourdes or Rome. Although these were unquestionably sincere religious undertakings, they were also structured to resemble and eventually intertwine with the commercial cruise industry. The 1930s was the decade when Mediterranean cruises first became a luxury holiday form, combining sea and sun with the distinctly modernist aesthetic of cruise-liners themselves. This article explores the development of pilgrimage cruises, maps their relationship to the commercial cruise industry of the 1930s, and argues that the phenomenon was a forerunner of the package holidays to southern Europe which would later become so popular with Irish tourists.