Recollections: The Sea and me (part 1 of 3)

Certain events in life register with you for many years or forever. If an important event happens when you are a child, it certainly makes a lasting impression. As I mentioned in earlier posts, when I was about 6 years old my mother and I took a ship from Marseille, France to Istanbul, Turkey. This voyage lasted about 10 days I think because the ship had to stop, first in Athens, Greece, to make repairs and then it also stopped whenever we were close to a torpedo floating in the sea. This was in late 1946. Below is a picture of my mother and me visiting the Acropolis in Athens while the ship was being repaired.

Mother and me at the Acropolis, Athens, Greece, in late 1946

My mother was very sea sick and stayed in her cabin most of the time. I was free to roam the ship and I did. I made friends with other children, English, American, Greeks and also the staff. They kept an eye on me I think as I was always on deck watching the sea. I was fascinated. It was on old ship, no elevators but metal stairs. An old sailor there, or it could have been a petty officer, gave me a tour of the ship and often brought me in the galley. He told me “tu vois, au grand large, les vagues elles caressent notre bateau” [you see in the open sea the waves they caress our ship] “la mer, c’est comme notre mère, elle nous câline” [the sea, it is like our mother, she pampers us - In French the word for “sea” sounds the same as the word for mother – mer and mère.] “les vagues partent et reviennent sans arrêt , aujourd’hui et demain, autour du monde.” [waves come and go ceaselessly, today and tomorrow, all around the world.] How wonderful I thought that these waves saw the entire world. I decided that when I grew up I would see the world by ship. When we arrived in Istanbul I did not want to leave the ship, but I had to.

Picture taken in Istanbul in the fall of 1946

We stayed in Istanbul 4 or 5 months to take care of my grandmother’s affairs (selling her house, etc.) We did take a ferry to cross the Bosphorus – the strait that connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara - to visit the Asian part of Turkey. Then we took the ship back to Marseille. This time both my mother and my grandmother were sick as the Mediterranean Sea was quite rough. I did not take pictures then so I’ll have to rely more on my postcards, vintage or modern.



My love of the sea started with this sea journey to Turkey. In the summer we returned to Marseille to visit my father’s Armenian relatives that had been found again. I was pleased to meet then but also to often go to the sea in Marseille.

Picture on the Marseille Canebière boulevard, with our new found Armenian cousins – I am wearing dark glasses.

Since we lived in Paris and then in the suburbs I always talked about going back to the sea. Luckily at the time (I don’t know if it is still done) the primary schools of our “département de Seine et Oise” (county) finished the year by taking all the kids for “Une journée à la mer” (a day by the sea.) It would be somewhere in Normandy – usually Dieppe. Very early that morning all the children were brought to the train (steam train) and we would ride to Dieppe. We would go to a local school for lunch, then spend the rest of the day on the beach. It did not matter to us that the beach was not made of sand, but “galets” (smooth stones) we had a great time and came back late, exhausted and sun burnt.

Postcard of the beach at Dieppe and stones on beach, Normandy

When I was 11 years my mother finally said that we could go and spend the month of August on a beach if I planned the trip and selected the town. I had fun researching all the beaches, not too far away. I remember the first beach we went to was called Fort Mahon. Sand dunes were covering the beach, but not much else was happening there. Below is an old picture near Fort Mahon – a bit of a desolate place and a newer picture of the beach which shows it has not changed a lot…. I wish I had had a horse like the girl in the picture.

Beach de Fort Mahon, France (Wikimedia Commons)

We had no TV, no phone, no radio and knew no one. We went to the beach every day and when it was cool, I just would sit watching the waves or walk along the beach. But as long as I was near the sea, I was happy.

Picture of me on the beach in Fort Mahon, 1951.

Then every year after that we went to a beach in August and stayed for the month. Once it was in Saint Malo, in Brittany.

Vintage postcard of St Malo, a fortified town in Brittany

Another time we stayed at the Mont St Michel first for a week, then went to another beach.

Sometimes my mother would go back to stay with my father and a guardian would stay with me. One year we were in Courseulles sur Mer, in Normandie.

Getting ready to catch some shrimp in Courseulles sur Mer, Normandy, 1954

There were still some German blockhaus near the beach and I would go and visit them. The Canadian forces had given the code name of “Juno Beach” to Courseulles for the D Day invasion there in 1944, just ten years earlier. You can find more about Juno Beach here

(click on "Canada in WWII" under the heading Juno Beach Center) and here.

Courseulles sur Mer (Juno Beach) Normandie

I found some more pictures, but with not any date or location. I always wanted to stand near a ship or a boat when photographed.

Then when I was maybe 16 years old my father bought a small house in Mers-les-Bains, a small Normandie town 27 kms from Dieppe (16.7 miles.) I spent many hours reading on the beach, or roaming all around the little town with a bicycle, alone. Here is a picture of a similar house as ours in Mers-les-Bains – and a picture of my mother at the window.




We would drive there quite often as it was not too far from Paris – 95 miles/150 kms or so. But when I was 17 I started going to Italy in summer – the first two summers I traveled with a chaperone to San Benedetto del Tronto, on the Adriatic Sea.

Picture taken at San Benedetto del Tronto, Italy, near a boat (of course) in 1957.

The 3rd and 4th year I travelled to Rimini, also on the Adriatic Sea, with 4 other girl friends. I spoke better Italian then than English.




Concurrently, starting when I was 13 years old, I went to England to improve my English. I joined a school group in December 1953, but on the ship crossing the Channel, I managed to stay alone. The family in England was so very nice. They invited me the following July to accompany them to a beach on the Isle of Wight. I was pleased to go of course as I could take a ferry first to go to England and then another one to the island. The beaches on the Isle of Wight were lovely. Here is a 1950 era postcard showing the ferry to the Isle of Wight.




For several years I went back to England, mostly during the Christmas vacations. I would travel on the ferry taking the longest time to cross the Channel, the 4-hour crossing from Dieppe to Newhaven instead of the 1 ½ hour Calais-Dover. I did not take a picture of the ferry then, but below is a vintage postcard showing a Dieppe ferry boat.



This is getting a bit long, so I’ll finish next week. My mother (my mère) loved a song created by the French singer Charles Trénet, called “La Mer” (the sea.) He composed it in the 40s after a trip along the Mediterranean Sea. Later on lyrics were written in English, unrelated to the French lyrics. Bobby Darin made it a hit in 1959 under the name “Beyond the Sea.”

La mer
Qu'on voit danser le long des golfes clairs
A des reflets d'argent
La mer
Des reflets changeants
Sous la pluie...

Note: Top picture was taken off the coast of Sicily on 11/05/2009 with my Nikon.