The Circus

My old boss who was an intern with USLines in Liverpool circa 1938 told the following story: We had taken a circus eastbound in mid 1930s on a vessel with a shelter deck to accommodate animals. As war threatened in 1939 the owner of the circus came to us to arrange to bring the circus home. Except that now we had different type ships and we had to construct stalls on the main deck to accommodate primarily the three elephants who were the focus of the show. On the appointed day the elephants were delivered to the dock. We had constructed a gangway to get them on board. The mahout (elephant trainer) advised that the only way they would go  up the gangway was in a "trunk in tail" arrangement which was the way they moved in their act, i.e. number two trunk attached to number one tail and number three trunk attached to number two tail. We hastened to reinforce the gangway to handle this additional weight. As number one reached the top of the gangway, number two let go of her tail which was the signal to turn around so number one now tried to come down the gangway. We had to pass thru a lock so we had a timed sailing deadline which was rapidly fading. So we undocked the vessel to take her down stream and trucked the elephants down to meet her where they could almost walk on board. When New York received the sailing cable and noted we had three elephants on board they diverted the ship to Boston. This was twenty years before my friend Frank K. was manager of livestock as he would never have flinched from a few pachyderms.
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