Aboard the S.S. Cedric: Crossing to America

On the morning of the 25th of March, 1912, 'Abdu'l-Bahá and His small party — Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání, Mírzá Asadu'lláh-i-Iṣfahání, Dr. Amín'u'lláh Faríd, the Master's attendants Siyyid Asadu'lláh and others — boarded the White Star liner S.S. Cedric at Alexandria, in Egypt, bound for New York by way of Naples and the North Atlantic crossing.

The Master had been in Europe and in Egypt for several months gathering His strength for the American journey. He was sixty-eight years old. He had spent forty-seven of His sixty-eight years in prison and exile. The transatlantic voyage ahead — ten days at sea, then a continent of public talks, journeys by train, large audiences in unfamiliar cities — would have tried a younger man. The American friends had been asking, in their letters, whether He was well enough to make the journey. He had answered that He was.

Mahmúd records the small daily life of the crossing. The Master rose before dawn and chanted prayers in His cabin. He took breakfast with His party in the second-class dining room, declining the first-class accommodation that some of His attendants had urged Him to take. He spent the mornings on deck or in the lounges, often in conversation with His attendants and with the small number of Western passengers who had begun to recognise Him by sight. He kept a strict afternoon nap. He resumed conversation in the evenings.

The conversations Mahmúd preserves from the voyage are quiet and almost domestic. The Master spoke of the friends He expected to meet in America. He named some of them by name: Lua Getsinger, who had been to 'Akká several times; Howard MacNutt, whose home in Brooklyn would be the first reception; Roy Wilhelm, whose hospitality at West Englewood had been arranged for. He spoke of the sights of America He had been told to expect: the great new buildings of New York; the prairies; the Pacific coast.

We have come to America that the friends may see Us and that the truth may be proclaimed.

The phrase, set down by Mahmúd in one of the mid-voyage entries, gave the Master's own framing of the journey. He had not come for sightseeing, however much He might in fact see. He had not come for rest, though the long sea voyage would in some sense be one. He had come for the friends — that they might see Him in person; that the Faith they had received in correspondence and in pilgrim notes might be confirmed by His visible presence; and that the great themes of the Faith might be proclaimed to the wider American public from platforms the Master Himself would in person occupy.

The S.S. Cedric docked at the Hudson River piers in lower Manhattan on the 11th of April, 1912. The American journey had begun.

Paraphrased from Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání (George Ronald, 1998), entries for March 25 - April 11, 1912; see original for full text.

Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání, M.. (1998). *Mahmúd's Diary: The Diary of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Zarqání*. George Ronald.