POSH
Peninsular
and Oriental Steam Navigation Company ship The Hindostan departing Southampton,
24th September, 1842
Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons
In common with many others, I thought POSH came from the initial letters of ‘Port Out, Starboard Home,’ which described the preferred cabins of passengers travelling from Britain to India and back, possibly on a P&O ship. These were the cooler, north-facing cabins of wealthy, often aristocratic travellers, who could afford to pay for their greatest comfort. Sadly, the story has never been verified.
Another suggested origin is the Romani posh. From posh-kooroona, or half a crown, posh came to mean something expensive or upper-class. It came more generally into the English language in the early 20th century and was used to mean elegant and is still used currently to describe something a little more extravagant than the commonplace – a posh restaurant, a posh frock, a posh do. It was considered slang for ‘swish.’
‘Posh’ is a pejorative description applied to people who may consider themselves or be thought to be superior to the hoi polloi by reason of any of the following: the way they dress, where they live, how they vote, where they went to school and how they sound – that is, their accents. Britain is a class-ridden society. 😉
I always thought P&O stood for the Pacific and Orient Company, but it was actually the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. For more than a century, from 1842 to 1970, P&O was the major sea carrier of mail and passengers between Britain and India. On the outward journey to India, the port, or left, cabins had the sun first thing in the morning and then cooled down during the day. The right, or starboard cabins had afternoon sun, so were still very warm when it was time to retire for the night. During the return voyage from India to Britain, the reverse was true.
P&O dates from 1822 and was formed by a London stockbroker, called Brodhie McGhie Wilcox, and a Scottish sailor, Arthur Anderson. Its life as a cruise company began in 1837, and it is the oldest cruise line in the world. It is now owned by the US Carnival Corp, which also owns Cunard and Princess Cruises, but still caters mainly to British passengers.
Today’s cruise liners are enormous. P&O’s ships Iona and Arvia both carry 5,200 guests and are served by 1,762 crew. Iona was built in 2021 and it and Arvia are both powered by LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) The line’s smallest cruise ship is the Aurora, which has 850 crew attending to 1,874 passengers.
