Monthly Archives: December 2009

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Queens of the Sea: The Golden Age of Ocean Liners

Ocean Liner. The very word conjours up images of grand, majestic, enormous, powerful, luxurious metallic beasts, powering their way through the oceans of the world, delivering their fragile and all-important human cargo safely and comfortably to their destinations. Most of us seem to forget that, prior to the early 1950s, ocean-liners were the only way to cross the Seven Seas to distant parts of the globe. Commercial, long-haul airplane flights of the kind we know and love today, did not take off (literally) until the postwar boom of the 1950s, when aircraft technology (spurred on by the Second World War), had advanced enough for large numbers of people to fly through the air from country to country. While flying as a form of transport had existed before the 1950s, it was still rather experimental at the time, and flights were short, city-to-city or state-to-state stopovers, rather than planes which flew halfway around the world. It was because of the fact that nobody was sure of the long-haul abilities of aircraft, that ocean liners retained their dominance for so very long. But where did ocean liners come from?

The First Ocean Liners

An ocean liner is defined as a large, sea-going ship, capable of crossing great stretches of water in long voyages, in relative ease, speed and safety. They’re defined as carrying large numbers of passengers and having passenger comfort and satisfaction-of-service as being a key priority in their operation. Given these criteria…what were the first ocean liners?

The ocean liner as we know it today, was born around the middle of the 19th century. It was at this time, in the 1840s-1860s, that steam-power was gradually overtaking the soon-to-be-outdated wind-power of sailing-ships. Initially, steamships were only marginally faster than sailing ships travelling the same distance, and people took little notice of which kind of vessel was better, if indeed, one was. However, improvement in steam-powered engineering allowed steamships to travel faster and further than their sail-powered competitors and soon, stiff competition had arisen.

Early ocean liners were slow, coal-fired paddlesteamers which made slow, choppy, unsteady progress through the seas. These early ships were prone to mechanical failure, shortage of fuel and having only a barely-noticable advantage of speed over similar, wind-powered clipper ships of the period, which were the fastest sailing-ships then in existence. Furthermore, paddlesteamers were loud and noisy and they were dangerous to use in rough seas. Indeed, some early paddlesteamer ocean liners even had a full arrangement of masts, rigging and sails, such was early steamship captains’ mistrust of this new technology.

As time passed, however, steam technology improved and steamships were now significantly faster than sailing-ships, to the point that they were a practical way of crossing the Seven Seas. Added to this, without the necessity of having to store spare wood, spare rope, spare sails and spare other things, that a sailing-ship needed, shipbuilders were able to concentrate more on passenger comfort and ammenities, rather than the storage of provisions. Early ocean-liners, such as the RMS Britannia, the S.S. Great Britain and the S.S. Great Eastern and the Great Western, soon began to steal passengers from other, sail-powered shipping-lines, and people began to realise that steam was the thing of the future.


The Cunard line’s RMS Britannia (1840); one of the world’s first true ocean liners.

The Power of Steam

Once steam-power had proven itself to the shipbuilding masses, sailing ships became increasingly, a thing of the past. By the 1880s and the 1890s, leading up to the turn of the century, great steamship companies or shipping-lines, such as Cunard, White Star Line, Red Star Line and the French Line, were all in stiff-competition with each other for the greatest slice of the passenger pie. Cunard and White Star were the two most famous shipping lines of the turn of the last century, and they were constantly trying to outdo each other with grander, faster, more luxurious, more powerful ships. By the early 1900s, paddlesteamers were a thing of the past; as early as the late 1850s, ships started being powered through the world’s oceans by propellers, having first one, then two and in some cases, even three or four propellers!

Ships which were built for the various steamship companies all had their own, very distinct characteristics, typically regarding a ship’s name. For example, all ships owned by the White Star Line, ended in ‘-ic’. Titanic, Britannic, Olympic, Baltic, Oceanic, etc. Cunard’s ships all ended in ‘-ia’. Carpathia, Lustiania, Mauretania, etc. The Red Star Line’s ships all ended in ‘-land’: Finland, Kroonland, Lapland, and so on. Just like car-manufacturers today, steamship companies printed advertisments in magazines, on posters and in newspapers, all trying to boast…the most luxurious crossings, the fastest crossings, the most passenger ammenities, fast express-trains from the docks to major cities, automobile hire and almost anything else you can think of!

By the early 20th century, the ocean-liner had truly taken on the image which we think of today: Large, metal ships with tall smokestacks, with staterooms, berths, boilers, coal fires and communicating to each other across the seas using the Edwardian equivalent of MSN Messenger: Morse Code wireless telegraphy.

Morse Code wireless telegraphy…more commonly known as ‘wireless’, allowed ships to communicate with each other in realtime, and everything from important weather warnings, ice-reports, distress calls and seasons’ greetings were exchanged between ships and land-stations. It became such a part of shipboard life, that people would even be able to buy newspapers which had all their content, courtesy of the telegraph-machine.

The Blue Riband

No article on ocean liners could possibly be complete without a mention of this, most famous of industry prizes.

The Blue Riband.

For most of its life, the Blue Riband was a sort of unwritten competition held between various ships and shipping-lines, and it was awarded to the ship which could make the fastest overall crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, and maintain the fastest average speed during its crossing. Winners of the Blue Riband were given the privelige of hoisting a long, bright blue banner…the blue riband…on the masts of their winning ship, to indicate proudly to prospective passengers that by boarding THIS SHIP with the blue flag…YOU would get the FASTEST crossing across the Atlantic Ocean! It was amazing publicity and one hell of a marketing-boost. Cunard was particularly famous for winning the Blue Riband and its ships held the Riband for several years.


The actual Blue Riband ‘Hales Trophy’, as it’s called, commissioned by British MP Harold K. Hales, in 1935.

In time, the Blue Riband became more than just a bit of cloth flapping in the wind, it became an actual, real-life, solid gold trophy! The trophy was awarded to the ship which made the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean while maintaining the highest average speed…or at least, that’s it in a nutshell; there were a mountain of rules abut how to win the trophy and what was considered a proper or an improper win, rules too complicated to try and explain here!

Throughout its existence, the Blue Riband was won by a total of 35 ocean-liners, of these, twenty-five were British, three were American, five were German, one was Italian and one was French. Of all the shipping-companies whose ships won the Blue Riband, the highest total was 14 ships, belonging to the Cunard line. I wasn’t kidding when I said they played to win!

Getting an Ocean Liner Underway

Away from the world of glamour, of luxury, of grand prizes, marketing hype and technological advancements, there was another, earthier, more grimey side to ocean liners which few people think about on a daily basis…and this was just what it TOOK to get an ocean liner ready for a voyage. These days, it’s easy, you pack it all in, you press a button and off you go! 80 years ago, it was a LOT harder.

These days, the food is all pre-packed and it’s driven onto the ship with massive forklifts and cranes. Back in the 1920s, this was all done by hand. Some cargo might be hoisted onto the ship by cranes, but most of the crates and barrels with food and drink and linen and crockery and cutlery and glassware and towels and napkins and tablecloths and pots and pans and all the other, billions of things that ocean liners needed, were all loaded by dozens of dock-workers. These days, everything is loaded onto pallets and driven onto ships with trucks and forklifts, and it still looks hard. Imagine doing it without all that stuff.

Apart from the provisions, ships needed fuel. In the 1910s and 20s, fuel meant…coal. Lots of coal. Tons and tons and tons of coal. It was all shovelled and craned and tipped and carted into the ship’s massive coal-bunkers, from which stokers and firemen would have to get it, to fire up the ship’s boilers.

This leads us to our next big thing in getting a ship going…firing it up…literally.

These days, ships are all powered by fuel-oil and it’s relatively easy to get them going. 80 years ago, all the ships were powered by steam. Firing up an ocean liner such as the Mauretania, for example, or the Olympic or the Titanic, took hours…even days…to do. If a ship was to sail on the 10th of the month, stokers, firemen and engineers, would have to be firing up the boilers at least two days in advance, before they could get going. But what exactly had to be done?

Well…first, the boilers had to be filled with water. Then, the furnaces had to be lit. Then you shovelled the coal in. The coal was brought from the coal-bunkers by wheelbarrows. Once the fires were burning, you had to feed them even more coal. The fires had to glow absolutely white hot. As the heat built up, the water in the boilers would start to boil. This could take hours to do, and lighting the fires already took hours! Once the water was boiled, it made steam. Constant heat was needed to keep the steam from cooling off and condensing again, so fires had to be kept lit and stoked up at all times. Once the steam was produced, you had to wait for steam-pressure to build up. This could take the better part of a day. Steam-power ran everything on an ocean-liner back in the 1910s, so if you didn’t get the boilers fired up…the ship didn’t move. The steam-pressure not only powered the pistons, which drove the driveshafts, which spun the propellers, which pushed the ship through the water, the steam-pressure also powered the ship’s generators, which ran the dynamos, which gave the ship its electrical power! You couldn’t even switch the lights on if the boilers weren’t lit!

Apart from that, you had to make sure that the steam-pressure didn’t get too high. If it did, the boiler could explode from the pressure, killing everyone! A buildup of steam-pressure caused great damage to a smokestack of the S.S. Great Eastern when it exploded; several of the crew were killed in the blast. Stokers had to keep the fires burning, but they also had to make sure that the fires were laid and built correctly; out on a rocking, rolling ocean, you couldn’t risk having piles of burning coal spilling out of the furnace onto the floor because you forgot to rake the fire correctly and prevent buildups of unsteady coal!

Speed was paramount onboard steamships. Ocean liners, much like jumbo jets today, had strict schedules to keep. They were all expected to be able to sail from A to B within a certain time, dop off their passengers, recoal, reprovision and then turn around and sail back, within a couple of days. As a result, the ‘black gangs’, the stokers and firemen who lived in the bowels of the ship, all worked in shifts, in very hot, very sweaty, very trying and noisy environments, twenty four hours a day, for weeks at a time.

But just how fast were ocean liners?

This varied. Most people think of ocean liners as big, grand vessels with lots of funnels, belching out smoke and slicing through the water. Yes, there were ships like this, but they all belonged to the wealthier lines, the less-prominent steamship lines, of which there were many, did not have such grand vessels, and they could not go as fast. But to give you an idea of just what kinds of speeds ships were expected to make…


The RMS Mauretania, of the Cunard line. Top speed: 24kt.

At 24kt, the RMS Mauretania was expected to be able to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a week. Today, the RMS Queen Mary 2 is expected to cross the Atlantic (going at a speed of 30kt) in six days or less. Voyages on smaller, slower ships could take ten days or two weeks, but on the really fast ships, a week was generally the expected crossing-time of the Atlantic.

Changing Times

Up until the mid 1920s, all ocean liners were coal-fired, water-boiling monsters which took on tons of coal for each crossing. In the 1920s and 1930s, new technology allowed ships to have boilers which were fuelled by oil instead of coal. This was more efficient and it needed fewer people to work the ship’s engines. Newer ocean liners coming out in the 1920s and 30s started looking more modern and more sleek than their aging, Edwardian and Victorian running-mates. One example of this was the S.S. Normandie.


The SS Normandie, launched in 1932 and entering service with the French Line in 1935.

The Normandie was different in many ways; she was sleeker and more aerodynamic than the earlier, more boxy and angular Edwardian ocean liners of the 1900s and 1910s. She was faster, boasted better engines and more modern, up-to-date appointments. Earlier ships boasted interiors which were modelled after great palaces, hotels and grand manor houses of European royalty and aristocracy. By comparison, the Normandie had more modern decorations, in keeping with the then, very popular Art Deco and Streamline Moderne art-movements, which emphasized sleek lines, flashy colours, glass, metal and graceful curves.


The main dining-saloon of the SS Normandie. In comparison with earlier ships which had carpets and wrought iron and lots of wood carving, this dining-saloon is brighter and more modern, with more modern carpet-patterns, tiles, mirrors, and flashy, glass light-fixtures.

The Depression and the War

Like almost everything, the shipping-industry was hit in the crotch by the Great Depression. Several famous shipping-companies collapsed completely, or had their ships reduced from grand, ocean-going superliners, to coast-hugging cruise-ships. Cunard and White Star had to perform a merger, just to keep each other afloat, literally and figuratively. They became ‘Cunard-White Star’ in December of 1933. The Depression meant that people couldn’t afford to take casual, week-long pleasure-crossings on grand ocean liners anymore. Passenger numbers plummeted and company big-wigs had to do some fast thinking if they didn’t want their ships to go under along with the money they brought in.


The RMS Queen Mary in her heyday.

The Second World War, starting in 1939, changed a lot of things, including the shipping-industry. Ships such as the SS Mauretania (a later Cunard ship, launched in 1938), the RMS Olympic, the RMS Queen Mary and the RMS Queen Elizabeth, all famous ocean liners, soon found themselves as troop-transport vessels, which were badly needed to ship soldiers to battlefields in Europe and Asia. Their enormous passsenger capacities, together with superior speed, meant that these ships were excellent for transporting combatants across the globe quickly and efficiently…and most importantly – fast enough to outrun any German U-boat submarines.

The SS Normandie, like the ocean liners listed above, was also to be converted to troop-transport, however during conversion in New York Harbour, a fire broke out in the ship. Attempts to put the fire out meant that there was a severe weight-imbalance, caused by the water pumped into the ship to put out the blaze. This imbalance caused the Normandie to capsize. Too busy with other wartime efforts to salvage the ship, the American authorities left the Normandie in the harbour for nearly a whole year. It was finally righted and refloated in 1943 (it was capsized in ’42), but the ship was, by that time, so damaged that it was considered a write-off, and was sent to the scrapyard.

Ocean Liner…or…Cruise Ship?

If you went up to the captain of an ocean liner and told him he had a nice ‘cruise ship’…he’d probably slap you in the face. Despite what some people think, there are actually significant differences between what constitutes an ocean liner, and what constitutes a cruise-ship. Ocean liners are large, powerful, ocean-going ships (hence the name…OCEAN liner), designed to transport vast numbers of passengers in comfort, over long distances. They are designed to be faster, larger, stronger and more luxurious. Their lifeboats are situated higher up on the ship’s side, to protect them from rogue-waves when out at sea.

By comparison, cruise-ships are smaller, less luxurious and slower. Their lifeboats are located further down on the ship’s hull and they are not expected to have to cross vast oceans on a regular basis. Cruise-ships sail from port to port, while ocean liners sail from country to country, covering several hundred miles of ocean. Cruise-ships carry fewer provisions, given the fact that they don’t spend as much time away from land. Ocean liners had to carry enough food and other necessities, to keep people fed for up to two weeks at a time.

The End of the Ocean Liner

With the rising popularity of commercial airplanes in the 1950s, with their faster travel-times, ocean liners began to find themselves running short on passengers. Most lines had crumbled in the Depression of the 1930s, but the few which remained, such as the Cunard Line, struggled to hold onto what passengers they had. By the 1970s, the RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 was one of the few ships still making regular, transatlantic crossings. Eventually, however, airliners won out, and the grand days of the ocean liner were but a memory. Today, Cunard, with its grand ocean liners, is one of the very few shipping-companies which still plies the transatlantic route, with new ships such as the RMS Queen Mary 2 and the MS Queen Victoria.

Few of the grand ocean liners of yesteryear exist today. Ships such as the RMS Acquatania, the RMS Olympic, and the Normandie were scrapped. Ships such as the Britannic and the Titanic were either destroyed during service as troop-transport or hospital ships, or were sunk during accidents at sea. Today, the original RMS Queen Mary is the only one of the original ocean liners still intact, which plied the oceans of the world in what was the Golden Age of Ocean Liner.


The RMS Queen Mary as she appears today, docked in Long Beach, California.

 
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The Jazz Age and the Roaring Twenties

I’ve read frequently in the past, that professional historians (as opposed to the person writing this article), have often dubbed the decade of the 1920s, to be the decade of the 20th century, the decade which was most interesting, most exciting and the most culturally significant, both in the United States and elsewhere.

What Were the Roaring Twenties?

The 1920s are known to history as the Roaring Twenties (taken from the Roaring 40s, 40 degrees south latitude), and it was a name aptly given for one of the most vibrant and tempestuous decades in world history.

The Roaring Twenties essentially saw the birth of modern society as we know it today. The consumer. The homeowner. The driver. The moviegoer or the nightclub patron. While all these people existed before the 1920s, it was in this decade that they really took off. The 20s saw rapid technological changes and innovations and all kinds of flashy new inventions and new cultural phenomena which would change the world and affect it for the next 80 years.

The postwar boom (that’s the First World War, folks; some people forget that there were two of them!) saw America and other countries (such as the United Kingdom and Australia and various European countries) enter a golden age. The age of radio, crime-sprees, prohibition, jazz-music, the Charleston and a new innovation in filmmaking technology: The Talkie!

All of these things are instantly associated with the 20s, a time when many of our grandparents (or if we’re old enough…parents!, or young enough, great-grandparents!) were growing up. People tend to think that before television, folks did the housework, read, sewed, knitted, chatted, had dinner and then went to bed with the chickens. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Just because the sun went down at seven o’clock was no reason for people to do the same, and this was when people started going to what some people probably think is a brand-new invention…the nightclub.

Music of the 1920s.

Then, as now, nightclubs had loud music, smoke, drinks and well-dressed customers…well perhaps that bit hasn’t lasted the test of time….but the rest has. Nightclubs and restaurants of the 1920s were a bit more formal than what we would recognise today, but it was all still there: the dance-floor, the tables, the partying patrons and the cigarette-smoke. Famous nightclubs in the 1920s and 30s included the Stork Club and the 21 Club in Manhattan and the Empress Club in London. The 21 Club still exists today, although it’s now more of a restaurant rather than the speakeasy nightclub it would’ve been, back in the 1920s.

Jazz was the pop music of the 1920s and it was as popular in its day as rap is today. Neither was considered cultured or polite and both took considerable time to be accepted by the more conservative peoples of the world. Jazz was loud, vibrant, fast and raunchy, thoroughly unlike the more delicate parlour-songs of the early 1900s. It was born out of ragtime piano-music of the turn of the century and gradually evolved into its own, distinct genre by the late 1910s. Many famous songs still widely known today, were published in the 1920s…How about…

The Charleston.
Puttin’ on the Ritz.
Blue Skies.
Ain’t Misbehavin’.
There’ll Be Some Changes Made.
I’m Sittin’ on Top of the World.
The Sheik of Arabay.
Tootsie.
It Had to be You.
Let’s Misbehave.

The Charleston is considered the ‘theme song’ of fhe 1920s, much like how ‘In the Mood’ was considered the theme-song of the 1940s. It claimed to be the most popular and instantly-recognisable of all the tunes of the 20s and was synonymous with the popular dance known as the Charleston (named for the city of Charleston in South Carolina). Both the song and its accompanying dance were brought to public attention in the musical play ‘Runnin’ Wild’ which premiered in 1923. They were an instant hit! Like the music, the dance was also considered scandalous and offensive, while others saw it as something fresh, bold and fascinating to watch. Actress Ginger Rogers was considered one of the best Charleston dancers ever.

The 20s saw the rise of commercial radio, where people could sit back, turn on the set and enjoy listening to radio serials, the news or popular music. The first commercial radio-station in the USA went on the air in November, 1920 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. For the first time, people were able to listen to public messages and eletronic entertainment from the comfort of their own homes, without having to go hunting for a newspaper. More information on the Golden Age of Radio can be found here.

Films of the 1920s.

The 1920s saw the rise of the film-industry as we know it today. While film or ‘moving pictures’ had existed since the 1890s, it wasn’t until the 1920s that it really started taking off. Early films were short and the actors remained anonymous. By the 1920s, the idea that the people in the films should *gasp!* be recognised for their talent!…had taken hold, and film-credits were introduced, to tell the viewers who played which part, who had produced the film, who had directed it, and so-on. The era of the movie-star had been born!

Famous early movie stars included such notables as…

Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin.
Mary Pickford.
Rudolph Valentino.
Clark Gable.
Buster Keaton.
Harold Lloyd.

Some were successes, some were failures, some made the successful transition to talkies in the 1930s (such as Gable and Chaplin), some were sad failures. Valentino didn’t even make it to talkies, he died in 1926!

A Changing World.

The 1920s saw incredible changes, not just technologically, but also culturally. People started taking to the road in their flivvers, Stutzes, Mercers, Stanleys, Pierces, Maxwells and…dozens of other motor-cars whose brands you probably also have never heard of. The Road Trip became the new craze, and families packed up their picnic baskets and went for long adventures around the country, visiting seaside resorts or quaint villages or going fishing and hunting. The availability of the automobile to the common man (and later, woman) allowed people a new kind of freedom which they had not previously known. No-longer restrained by horses, timetables and trains, they could hop into their cars and drive off whenever they liked.


Looks kinda cute, doesn’t it? This is a 1920 Stanley Steamer. All cars manufactured by Stanley were steam-cars, meaning they worked like locomotives: You boiled the water, the water made the steam, the steam-pressure drove the car. They took forever to get going, but cars like these lasted from the dawn of motoring until the late 1920s. Steam cars were the fastest cars in their day, capable of reaching upwards of 100mph when most gasoline cars struggled to make 60.

Women changed a lot in the 1920s, they wore shorter, more revealing skirts, they started smoking cigarettes, they started drinking, hanging out in nightclubs and even driving motor-cars. Men didn’t believe that women were able to handle such technologically advanced machines such as cars, so this was quite a change.

A new kind of superhero was invented in the 20s as well: Pilots. People could now see that airplanes were here to stay, and that they could serve a practical purpose in the civilian world, delivering mail and packages and helping people fly from A to B. Aerial stunt-pilots and the stuntmen (and women!) who worked with them…colloquially known as ‘barnstormers’ were popular fixtures at fairs and carnivals, where people would come to watch daring aerobatics. Barnstorming was a fad or a phenomenon which is almost fixed in the 1920s, unfortunately. Though it proved very popular, both to participate in as well as to observe, safety regulators put all kinds of rules and guidelines on pilots and barnstormers in the late 1920s to prevent them from hurting themselves. In the end, barnstormers had had enough and stopped performing altogether, because they couldn’t do their tricks AND satisfy the safety-requirements at the same time.


Two men playing tennis on top of a biplane in this 1920s barnstorming photograph. Note the lack of almost all safety equipment.

The End of the Roaring Twenties.

The celebrated, much-loved and sorely-missed 1920s came to an abrupt end in October of 1929. The Wall Street Crash left millions out of work worldwide and the lack of money meant that the postwar extravagance of the 1920s was, to many at least, soon nothing but a distant memory of what life once was.

 
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“I never guess, it is a shocking habit!”: The Myths of Sherlock Holmes.

Holmesian Myths.

    “…Any truth is better than indefinite doubt…”

– The Yellow Face.

As with any great person, there have been all kinds of myths and legends and suppositions about Holmes. How many of them are actually true? Here are some of the more common ones:

1. Holmes took drugs.

Yes he did. Holmes did occasionally take morphine and cocaine. Don’t forget, when Doyle was writing these stories in the 1880s and the 1890s, cocaine was legal. You could buy it over the counter at a chemist’s shop just as easily as Panadol today.

2. Holmes was a drug-addict.

No. Holmes was never a drug-addict, per-se. At least, not in the sense that most people would understand the term. Holmes shot himself up with cocaine because he required an artificial stimulus when he had not his natural one (which was of course, a case, to keep his mind occupied).

3. Holmes wore a deerstalker hat.

No. No stories mention Holmes ever wearing such a hat. The hat was the invention of Sidney Paget, the illustrator that The Strand Magazine commissioned, to illustrate the Holmes stories. In one publication, he read of a hat, to which Doyle had given no specific name, and imagined it to be a deerstalker.

4. Holmes smoked a calabash pipe.

No. Holmes never smoked such a pipe in his life. He smoked cigars, cigarettes, clay pipes, briar pipes…but not calabash. This was an invention of Hollywood.

5. 221b Baker Street really exists!

Yes and no. Certainly, it never existed in Doyle’s time. Doyle deliberately exaggerated or falsified addresses in his stories, because they were set in (then) contemporary London, and he couldn’t risk having people knocking on actual doors, looking for his detective. He originally had Holmes living at 21 Baker Street, but when he realised that that particular address was occupied, he changed it to ‘221b’, an address which, in his lifetime, did not exist. Later, when Baker Street was lengthened and the houses were all renumbered, there did come into existence, a ‘221 Baker Street’, which still exists today.

6. Holmes & Watson were gay lovers.

You’d be surprised how often this one pops up. They were flatmates, colleagues, friends, partners…but not lovers. Holmes was so detatched and at times, inhuman, it’s nearly impossible to think of him loving anyone at all. In Watson’s case, he was constantly jumping from one wife to another, ending up, as some believe, with the grand total of six wives, throughout the run of the canon.

7. Holmes once said: “Elementary, my dear Watson!”.

No. Never once in all of the sixty original publications that he appears in, did Holmes ever say that line. While he certainly said “my dear Watson!” dozens, if not hundreds of times, and “Elementary” just as frequently, the phrase never appears in its entirety throughout the entire Sherlock Holmes canon. It did appear at the end of a 1929 film called “The Return of Sherlock Holmes”.

8. Holmes owns a Stradivarius violin.

Yes. Holmes does own, and play, a violin, and he mentions it as being a Stradivarius worth at least “five hundred guineas”, and which he bought from “a Jew broker in Tottenham Court Road for fifty-five shillings” (The Cardboard Box).