Fifty years ago, Louise Wilson and her best friend left New York for Bermuda.

It was a special trip for the 20-year-olds. They’d never been far away from home and they were travelling on the legendary Queen of Bermuda.

Clark Gable, Shirley Temple, TS Eliot, and US President Harry Truman had all been guests on the Furness Bermuda Line ship.

“I was a junior in college and came on the Queen of Bermuda from New York with a college friend, Sally Pearson,” she said. “It was my first introduction to Bermuda. I was very excited. I’d never been anywhere before. Neither of us was that well travelled. We were naive, young girls and not very worldly.

“It was a wonderful adventure and we both felt very fortunate that we could do it.”

The Queen of Bermuda and the Monarch of Bermuda were dubbed the “millionaires ships” because of the luxurious travel they offered.

Miss Wilson kept the items from that 1965 trip — the menus, the passenger list and even the receipt for the $401.70 fare. And then forgot about them.

She returned to the Island as Mrs Hammond in the early 70s. Her husband Bob brought her with him on a business trip.

It marked the first of many visits they made to the Island together. Twenty years ago they started coming every winter, staying at Pompano Beach Club.

“We love the Port Royal Golf Course and Pompano is a prize,” said Mr Hammond, 71. “The staff and [the owners, Tom and Larry Lamb], are wonderful, wonderful people. We feel that’s our home in Bermuda.”

This year the couple inadvertently brought a gift to their adopted home. They’d brought the items Mrs Hammond collected on that 1965 trip to show a Bermudian friend, Susan Titus. She suggested they contact Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art. The Paget gallery has a permanent collection of art related to the Queen of Bermuda.

Masterworks’ executive director Tom Butterfield and curator Elise Outerbridge were thrilled with the donation.

“There was a booklet with the passenger list and ads of all the businesses back in that day. Tom and Elise recognised many of the names on the passenger list,” Mrs Hammond said.

Added Mr Hammond: “I think quite a few people from Bermuda would take the ship and go on holiday to New York. The names would be quite familiar as Bermuda is such a small community.”

The pair said they keep returning to the Island because of its natural charm and because it’s easily accessible from their Philadelphia home.

“I never thought I would come back at all, much less the number of times that we have,” Mrs Hammond said. “I thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime adventure but Bermuda has a charm that many other places don’t.”

She and her husband rented motorcycles to get around the Island in their early days of travel. Now they take the bus. They also love hiking and have walked many miles along the railway trail.

Said Mrs Hammond: “The people are wonderful. They’re so polite. They come on and greet everyone and thank the bus driver when they get off. I don’t know too many other places where you’d find that.”

Her husband was equally as effusive in his praise.

“Part of the attraction is it’s so close to the US. Secondly, the culture and British influence makes it unique to anything we have that’s relatively close by in wintertime. When we come in the winter it’s certainly off-season. It’s less crowded than the places where we go such as Florida. We’re not people who come and lay on the beach. We like golf. We like to hike. Bermuda has so many places where you can go, all the parks along the shore.

“Obviously a lot of people come for business but we still don’t understand why people don’t [vacation] here in the winter. It can be windy or rainy but that’s nothing compared to the snowstorms at home.”