A religious sister (probably from the Sisters of the Holy Cross) with children, probably from a parish school or orphanage in Cape Province, South Africa.
An image captioned 'Dominion Monarch / 1947'. The photograph shows a line-crossing ceremony on the ship, an initiation rite that commemorates a person's first crossing of the Equator. Built in England between 1937 and 1939, the 'Dominion Monarch' was a passenger liner which regularly operated services between Britain and ports in the southern hemisphere (particularly in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand).