Anticipation In The Press
Lady Meets The Sea
Transcript of an article published in the November 1948 edition of “Everybody's” magazine written by Hilde Marchant
With the coming of the New Year the World's seas will welcome a new liner - the “Caronia”. Craftsmen of the Clyde have brought into being this floating miracle - proof that Britain still maintains her traditional lead in luxury sea travel.
[Photo: “Everybody's” Magazine of Nov. 1948]
Power Blended With Feminine Grace
THREE years ago a group of marine engineers and scientists spent months towing a ship model up and down a large water tank in the Clydebank shipyard of John Brown's. They called for storm and violence, wind and weather, to try and wreck the little craft. They manoeuvred her through tropical heat and shallow waters and they finally let loose an equatorial hurricane.
From these experiments, which would have delighted any schoolboy and his father, they produced innumerable calculations and, finally, two hundred-odd drawings which represented a revolutionary design in marine architecture. The Cunard White Star Line had asked the engineers if they could construct a liner that was sturdy enough to tackle the North Atlantic in violent winter gales and yet was attractive enough to be sent cruising through tropical waters: a ship that had all the massive power of an Atlantic liner blended with the feminine grace of a cruising yacht.
It was a tall order. The specialists at John Brown's shipyard, Glasgow, who had produced the “Queen Mary” and the “Queen Elizabeth”, spent over a year laying down the detailed specifications for this new liner. The result is the “Caronia” now in her fitting basin receiving the final lavish touches before she sails on her maiden voyage to New York in the New Year.
World's Largest Post-war Liner
Though she is the World's largest liner to be built since the end of the war, the “Caronia” is not, for size, a rival of either of the “Queens”. She was intended to be a more intimate ship for cruises and has only two classes - first class and cabin. She is registered at 34,000 tons and the “Queen Elizabeth” at 83,673 tons.
Have the designers succeeded in their commission? It is always hard to judge the lines of a new ship when she is on the stocks, wedged against a background of derricks and warehouses. She looks awkward and ungainly, like a large block of modern flats built in the heart of an industrial slum. It is only when she is afloat that she reveals her full beauty.
My impression when I saw the “Queen Mary” and later, the “Queen Elizabeth”, in their fitting basins was that they were massive, powerful, solid and slightly fat around the waist. The “Caronia”, even in her earthbound state, looked slimmer, more graceful and rather more feminine.
The men who are finishing her now seem to have that impression too. On bright and pleasant days when work goes well, they give her female terms of endearment and proudly tell the enquiring novice that she is the ‘bonniest, brightest lass’ the Clyde has launched into the World. On less successful days they give her the worst aspects of a young woman's character, the moderate referring to her as ‘that feckless female’.
Most of the men at work on the “Caronia” helped to build the “Queens” before the war and, during the war, produced the battleship “Vanguard”. A new ship, even the “Caronia”, is not necessarily exciting to them.
[Left:]
Caronia meeting her element fulfilling her rôle as the ‘bonniest, brightest lass’ the
Clyde has launched into the world
[Image: Everybody's Magazine of November 1948]
It is such a vast job of work, and so diffuse, that it cannot really be personalised. As one of the carpenters replied, when I asked him what he thought of the finish: - “Well, I know that six panels in the writing room are first class - I've lived with them for weeks”. And when they are finally set in their place, he moves off to plane down a set of swing doors.
Have A Look Round
The work is so heavily sectionalised that the men working on the swimming pool have not the slightest idea what the first-class cocktail lounge a couple of decks above looks like, until a few days before she sails. Then the company set aside an afternoon so that the men who have constructed the ship can look over the whole of their work.
Usually visitors’ tickets are issued and the wives and families of these Clydebank ship workers also have a good look round. It is certain on these occasions that some bright but embarrassing child will ask father which part he built. The child will be shown one minute screw holding up a wall bracket or a mirror and be told: “Your dad did that. It holds the whole ship together”. It is a childish joke, but it happens every time. It is really the shipyard workers’ way of saying: “Mind your own business : we all had a go at this ship”.
For their skill and tradition has made the workers at John Brown's yard an independent, clannish lot. They have produced the finest and largest liners in the World and they don't believe that anybody outside the yard gates really knows anything about the job. This attitude spreads from the company executives down to the youngest boy in a riveting team and it always strikes me as odd that men who are so certain and bold in their craft, should indulge in a streak of superstition when they are at work.
She Will Be Lucky
The “Caronia”, they believe, will be a lucky ship. She is packed with the most advanced features of British shipbuilding, but the men are also confident because there have been fewer accidents on her during building than on any of the big pre-war jobs.
It could be because the safety precautions were strictly applied but many of the workers - particularly those with an Irish streak in them - believe that it is in the nature of the ship. Cats have always the right of way, particularly females who wish to give birth to their kittens in the ship.
When the ship's crew take over, they will be given a black kitten that was born on the “Caronia” while she was being built. And a dozen men have scratched their names on the inside of the ship in some spot that has been panelled or covered in, for luck.
But apart from these idiosyncrasies, the shipyard workers are justifiably boastful about the production of their ship. Forty-three years ago the first “Caronia”, built by the same shipbuilding company for Cunard ownership was launched from the same building berth. Regarded, in her time, as the ideal of grace and efficiency she was the first passenger liner to be designed with a public room called a ‘lounge’.
Represents Experience
The present “Caronia” is half as big again and every feature in her, from her power room to the enormous, smokeless funnel, represents forty years of accumulated shipbuilding skill. Like modern ships she is entirely oil fuelled and all her electrical requirements will be supplied by a power station built forward of the boiler room and producing 4,400 kilowatts.
All deck equipment such as steering gear, windlass, capstans and baggage winches will be electrically operated and electricity will also be exclusively used in the kitchens. There will be approximately 500 electric motors in the ship, totalling, in all, about 6,500 h.p.
Down below, the “Caronia” will be the cleanest ship afloat for most of her engines will be enclosed. The main turbines will, at full pressure, run at 3,686 revolutions per minute, and the boiler room will supply steam for propulsion at the rate of 600 lbs. per square inch.
A skin of asbestos has been sprayed on the inside of her hull which will prevent the heat of the sun's rays penetrating and raising the temperature below decks. In winter this asbestos ‘overcoat’ will keep out cold and make living conditions below considerably more comfortable.
No Smoke
The enormous funnel, the largest since the “Queen Elizabeth”, is packed inside with machinery for smoke washing and ventilation.
Caronia's funnel being capped
Image: Everybody's Magazine Nov 1948
And another device is that which gathers the smoke and gases from the boilers, washes them and discharges them under water. In other words every corner of the deck, where sunbathing, swimming and games will be going on during South American cruises, will be clear of smoke and soot.
There's no difficulty at all in describing the first class suites and public rooms. They are simply the most lavish and comfortable in any ship afloat.
Many Practical Solutions
Designed mainly as a dollar attractor, the “Caronia” has refrigerators as big as living rooms, ice water laid on to every washbasin, and air conditioning through all the living quarters. Even wealthy Americans, who complain there is never enough drinking water or air in any British hotel or train, will be able to cool themselves to their heart's content.
Another complaint of transatlantic travellers is that all heavy baggage is locked up in the hold during the journey and inevitably there is some little thing, vital to the journey or life on board a liner, packed in a trunk at the bottom of the hold. In the main suites there will be a sitting room, a bedroom, private bathroom, a servants’ room, and a box room for all luggage.
Some of Britain's best young artists submitted designs for the public rooms and though the designs themselves are highly imaginative, the best feature of the decoration is the ingenious use of new materials for panelling and finish.
Artistic Decorations
It has always been traditional to use fine Empire woods in Cunard liners and some have been used in the “Caronia”. However, the silver birch and natural mahogany has been broken with glass, leather and plastic panels.
When this was done in the French liner, the “Normandie”, the result in the first class dining room was rather garish, for the French designers overdid it with fairy-lights, chandeliers and fountains that tinkled and rattled and splashed all through the journey. Our designers can be relied on not to make that mistake.
Since the beginning of the century, when the Cunard line ordered a ship with the first passenger smoking room, that room has been traditionally one of the most carefully designed and thought-out masculine havens in all their liners. Women do, of course, enter it during the journey but men have the first right to sit there, quietly smoking or sipping port after dinner, away from the ladies.
In the “Queen Mary”, a chess motive was used for the decoration but in the “Caronia” the owners have gone back to the original theme of nautical history. They produced some of their old prints of early ships and the artist has done a series of fine line drawings to make a surround to the doors.
Off To Earn Dollars
A good deal of relief panelling in bronze, gold and silver metals has been used, and the cocktail lounge, another point of pride with the owners, has a long, decorative panel in aluminium bronze. But perhaps the most unusual features for any Cunard liner are the glass panels which they commissioned from a London company. Two artists - John Hutton and John Buckland-Wright, have designed them and they will be the last pieces of decoration to be moved in; that is, when the heavy machinery has all been moved.
So the “Caronia”, luxurious and efficient, will set sail in January seeking dollars on a programme of winter cruises through the tropics for winter-weary Americans. British people will not be able to join her unless they have dollar resources. She represents the newest developments in British marine engineering and design.
It is a source of delight to the men in John Brown's yard who planned and built her, that the first ship of the passenger class that was built in the yard at the end of the nineteenth century, would fit neatly down the funnel of the “Caronia!”