Pale green colours, whose seagoing use in the past has been restricted to private yachts, appear for the first time on
the hull of a giant transatlantic luxury liner in Cunard White Star's new 34,183-ton Caronia, world's largest postwar
passenger ship which arrived in New York for the first time on 11 January 1949.
Ships painted in light colours are cooler in the tropics, and the new Caronia has been designed with an eye to cruising.
Colours other than green might have been chosen but they would not have been original. No other passenger liner afloat
boasts an exterior colour scheme resembling the Caronia's.
Beginning at the waterline, above the red boot topping and white ribbon line, the first shade of green extends up to
just below the level of the Main Deck, where it is broken by a twelve-inch dark green ribbon line extending completely
around the hull. Above this ribbon is a paler shade of green, and the fourth shade, palest of all, appears on the deck
houses, tripod masts and derrick posts.
Another innovation is the use of aluminium paint for boat winches, cargo winches, bollards and other items.
A difficult problem had to be overcome in achieving the Caronia's colour scheme. Green paints invariably lose their
initial colour and either fade or go blue. It would have been an easy matter to select a pale green for mere prettiness,
but to effect a blend of four shades of green employed in the stepped-up colour scheme was a problem which occupied
colour experts some time before the actual shades were determined.
Tests extending over 18 months were made before paints were produced in shades of green which were attractive and also
durable in varying weather conditions.
Apart from technical research, two ships’ plates were painted in the Caronia's colours and sent on voyages where they
would meet weather conditions likely to be experienced by the new liner either on the North Atlantic or on tropical
cruises. One of the plates made five trips across the Atlantic on the foredeck of a freighter, and the other was sent
to West Africa and subjected to the full rays of the tropical sun by being placed flat on deck.
Dual Purpose Design
An asbestos “overcoat” for an ocean liner is the latest word in shipbuilding fashion from Clydebank,
Scotland, where the new 34,183-ton liner Caronia, world's largest post-war passenger ship, was built at the same yards
that produced the famous Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth.
Especially designed for cruising as well as transatlantic service, the Caronia has been built for comfortable sailing
in all types of weather. The hull has been insulated internally by a process of asbestos spraying which will help to
prevent the sun's rays penetrating and thus raising the temperature below decks in the tropics. Likewise in winter
weather the asbestos “overcoat” will keep out the cold.
Perhaps the most outstanding example of the new Caronia's dual purpose design is the outdoor tiled swimming pool and
open air lido deck which are features of the terraced after decks of the World's largest and newest postwar liner.
Just below the Verandah Café on the Sports Deck, with its dance orchestra and open air dance floor, is the lido
complete with standard lighting and lamped festoons enclosing groups of open air café arm chairs and pedestal
tables, each with a gaily coloured beach umbrella.
Below the lido, on a subsidiary deck, is an open air swimming pool built into an enclosure of cream coloured glazed
bricks. The walk between the pool and guard rail is laid in random fashion with grey-green Westmorland stone fitted
with non-slip surface. The pool is approximately 24 feet long by 16 feet wide, and slopes from five feet at one end to
seven at the other.
The bottom and sides of the pool are finished in glazed briquettes of ivory shade, incorporating chromium handrails on
all four sides. Teak ladder treads are bracketed to chromium tubular handrails on the port and starboard sides.
The walkway surrounding the pool is tiled and has a parapet faced with glazed briquettes topped with long teak seats.
Handrails are also in teak, supported by phosphor bronze stanchions.
The contrasts of 44 years progress in naval architecture and marine engineering have been vividly portrayed during the
past year at John Brown's Shipyard in Clydebank where the new 34,183-ton luxury liner Caronia has been fitted out
beside the same building berth from which the first Caronia of 20,000 gross tons was launched on July 13, 1904.
The 1949 Caronia
The two Caronia's present, as it were, a sketch of the great developments in ship design which have come with the years
since the turn of the century, and their characteristics reveal a number of interesting points of contrast.
The 1904 Caronia
In 1904 the straight stem and counter stern were thought to be the ideal of grace and efficiency; funnels were tall and
thin, and the proportion of length to beam was higher than it is now, so that although the first Caronia had a length
of 675ft, her beam was but 71ft.
Today the new Caronia is 715ft overall, but her beam has gone up to 91ft; the cruiser stern has replaced the counter
and the straight knife-edged stem has become well-raked, its plates rounded and fashioned in a graceful curve that for
all its modernity is yet reminiscent of the beautiful bows of the clipper ship era.
The last ship in Cunard Atlantic service to be given a clipper bow before the adoption of the straight stem was the
Russia in 1867.
A large oval funnel in association with a tripod mast and terraced decks give the Caronia of 1949 a massive, compact
appearance that is no less appealing or conducive to the conception of a beautiful ship than were the features which
prompted so many to name the first Caronia and her sister ship, the Carmania, the “pretty sisters.”
In 1904 glass-enclosed promenade decks were rare, rounded bridge fronts and observation lounges were unknown and open
decks had none of the wide unobstructed spaces of today. Ventilator cowls stood in mushroom groups around funnel
casings and before the designing of the gravity davit, boats rested on the deck in pairs, one above the other, blocking
the view seawards and taking up promenade space.
Today in the Caronia, in accordance with modern practice, the lifeboats are all carried in gravity davits and are power
driven. Yet in the type of boats there is an important advance even by 1949 standards. While there are motor boats of
orthodox pattern, the Caronia also has six single screw launches, fitted with deck shelters and driven at up to 10knots
by 130 horsepower Diesel engines. While serving as lifeboats, they also enable passengers to land comfortably and
speedily on shore excursions when the ship is at anchor off cruising ports.
Below decks the two ships are almost beyond comparison, so far has the standard of accommodation advanced from the
period drawing rooms and small cabins of 1904 to air-conditioned public rooms and cabins fitted with innumerable
items of detail for the comfort of passengers.
In the machinery spaces, steam is still the prime mover, but there all comparison ends. Thirteen coal-fired boilers in
two compartments were needed to drive the earlier Caronia's two sets of quadruple expansion engines. Today, in a ship
half again as large, there are but six boilers in one compartment, oil-fired and fitted with a labyrinth of nearly
15,000 watertubes. Boiler pressure then was 200 pounds per square inch; today it is 600 pounds and steam is supplied to
the twin-screw geared turbines at a temperature of 800°F.
The old Caronia and her sister ship remain today important turning points in the progress of marine engineering. The
Caronia marked the highest development of the quadruple-expansion reciprocating engine, while the Carmania prepared
the way for the revolutionary turbine engine with which the old Mauretania established and maintained the transatlantic
speed record for 22 years.
These two “pretty sisters” were also important in that they both were more than 5,000 gross tons larger
than their predecessors in the Cunard fleet and established new dimensions for ocean liners. Both were built by John
Brown and Company, builders of the new Caronia, in the same town that produced the Britannia, first transatlantic
Cunarder, in 1840.
In her day the earlier Caronia was the epitome of all that was finest in shipbuilding technique. And so with the new
ship. As was her predecessor of 1904, the new Caronia is an inheritor of the accumulated skill of the many industries
that have played a part in her building.
