Mark Berry - A History of Ocean Liners in 50 Objects

All of the objects in this book are from Mark Berrys collection, unless otherwise stated.

Cover illustrations:Front: Chad Valley cardboard model of RMS Queen Mary. Back: Bronze recreation of the mural in the first-class dining room of SS Normandie.

First published 2020

The History Press

97 St Georges Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Mark Berry, 2020

The right of Mark Berry to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9647 1

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed in Turkey by Imak

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

The definition of an ocean liner is a vessel that runs on a set route to timetable between two or more ports, normally returning to the start point to resume the cycle. A cruise ship is a totally different entity, transporting passengers on a journey that may call at several destinations and which does not generally run to a regular recurring schedule. In this book, you will find that there are occasions where an ocean liner is also used for cruising, but the reverse is rarely the case.

So why is a liner so different? She doesnt generally potter around ports in sunny climes, of course, but she sometimes might do so. Occasionally she might steam up and down fjords, allowing well-nourished passengers to take in stops ashore and to admire stunning scenery between excellent meals and copious amounts of reasonably priced beverages. However, these are diversions; she was designed and built for a purpose, to keep a schedule, to run line voyages.

Three words sum up the elements of a liner: power, design and soul!

From the earliest days of ocean travel, the transport of goods was (apart from war, of course) the prime reason for crossing the oceans. As global transport became more vital to trading nations, the movement of commodities and goods from producers to consumers became of paramount importance. Commercial entities such as the East India Company and the Hanseatic League built or purchased fleets of sailing ships to move goods around Europe and the world. As empires grew, personnel and materials also had to travel around the globe, and as with any commercial enterprise, time was, and still is, money.

The tea clipper races from China to Britain in the 1860s showed how commercial advantage could drive the need for speed at sea. Ships such as Ariel and Taeping vied to be the first home over a 14,000-mile voyage, rounding the Cape of Good Hope and up through Biscay. Cutty Sark was late to the party in the 1870s, but she survives today. If you visit her at Greenwich, it is evident that she is the result, and indeed the personification, of the evolution of the sailing ship from a humble cargo carrier to a finely tuned commercial racing machine. We will return to this concept as applied to the ocean liner later in this book.

A liner needs to keep a schedule. The business or leisure traveller of today needs to be able to consult a timetable; board a train, ship or aeroplane; and know that there is a good chance that it will leave on time and arrive as expected. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, voyage by sea was the only option for transcontinental travel, and the oceans paid little heed to the certainties of a timetable. When your vessel relied on sail or at best an early and inefficient steam engine, possibly linked to paddle wheels, there was no certainty of keeping to any kind of schedule, if indeed you arrived at your destination at all. It was not unheard of for a nineteenth-century liner to disappear without trace and, as we shall see, it was still quite possible for this to happen to a large, almost new steam-powered liner in the early twentieth century. Power increased as technology advanced, the Parsons steam turbine taking efficiency to a new level after the steam expansion engines that were fitted to most ships in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Turbo electric, diesel engines and gas turbines have all been part of liner evolution. Coal gave way to oil and now concern for the environment pushes forward the development of greener power plants using liquefied natural gas (LNG).

From the earliest designs for ocean liners, it became evident that a streamlined hull with a keel for stability was essential. Crossing the Atlantic, for instance, can often put a ship in conflict with extreme weather and sea conditions. She needs to keep moving ahead, the luxury of running to a sheltered bay or port to ride out bad weather is not an option. She needs good sea-keeping abilities and the strength to cut through or forge over swells and troughs, and sometimes take on extreme waves and hurricane-force winds without damage or risk to life. Early twentieth-century liners such as Mauretania had a length to width ratio of around 9:1 and knife-like prows to cut through most sea conditions. Granted they tended to roll, but this was more an inconvenience to passengers than an impediment to progress. New hull designs were tried and led to the revolutionary Vladimir Yourkevitch design for the Normandie. Aids to stability developed, both gyro and extending stabilisers. A modern slab-sided cruise ship with a relatively flat bottom is not suited to speed in rough weather, or to having to keep a schedule week after week on long back-to-back crossings in all conditions.

Yes, ships do have a soul and none more so than the ocean liner. She is not just a conveyance for passengers but also a home to her crew, who may have spent most of their careers on the same ship. The way the ships were designed and fitted gave individuality. The words luxury and ocean liner are synonymous, but the luxury did not necessarily extend to second- and certainly not to third-class accommodations. Each ship, however, had its own personality. The Mauretania, or Maury to her crew, was built on the Tyne and had an interior style using a variety of darker woods, especially mahogany, which gave her more of a traditional feel, akin to a country house at sea. Her sister, Lusitania or Lusi, was built on the Clyde, had a different designer, James Miller, and had a lighter interior with extensive use of painted plaster. Ostensibly very similar ships but with very different personalities, and to their crews and those passengers who knew them, both had an individuality and a soul.