Foreign News: Cathedral & Dirt Track

Proudly last week Britons spoke of what many called a renaissance of their merchant marine. They meant two new trans-Atlantic liners: the 40,000-ton Canadian Pacific Empress of Britain recently christened by Edward of Wales and the White Star Line’s 27,000-ton Britannic which maiden-voyaged to Manhattan last week as “the largest cabin class liner in the world.”

As the Britannic steamed in, Manhattanites sat watching and listening to a talking film of the Empress of Britain’s christening. They saw Christener Wales drop easily into conversation with a beaming bystander, heard H. R. H. say with a grin:

“When I told the King about this he said, ‘What do you mean by launching a ship? That’s a woman’s job, not a man’s.'”

In salute to the renaissance London’s famed Punch ran a cartoon of two seaworthy beer-bibbers in a waterfront saloon, with this caption:

Sailor (discussing the latest luxury liner). “Mark my words, Joe, the luxury ship business’ll come to this. In a few years you won’t get no passengers to sail in a ship wot ain’t got a cathedral an’ a dirt track.”

Although she carries no cathedral the Britannic does have a series of screens in her Adam drawing room which, upon being slid, reveal an altar and convert the room into a chapel. Instead of a dirt track there is a swimming pool in ancient Roman style, where both cabin class and tourist third class passengers plunge—at different hours. In appearance the Britannic with her two low “raindrop” funnels suggests the German superspeed ships. A motor-ship, Britannic is a direct rival of the French Line’s month-old Lafayette (TIME, June 2). These rivals bring into cabin class the spacious “bedrooms” (“scarcely cabins”) and the “real beds” (“not berths!”) formerly peculiar to first class. Captain Frederick Fletcher Summers of the Britannic used to be assistant com-mander of the Majestic. Famed is Chef Ernest Masters whose cabin jingles with medals won playing soccer and cricket, plus one from the Italian Government for rescue work during the nasty Messina earthquake.