FRANCE: Ship of Empire

Thunder clouds rolling down the valley of the Loire last week made excited Frenchmen hurry to launch from the river’s mouth at St. Nazaire the largest ship in the world.

Eight hundred guests of the French Line, including the President of France and Mme Lebrun, had come by special train from Paris. If possible they must not get wet.

Spitting on their hands, 600 brawny Breton & Norman shipwrights rushed out to the launching ways, took their stations and stood ready to pull the wedges. The stupendous hull (longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall) had been anointed with 43 tons of tallow, two-and-one-half tons of lard and more than a ton of soap. The grease alone cost 150,000 francs ($6,000).

Dignified President Lebrun had key-noted at a luncheon preceding the thunder clouds: “Our merchant marine is regaining its full strength. A big commercial fleet is necessary in such a colonial empire as ours—scattered over the four corners of the earth.”

From the corner called Madagascar had come its former Governor, dapper M. Marcel Olivier, recently elected president of the French Line. Accustomed to think internationally, M. Olivier appealed in his speech for a “Washington Conference” to end the present costly race between Britain, France, Germany and Italy, each of which has been squandering untold millions to build the champion liner of the Atlantic. “In the interests of that internationalism for which the world is striving,” cried M. Olivier, “the French merchant marine is anxious to collaborate in avoiding wasteful competition!”

Satisfied that the launching by France of the world’s certainly largest and expected-to-be-fastest liner provided a suitable occasion for ending wasteful competition, President Lebrun and the other guests rose from their superb lunch and hurried to the launching platform as a few drops of rain fell. Nothing but the weather had been left to chance. It was impossible that Mme Lebrun should fail —as some eminent christeners have failed —to throw the champagne bottle soon enough.*

Such a faux pas was impossible last week because the Penhoet Shipyards, sagacious builders of the superliner, had provided an automatic bottle-smasher, needing only to be tripped by Mme Lebrun. The christening bottle was a monster, a triple magnum holding six quarts, “Largest Champagne Bottle in the World.”

Precisely at 2:40 p. m. self-effacing Mme Lebrun took her place of honor. She cried, “I name thee Normandie!” She tripped the christening machine. Champagne foamed and spurted. The vast black hull slid down the ways and everyone—oblivious of the fact that it had begun to rain in earnest—sang “La Marseillaise.”

Seven seconds, which seemed like an eternity, was the actual launching time. Enormous chains slowed the Normandie lest she slide too far and crash into a cement wall at the other end of her basin. She did not crash. St. Nazaire went wild with joy. St. Nazaire workmen will be busy for another 18 months installing the innards of the Normandie.

When launched the empty hull weighed 32,000 tons. Completed the Normandie will be a liner of 73,000 tons, thus far outranking the present world’s largest Majestic (56,621 tons). As everyone knows the Bremen is the world’s fastest ship, with a transatlantic performance of a little more than 4½ days,† a horsepower of 100,000. The Normandie with 160,000 h. p. is expected to outspeed the Bremen, the Rex and the new high-speed liner which Italy is putting into service late this month, the Conte di Savoia.

Luxury on the Normandie will begin in her engine room where a vibrationless electric drive will transmit power from steam turbogenerators to four 40,000-h. p. electric motors, one on each propeller shaft. No other great liner is thus driven, but electric drive has proved practical on the world’s most powerful ships, the U. S. aircraft carriers Lexington and Saratoga, each driven by eight 22,500-h. p. motors.

Luxury of appointments on the Normandie will include fresh bath water in all first-class cabins, a theatre with permanent seats (as distinguished from the usual liner’s ballroom-theatre), ten passenger elevators, a winter garden boasting 150 tons of dirt and the largest chapel, largest garage, largest nightclub, largest room (the Dining Salon) afloat.

*Worst recent fiasco was the launching of the latest German pocket battleship (TIME, June 1, 1931). She was one-third into the water before Christener-President Paul von Hindenburg cried, “Deutschland be thy name!”

†Designed to be faster, the Rex suffered a delay on her maiden voyage (TIME, Oct. 10), may beat the Bremen later.