Foreign News: Day of Glory

Smashing every transatlantic travel record for speed, size and monumental elegance, the French Super-Liner Normandie swept into Manhattan this week from a maiden voyage unprecedented. Not since before the War has any one ship been simultaneously World’s Largest and World’s Fastest. Last with that double distinction was, in 1907, the Cunarder Mauretania of 30,696 tons, 27.81 knots maximum speed and 67,000 h. p. The Normandie is of 79,280 tons, 31.55 knots maximum speed and 160,000 h. p. As she shot over the Atlantic record mark at Ambrose Lightship, her 1014 passengers and 1,320 crew knew that for maritime France in the words of La Marseillaise, “Le jour de gloire est arrivé!”

To win this Day of Glory cost 800,000,000 gold francs ($53,000,000) of which 150,000,000 francs have been exacted in interest already paid on the rest of the money borrowed to build the Normandie. Into her, French trade unions estimate, have gone 2,500,000 days of French labor —toil not only at St. Nazaire, where the ship was built, but in all parts of France and her colonies, whence came everything from Indo-Chinese ebony to champagne from Champagne, and the four stupendous driving motors of 40,000 horsepower each —largest electric motors on sea or land—from the French reconquered province of Alsace. Never have a people felt that an achievement was more national. In France for the past fortnight everyone imaginable, the haut monde, the bourgeoisie, the proletariat, even the peasantry has chattered of the supership, read newspaper specials, hoped and even prayed for the Normandie.

One unlikely Frenchman to scurry for a ticket and climb aboard at the last minute for his first voyage to anywhere was the famous proprietor of La Tour d:’Argent, swank Paris restaurant and temple of succulent pressed duck. Also who should pop aboard for no other reason than the sheer excitement of Normandie’s first voyage but His Exalted Highness the lean, grey-mustached, old Maharaja of Kapurthala and his sporty, ugly, egg-headed Crown Prince. Because one never knows when a French cabinet will fall—one fell during the crossing (see p. 19)—sad-eyed President Albert Lebrun of France remained dutifully in Paris, sent on the Normandie his cheerful, gracious wife and their gay but impeccable married daughter who sipped orangeade at the Normandie’s evening galas while all around her quaffed champagne.

Finding Herself-Machinery-Minded Rudyard Kipling hymned what happens to every new liner in his The Ship that Found Herself. Stirring to Normandie passengers was the process by which a good ship runs herself in like a motor car, settles her machinery down and finally levels off at full speed.

As the supership leaped out from Europe [Havre and Southampton] last week, seasoned socialite salts opined: “She vibrates much less than the Bremen and Europa on their maiden voyages.” Neophyte First Classers however, complained loudly of the rattle-bang in the Normandie’s not-quite-completed night-club bar astern, just over the propellers. Some upped eyebrows at Commandant René Pugnet’s “it is a question of noise rather than vibration,” but under his orders French tars swarmed in, tightening braces, putting all shipshape and within 36 hours topping off the night-club which thereafter was pack-jammed from midnights to dawns.

First record scored by the Normandie came when she covered 744 sea miles as her first full day’s run, beating the best previous day’s run of any other liner, the 736 miles made by Benito Mussolini’s Rex in August 1933. Next day the Normandie sprang a leak in one of the condensers cooling down her steam after it leaves the turbines. Promptly Commandant Pugnet cut the flames from under six of his 30 boilers while the leak was repaired. Passengers felt nothing, but the next day’s run dropped to 715 and British editors with Cunard’s coming Queen Mary on their minds hopefully queried British correspondents on the Normandie whether she was not “in danger.” Next noon the British correspondents tersely reported that the Normandie, her leak repaired, had now broken her own first record with a 748 sea mile day at an average speed of nearly 30 knots. For the last day and the record, Commandant Pugnet spurred all his 160,000 horses, sent the Normandie along not for a mere spurt but for a whole day at the hitherto undreamed of speed for a liner of 31.55 knots—with vibration less than on any other part of the record trip. Queried a newshawk:

“Commandant Pugnet, do you feel a heavier responsibility than ever before now that you command the Normandie?”

“Um,” said the terse Commandant, “if I lose any ship I get my head cut off and it cannot be cut off twice. But you can say that on this trip of the Normandie I have had no time to play my violin. That answers your question?”

Floating Buckingham. To many a voyager the Normandie seemed this week like the first liner authentically huge enough to be in actual fact and not hackneyed fiction a “floating palace”—Buckingham Palace in size and heft. Her chapel is as big as many on land. Her theatre is real, not ship-improvised, complete with permanent deep-cushioned seats, full theatre lighting and three-dimensional scenery. Spectacles on the voyage, with spontaneous Mme Lebrun always one of the first to chuckle and applaud included two short, highly Parisien comedies with players from the Comédie Française, a world premiere of famed Sacha Guitry’s new film, Pasteur, and a rollicking appearance of Colette, naughty novelist and only woman member of the Académie Française. “What American newspapermen are interested in, I suppose, is not my books but what I wear,” said frowsy-haired Colette who was wearing her usual semi-smart, semi-mannish clothes with feet bare in open sandals, plump toes rouged and gleaming. Fof half an hour France’s great best seller held the swank audience with “recollections of my youth.” now mirthful, now poignant.

Next most exciting moment on the Normandie : when two mad wags, one Dutch, one English, invaded the sumptuous swimming pool bar with war whoops, each balancing an empty glass on his head and dancing about, after which they snatched cocktails which the Maharaja and Crown Prince of Kapurthala were about to drink, drank them themselves, saluted Their Highnesses with elaborate salaams and accepted two more cocktails which the Indian potentates indulgently ordered—assuming that white men on vacation are like that.

Such goings-on scandalized the French majority aboard. To all France the Normandie is a great and solemn achievement. Said President Lebrun, and he never spoke more truly for France, bidding the Normandie Godspeed:

“Often in the past and with reason, the World has said that Frenchmen created on too small and circumscribed a scale. This time no such reproach can be addressed to us, and let us have the courage of our great audacity. Since when in times of pessimism has optimism ceased to be a virtue? Forward with Normandie!”

With Normandie the transatlantic run receives its first liner driven not direct by steam but by turbines which drive generators supplying electricity to the motors which turn the propellers. This system, pioneered by the U. S. Navy and realized by the French subsidiary of General Electric on the Normandie gives the World its fastest liner, thanks partly to a brilliant Russian, M. Vladimir Yourkevitch, chief designer of the hull. His “lines” are said to have saved 40,000 horsepower, making the Normandie slip through the water with phenomenally little boiling and wake. In the vast dining salon at Table No. 80, Mme and M. Yourkevitch drank vin ordinaire at lunch after the record, unnoticed, beaming with inner happiness supreme.

Normandiana. . . . The dog kennels in the after funnel with a midget life preserver for each dog, Russian wolfhounds rating two, front & rear. . . . The flowering orchids and exotic multicolored birds in Normandie’s winter garden. . . . Provoking mannequins from the eleven biggest Paris houses wearing fabulous spring creations nightly but keeping their collection of “summer models” locked up to be shown exclusively at fêtes in New York. . . . The ceaseless patrol of Normandie firemen, each with a flashlight and ax strapped in his belt. . . . crêpes suzette and any other special dish any First Class passenger could think of served without extra charge, plain wine free, champagne averaging $3 per bottle, cocktails 30¢. . . . The effort of the Maharaja and his son to guess whether they should wear a black or white tie at Mme Lebrun’s table. Their miffed guess: black. . . . The handsome radio from Cunard President Sir Percy Bates who flashed from London. “The beautiful Normandie, possessed of all the latest technical refinements of naval construction will prove, I am sure, a profitable enterprise.” . . . Price of a first class ticket on the Normandie: $280.