The Other Side of the Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

appeared to challenge the line, now lost its potency. Safety was no longer enough, as passengers wanted speed and luxury just as much, if not even more. That the Germans were each carrying roughly twice as many passengers as Cunard was bad enough, but because of the sensation these new ships were creating for Norddeutscher-Lloyd and Hamburg-Amerika, along with the accompanying publicity, they were attracting still more passengers. Even if a traveler wasn’t able to make his or her crossing on one of the German speedsters, the cachet of sailing on one their stablemates was still attractive. And because Cunard, like the German lines, relied heavily on the immigrant trade to make its profits, any decline in the number of fare-paying passengers carried serious financial consequences.
    Cunard’s response to the German challengers would soon appear, first in the form of the Caronia and Carmania — the “Pretty Sisters,”—and ultimately in the awesome shapes of the Lusitania and Mauretania , ships that would be triumphs of speed and luxury on such a scale that the German shipping lines would never recover their brief pre-eminence on the North Atlantic. But those magnificent ships were still to come when construction began on a handful of modern, if somewhat modest, Cunard liners. The first step taken toward refurbishing the fleet was an order placed for three liners, two to be built by C.S. Swan & Hunter and one by the John Brown shipyard. The first two would be the Ivernia and Saxonia , followed two years later by a ship that would be neither the largest nor the fastest ship in the line’s service, but would ultimately become one of the most famous in the whole history of Cunard: the Carpathia .
    Built in the Swan Hunter yard, the Ivernia was launched in late 1899, and entered service in April 1900. At close to 14,000 gross tons, she was the largest ship yet built for Cunard, but she would hold that honor for little more than a month, as the next ship to enter service, the Saxonia , was even larger. Built by the John Brown shipyard on Clydeside, in Scotland, the Saxonia was launched on December 16, 1899, with a gross tonnage of over 14,200 tons. By mid-May 1900 her fitting out was complete, and she set out on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to Boston on May 22. She was equipped with a pair of quadruple expansion engines, which turned two propellers. Not yet ready to challenge the Germans head-to-head, Cunard’s priority with the three sisters was size, not speed, and the Saxonia ’s machinery gave her a service speed of 15 knots.
    The appearance of the Ivernia and Saxonia was distinctive, if not particularly handsome. They had long, black hulls with a graceful sheer, straight up-and-down cutter bows, and attractive counter sterns reminiscent of the popular Campania and Lucania ; but there the resemblance ended. Rather than the multi-tiered superstructure sported by their predecessors, surmounted by clusters of vent cowls and topped by a pair of powerful-looking funnels, the superstructures in these new ships were long and low, creating the visual impression that they had been somehow flattened out and spread the length of the hull. Atop it all would be perched a single tall, almost spindly funnel; spaced equidistant along the length of the ships were four masts. As awkward as this arrangement may sound, as a whole the proportions worked together to create a look that was modern and purposeful, if not exactly handsome.
    This class of ships had been designed from the outset to make money for Cunard by carrying both passengers and cargo. The four masts were no affectation added for appearance—they acted as kingposts for the booms that were used when loading or unloading cargo. The cargo spaces were quite large, and as a consequence the passenger accommodations were not as extensive as might have been expected of the largest ships in the Cunard fleet. Accommodations were for two hundred Second Class passengers and fifteen