THE ATLANTIC RECORD

Otago Witness, Issue 2811, 26 August 1908, Page 19

THE ATLANTIC RECORD

NEW YORK, August 22. The Lusitania's passage to New York occupied 96h 18min, establishing a record.

Our London correspondent wrote as follows on July 10:— The Lusitaaiia, which left Liverpool on Saturday evening with four-bladed propellora for the first time, is apparently fulfilling the hopes of the Cunard Company of still further improving her speed. A wireless message states that between noon on Sunday and noon on Monday she did 643 knots at, an average per hour of 25.43. Her previous record was 641. Her average for the voyage co far was 25.37. The Mauritania's "longest run , for a day is 635 knots, but ehe holds the record of four days 20hrs 15min, an average of 24.86 knots, for the feng westward crossI "S'7 mne m^xx-trtes t»e-ttor than -fcli-e Lxisifcania. The controversy of the day apparently is whether there ie or is not excessive vibration on the Lusitania when the huge liner is steaming at her highest speed- One traveller who has made 74 journeys across the Atlantic declares that last November, when on board the new turbine leviathan, the vibration was so bad that it was "almost impossible to write a letter in the writing-room, or to sit with any comfort in the verandah cafe -or 6mokeroom." So unpleasant, in fact, was his recollection of. the voyage that in June, when ho had the choice of the two Cunard steamers — Lusitania at New York, or the Ivernia at Boston, — he chose the latter, which he knew "to be one of the steadiest and finest vessels in the Western trade." It is understood that between November and June the Cunard Company has made efforts to rectify the serious defect of excessive vibration, but so far as I am aware the •ompany has not let tho public know of this improvement.