BRITAIN’S PRIDE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19024, 26 May 1936, Page 14

BRITAIN’S PRIDE

HER GREATEST LINER TRIUMPH OF QUEEN MARY Britain's greatest liner, the K.M.S. Queen Mary, which will nail from Southampton on Wednesday for New York on her maiden voyage, is something more than a splendid ship—she is the symbol of a nation’s resolve to maintain the heritage of a thousand years, that sea supremacy which is exemplified no less truly by the peaceful merchantman than I lie ship of war. Though her owners and her builders disclaim any such idea, the public sees in this ship Britain's reply to the foreign rivals who have momentarily wrested from her the blue riband of the Atlantic. For the greater part of the nineteenth-century this trophy remained i.i Britain's possession. Captured for a time by Germany's ocean .greyhounds, it was regained in 1007 by the twin Cnnurders Mauretania and Lusitania, to be held for no less than 22 years by the first-named ship.

Then, in ibs’b, Germany again won the blue riband with that, splendid pair of express liners, Bremen and Europe, only to lose it a few years later to e e Italian Jiex, which last year had in turn to yield the trophy to the Crunch Normandie.

The history of the Atlantic ferry for nearly 10.) years has proved that the fastest ship invariably attracts the cream of the traiiic. The Queen Mary is designed to cam money, not merely to create a, sensation, (jit her mnid.cn voyage 2000 passengers will pay £74.imb. At 80,772 tons the Queen Mary weighs 21,0' HI tons more than the whole Spanish Armada. Costing JM,bOO,OOO, she is the world's most economical ship. .Her fuel bill will be no more than the Mauretania's, which was half the size, 1