WORLD’S LARGEST SHIP

Taranaki Daily News, 20 January 1933, Page 2

WORLD’S LARGEST SHIP

WONDERFUL FRENCH LINER.

LAUNCHING OF THE NORMANDIE.

• While the ‘British giant CunardSr lies unfinished and neglected iri a Glasgow shipyard, France has launched the biggest ocean colossus the World has ever seen, the 75,000-ton liner Normandie, with 'which she intends to win the blue riband of the Atlantic. Britain’s unfinished Cunarder, On which work was suspended twelve months ago for lack of money, has since become a lasting reproach to British prestige. France is enthusiastically congratulating herself on having taken the first place as regards fast ocean liners. Already in the shipyards they are talking Of laying down another and bigger ship. Nothing the world has ever seen compares with the Normandie. Twenty thousand tons bigger than the biggest liner in existence, she is a breath-taking spectacle.

The hull of the new liner alone weighs 30,000 tons. The rudder and rudder post weigh together 125 tons, and if stood on end would tower higher than the Mansion House. She has cost approximately £lOOO a. foot to build. If stood on end alongside, the Eiffel Tower the vessel would be a good, four-storey ' building higher than the flagstaff on top. If planked down in the Haymarket it would reach from Pall Mall to Coventry Street. Twenty-five designers worked five years and drew 7000 plans before a single rivet was hammered home, and 250 draughtsmen drew plans. of the hull alone. Eleven million rivets have been used in. the construction. LAUNCHING GREASE COSTS £l5OO. The launching on October 20 took the combined efforts of 600 men. Porty-tnree tons of tallow, two and a half tons of lard and twenty-two hundredweights of soap, in all costing £l5OO were used to grease the slipway. A hundred thousand people from all parts of France, including the President of the Republic, witnessed the launching. France has made, the launching of the Normandie a wqrld event. Americans, Germans and Italians have gone in scares to gaze in wonder and awe at the miracle of French shipbuilding skill. France’s world prestige has gone up in a night. If any argument was needed .for carrying on with the building of the Cunarder it lies in this fact.

The actual launching only took a few minutes. Madame Lebrun, wife of the French President, broke the traditional bottle of champagne on the vessel’s bows. Then the gigantic hull slid into the Loire amid the frantic cheers of 100,000 with bands playing patriotic airs and tri-col-ours floating in the breeze. When completed the Cunarder will be almost identical with the Normandie. Both vessels are scheduled to cost £6,000,000. The Cunarder is 1018 feet in length and the Normandie 1026. The Cunarder’s engines will develop a horse power of 200.000 and the Normandie’s the same, While the speed of the Cunarder would be 30 knots, against the Normandie’s 28 knots,

French officials are maintaining an amazing policy of hush-hush about the wonder ship, probably because of the foreign agents who have flocked to the town to try to learn, its secrets. The liner is an amazing spectacle, towering over the town like a black mountain and dwarfing the He de France, which is

in dock beside her.- Her decks are as wide as . streets. '

She. has 56 lifeboats, several wireless stations, eleven. decks, five of which run uninterruptedly from, stem to stem, and accommodation for 3490 people, including a crew of 1320. Here are some novel features. Wine will be served free with meals. The swimming pool will have a bar. The commander will have a. Wireless all to himself for tile first time in a French ship. The propulsion machinery will be electric. Insurances to cover the building risks for nearly £2,500,000 have been placed: in British markets. Altogether a total of about £3,000,000 has been written in, the insurance markets of the world, making one of the biggest individual contracts ever effected.