Furious at being double-crossed, an angry Franklin confronted his absent chief construction manager.
“I understood from you that you have been and are now negotiating with the Shipping Board for the management and/or operation of a steamer or steamers in the transatlantic trade,” Franklin wrote William Francis Gibbs, “and I regret to say that I feel such action is in violation of the intent and spirit of our agreement granting you and your brother leave of absence for the specific purpose of supervising the reconditioning of the Leviathan, and which we did only at the earnest solicitation of the Chairman of the Shipping Board.”
Franklin then added: “If my understanding is correct, I must ask for the resignation of your brother and yourself.”36
Gibbs replied a few days later. His response was confident, even cheeky. “When you gave your approval to our undertaking the work in connection with the Leviathan,” he said, “we did not understand you intended to limit our services to the Government so as to prevent our advising in the solution of the problems facing the Shipping Board and the operation of the Leviathan. We realized certainly, and you and your associates made us feel keenly, that any connection with the I.M.M. Company for the time being has ceased. We did not feel that our conversations with the Shipping Board relative to operation were in any way a violation of the intent and spirit of our arrangements with the I.M.M.” He then added that if Franklin insisted, they would “terminate any obligation on your part which might be implied.”37
Yet soon after this falling-out, the Gibbs brothers suffered a major setback, one that certainly influenced his later fear of speaking to the press too soon. Despite the crushing amount of work from the Leviathan project, William Francis was still refining his own designs for the Shipping Board. By now, Gibbs’s own ships had grown to over 70,000 thousand gross tons (almost a quarter larger than Leviathan), with a price tag of $35 million each. These would make them the biggest ships afloat, by far, a statistic that appeared in many newspapers. A revised rendering shows that Gibbs had heavily reworked his original prototype. It was longer, lower, and sleeker, with three squat funnels instead of four tall ones, and a curved superstructure front. Despite its huge size, it had the fine lines and racing profile of a navy destroyer. Gibbs imagined that he could combine the great luxury of Leviathan with the speed of Mauretania in a ship far safer than anything yet built.
Yet the ambitious young designer had overplayed his hand. On October 17, 1922, Albert Lasker told Gibbs that the Shipping Board would not provide a $25 million operating subsidy for the two ships that were supposedly to operate with Leviathan as a threesome. Despite President Harding’s urging, Congress refused to spend the money, as Republican members were pressuring the White House to turn over the government-owned fleet to private owners.
Without support from the government, the construction of the new superliners was financially impossible. For his part, Lasker was tired of government work and eager to get back to the advertising business, and had no heart for the political battle to raise the money for two new Leviathan-type liners. He decided to resign from the Shipping Board and rejoin his advertising firm once Leviathan entered service. However upset Gibbs might have been by the loss of the subsidy and his patron, he did not let it affect the work he had at hand, which was to keep Leviathan’s construction on a tight deadline to meet a May 1, 1923, delivery to the Shipping Board. It was met, and on that day, a happy Gibbs gave reporters some classic American philosophy: “When backed by preparation, initiative, and faith, seemingly nothing is impossible in America.”38 The question that remained was whether a single American superliner could compete against European rivals, without the two companion vessels needed for a regular schedule of weekly transatlantic service.
But even if Gibbs’s dream of building new ships of his own design was put on hold, the reconstruction of Leviathan was still a huge professional triumph, one that made everybody in the shipping world sit up and take notice. Gibbs had taken the lessons learned from engineering publications and his mentorship with Admiral Taylor and successfully applied them to the rebirth of the largest ship in the world. What he lacked in formal training and social grace he made up for in natural charisma and organizational ability. He also had a gift for wooing powerful supporters like Albert Lasker.
Out of his newfound confidence grew a managerial technique that he would use to get what he wanted: being disagreeable. Gibbs realized that if he remained shy and meek, he would be run over roughshod by naysayers. Conflict was part of the job of building great ships. To achieve his purposes, he would have to be good at fighting fights. And winning. And to win, he had to maintain autocratic control over every aspect of a project.
Gibbs also learned the value of secrecy. Walking out of IMM’s office with the Leviathan plans under his arm would not be the last time he kept his hard work from the prying eyes of rivals, real and imagined. He would also avoid speaking to the press as much as possible. He had no stomach for public embarrassment.
The former recluse knew he was rubbing people the wrong way at times. “Everyone thinks I’m such a mean fellow because I like ships more than people,” he joked.39
As Leviathan’s sea trials approached, Gibbs dreaded the impending publicity. Yet he knew he had to play to the media to convince the American public that it was time for the nation to compete on the North Atlantic sea-lanes.
A great ship proudly flying the American flag, he hoped, would sell itself.
8. THE PARVENU
The refurbished Leviathan left Newport News on May 15, 1923, and sailed up to the Boston Navy Yard for a final inspection at the new Navy dry dock, the first in America large enough to accommodate a superliner. She was greeted by fifty thousand cheering spectators. “So frenzied was the mob,” said her captain, forty-eight-year-old Commodore Herbert Hartley, “that the U.S. Marines were called out to hold the crowd in check.” Some well-wishers fainted in the intense spring heat.1
On June 19, the ship left Boston for the Florida coast with 456 guests and 1,135 crew members on board. The speed trials were to be conducted three days later. In the meantime, guests sang songs around the ship’s seven pianos, played shuffleboard, and swam in the ship’s Roman swimming pool. The crew conducted extensive tests of the auxiliary mechanical equipment. In keeping with maritime superstition—which had it that females on board were bad luck before a maiden voyage—there were no women aboard.2
At 7:17 A.M. on July 22, as the sun rose on the eastern horizon and Florida’s Jupiter Lighthouse appeared to the west, Gibbs gave Commodore Hartley a quick pep talk, and then left with his brother for the engine room.
The guests who were awake noticed that the entire ship was now shaking as a result of her increasing speed. The vibrations from the 90,000-horsepower engines were rattling chinaware and bedsteads all over the ship. Those on deck saw a violent wake surging astern and black smoke pouring from her stacks. They waited for some sort of announcement about what was happening, but the public address system was silent.
At 10 A.M., William Francis Gibbs walked down the grand staircase. He took out a piece of paper and tacked it to the ship’s main bulletin board outside the Social Hall. It read: “Between 7:17 am and 10 am, the ship had traveled 75 nautical miles.”