Gibbs remained a meticulous and tough manager. Armed with reams of notes and his photographic memory, he would compile records of every meeting and phone conversation, along with his firm’s research, into a series of bound volumes. When his advice was ignored and something went wrong, his so-called black booking made the lives of his critics miserable.
The strengthening relationship between Gibbs and the Navy elite began to raise some eyebrows. His abrasive management style and thirst for innovation upset established ways in a notoriously traditional military branch. But his ally, Admiral Bowen, couldn’t have been happier with the routing of those conservative Navy men he called “mossbacks.”
“The Navy isn’t hiring an entertainer,” Bowen said. “It’s hiring a man for his brains.”38
The shipyards, which had always resented Gibbs for insisting on strict compliance with contract terms, hated him even more for usurping the role of their in-house naval architects and ruining their old established contracts with Parsons. “Gibbs has a great way of getting what the owner wants,” complained one executive at Newport News, “and then steering things around to what Willie wants.”39
Despite the Navy work, the innovations, and his own growing personal wealth, William Francis Gibbs was still not getting what he really wanted: a crack at designing a superliner. If fitted with a high-pressure, high-temperature engine larger than the one in the destroyers, he reasoned, an American superliner would be unbeatable, a sea champion that would surely claim the Blue Riband.
Meanwhile, a new transatlantic liner from Great Britain had taken center stage in the public’s imagination. This ship, subsidized by a massive government loan, would become a British national icon.
For Gibbs, who felt that most British naval architects were “condescending, supercilious bastards,” the new Cunard flagship, Queen Mary, would be the ship to beat.40
14. THE QUEEN AND THE AMERICA
On May 27, 1936, all of England cheered for Queen Mary as she left Southampton on her maiden voyage. On the ship’s bridge, a cluster of reporters circled Sir Edgar Britten, her first captain. “Are you going to try for the Blue Riband, Captain?” an American reporter asked.
“Well, naturally that’s what we’re out for,” Britten replied flatly. “What did we build her for?”
The Cunard Line was eager to prove to the world that the Queen was indeed the fastest liner on the seas.
As a publicity stunt, British Olympic runner Lord Burghley sprinted around the four-hundred-yard enclosed promenade deck in only sixty seconds… while wearing evening dress and patent leather shoes.1
At 81,000 tons, Queen Mary was slightly larger than Normandie. Her conservative British designers had not given her any of the French ship’s swoopy lines. Although her prow flared forward, she had no bulbous bow. Her hull was full, her superstructure stacked and ponderous. Ugly, square-mouthed ventilators clustered around her three stovepipe funnels.
Inside, the color scheme was a somber palette of deep reds, rich browns, and brass accents. Artisans from the Bromsgrove Guild adorned her public rooms and staterooms with tooled leather and acres of rare wood veneers from every colony in the Empire. Big alabaster urns, which glowed yellow at night, lined her first-class main lounge. Overstuffed sofas and chairs cluttered the Smoking Room and “Long Gallery.” The Verandah Grille, the reservations-only nightclub overlooking the stern, boasted a sunken dance floor. Not everyone was pleased with the bizarre blend of Radio City Music Hall and Buckingham Palace. “The general effect is one of mild but expensive vulgarity,” sniffed one design critic. “The workmanship is magnificent, the materials used splendid, the result is appalling.”2
If Queen Mary lacked the French vessel’s flair, her engine room packed a real wallop. John Brown’s naval architects installed the most powerful geared turbines ever used on a commercial vessel, able to generate 158,000 horsepower. But because most of the design work was done in the late 1920s, the engines were not nearly as advanced as those Gibbs designed for the new American destroyers.
Gibbs excelled as a designer of naval vessels but he still craved the spotlight of the transatlantic passenger trade. He followed the construction of Queen Mary with intense interest, even if he disliked Cunard’s stodgy design. Even more, he resented what he perceived as the British nation’s sense of entitlement to maritime supremacy. He also guessed that Queen Mary’s great bulk would cause her to behave badly in rough seas.
Yet rather than building ships to match the new Cunarder in size and speed, American shipping companies wanted smaller, economical liners that could pay their own way and not depend on government money. The American public seemed to like it that way.
But Queen Mary would never have made it out of the builder’s yard if it were not for a massive infusion of cash from the British government. In December 1931, only a year after the keel was laid, Cunard was hurting so badly that Chairman Sir Percy Bates called off construction on the ship known only as Hull 534. For three years, the hulk sat half-completed on the Clydebank slipway, its upper decks scarred with rust and festooned with bird nests.
Cunard’s rival White Star was faring worse. IMM had repossessed the company after a scandal following its resale to British owners, and the American company received only a fraction of the $34 million still owed to them for the purchase. Saddled with a debt-ridden company that he had already tried to get rid of once, Philip Franklin panicked at the news of a potential merger between Cunard and White Star. He knew that a tie-up between the two would wipe out IMM’s stake in the troubled British line. Franklin sailed to England to try to block the deal and prevent 534’s completion.
He failed. In April 1934, the two rivals combined to form Cunard White Star Line Limited, with Cunard chairman Sir Percy Bates running the business. The British government swiftly loaned the new company £9 million to complete Hull 534 and start work on a running mate of comparable size and speed.3
Shortly before her launch in 1936, Bates approached King George V with the idea of naming the ship after the latter’s grandmother, Queen Victoria. Traditionally, Cunard ships had names ending in ia.
“Your Majesty,” Bates said respectfully, “the Cunard line is building the best, biggest, and speediest ship in the world, and requests your gracious permission to name her after the most illustrious and remarkable woman who has ever been Queen of England.”
The king replied, “My wife will be delighted.”4
And so the ship would be named not Victoria, but Queen Mary.
When the ship was launched, King George V addressed the two hundred thousand spectators and millions more who listened on the radio around the world. “It has been this nation’s will that she should be completed,” he declared, “and today we can send her forth, no longer a number on the books, but a ship with a name in the world, alive with beauty, energy and strength.”5