Manning’s association with the great ship proved to be short-lived. He went too far one last time. On the return leg of her second voyage, United States left France within minutes of the Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth. Both liners were booked to capacity. Manning spotted the Queen just off Bishop’s Rock. Sailors’ etiquette dictated that if Manning was to pass the British ship, he would have to do it at a good distance to avoid any appearance of racing. Manning didn’t. He set a course toward the British ship at a steady speed of 31 knots, closed in on the Queen, and passed her in plain sight.
United States arrived in New York at 2:55 A.M. on August 4, 1952. Queen Elizabeth arrived 11 hours later, maintaining her scheduled service speed of 28 knots.
Reporters were all over Manning, asking if there had been a race. “There wasn’t any race,” the commodore snorted. “We just raced away from her.”
Queen Elizabeth’s master, commodore, George E. Cove, claimed that his ship’s arrival time had been decided months in advance. “I have no knowledge of any race,” Cove said coolly. “Commodore Manning and I merely exchanged greetings off Bishop Rock.”12
Yet soon after docking, Manning received a stern phone call from the United States Lines office—just hours after completing the second voyage, he was sacked. There had been whispers about how Gibbs was constantly feuding with Manning over how to run the Big Ship.
At a short ceremony on United States’ bridge, the ship’s officers presented Manning with a ship’s clock as a retirement gift, and the fiery sailor then left for his home in New Jersey. Aside from commanding United States for a few relief trips, his career at sea was over.
Manning was replaced by America’s former captain, John Anderson, who was much more popular with his crews and deemed more reliable by Gibbs and the United States Lines.
During the high summer season of 1952, United States sailed at capacity and took her place as the most popular liner on the Atlantic. But Truman stubbornly continued to fight the original terms of sale, and threatened to cut off the ship’s operational subsidies. Finally, after Dwight Eisenhower’s election in November 1952, Truman’s special naval aide Robert Dennison prepared to pass the file on “The Case of the United States Lines Company” to the next administration. The ship’s funding would remain unresolved until May 1954, when the United States Lines agreed to a revalued purchase price for United States of $34,850,000. That was about $7 million more than the initial June 1952 purchase price—less than the original $10 million demanded by Truman’s comptroller general, Lindsay Warren, but enough to satisfy all parties. In addition, the government would no longer withhold the ship’s operating subsidies. This cash stream was safe for the time being.13
For William Francis Gibbs, the ship was never the result of a partnership between private business and the government. For him, not money but the ship’s design and construction created United States, and for him, creativity came out of a team, but never a bureaucracy. “This great ship that lies up at Pier 86,” he said after returning to his office, “is the embodiment to me, of the force and power of a free people working with individual initiative, coming together and cooperating to produce a result which is far beyond the capacity of any one agent or any one individual to produce by himself or cause to be produced by himself.”14 When asked why United States was so perfect, he answered flatly, “The reasons we managed to construct that ship was that the government left us to ourselves, putting no regulations in the way. So we designed the ideal ship.”15
Indeed, for the next decade, William Francis Gibbs’s “ideal ship” would lead a charmed career, the ship of choice for the rich and powerful, universally acclaimed as the most beautiful and modern liner afloat, an icon recognizable to millions of Americans. Stunned by the success of his Big Ship, her designer developed a fanatical devotion to his finest creation, making sure that she remained as perfect in service as she was on his drawing board. United States, in fact, became an extension of himself, his ideals, and also the medium in which he reached out to others.
Yet it was also clear that United States was an achievement he could never duplicate; by the 1950s, the public’s fascination with the superliner as a technological paradigm was nearing its end. It was a sea change that Gibbs would avoid confronting for as long as he could.
26. THE HALCYON YEARS
Once every two weeks, William Francis Gibbs made an early morning excursion before going to the office. He had his usual 6 A.M. breakfast of coffee and Uneeda biscuits in the apartment at 945 Fifth Avenue, as a chauffeur-driven black Cadillac idled out front. After Gibbs got in, the chrome-edged beast roared down Fifth Avenue, the foliage of Central Park zipping past the windows. Turning west near City Hall, the car sped across the Brooklyn Bridge, and through the sleeping streets of Brooklyn. At the foot of the Verrazano Narrows, the driver pulled off the road, and William Francis got out.
Around him were drab two-story row houses, their windows dark. The lanky figure strode past them toward the lapping waters of the Lower Bay. His brown eyes, squinting through wire-rim glasses, peered through the fog. Salty bay breezes whipped his gray trench coat. All around was the noise of foghorns, buoys, and screeching seagulls.
His ears strained for one very distinct sound.
Then a rich, mellow, deep bass note shook the morning air. A half-mile away, United States slowly emerged from the haze, signal lights blinking and smoke drifting from her two finned stacks. Veiled by the morning fog, she glided slowly through the narrows toward the shadowy skyscrapers of Manhattan.
All but a few of the passengers would be asleep in their cabins. A few small, dark figures stood at the railings, catching a glimpse of the New World. A crew member might lean over the bow rail, holding a lighted cigarette. He would flick it overboard, and Gibbs would see a tiny dot of orange arc toward the quenching waters below. Then looking up to the bridge windows, he would see the lights glowing.
United States pushed on through the fog toward her Hudson River pier, a large American flag fluttering from her sternpost. She would be docking at Pier 86 in a few hours. Gibbs turned and walked back to the Cadillac, the soles of his cracked shoes meeting the gravel. The glow of the early morning sun now spread across the Atlantic horizon. William Francis Gibbs had seen his Big Ship come in.
By 7 A.M. another round of coffee and biscuits awaited Gibbs in his office at 21 West Street. Here he scanned the shipping news in the New York Times and clipped out articles that interested him. One, dated March 12, 1954, read: “The 83,000 ton Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth reported on her arrival here today that two passengers had suffered broken bones, social events had been caneceled [sic] and interior decorations were smashed in the vessel’s stormiest Atlantic crossing of the winter.”1
William Francis Gibbs remained a charismatic figure, one whose monumental work ethic served as a benchmark for his subordinates. Even if they found him cantankerous or demanding, employees could never say he was lazy. Chief Engineer Walter Bachman wrote that even as he aged, Gibbs was a “natural leader, who inspired great loyalty in his staff and confidence and cooperation in those with whom he did business.”2