Figure 4. William Francis Gibbs at Harvard, 1910. Gibbs disliked Harvard and its social world, and lived in constant fear that his peers would mock his hobby of redesigning British battleships. Courtesy of the Harvard University Archives (HUD 310.870).
Figure 5. The Cunard liner Mauretania, holder of the Blue Riband from 1907 to 1929, being nudged into dry dock. William Francis Gibbs and his brother, Frederic, traveled on this legendary ship’s maiden voyage. Long, lean, and designed to be converted into naval auxiliaries, Mauretania and her sister Lusitania were the first express liners outfitted with steam turbine engines. Corbis Images.
Figure 6. The White Star Line’s Olympic, built in 1911 and the sister to the ill-fated Titanic. Bigger and slower than Lusitania and Mauretania, these White Star liners were built for luxury and smoothness over raw speed. Converted to a troopship during World War I, she carried John Franklin and his tank battalion to the front in 1917. Known as “Old Reliable,” Olympic would remain a popular liner until she was sold for scrap in 1935, following the merger of White Star and Cunard. The Mariners’ Museum.
Figure 7. William Francis Gibbs in his study, circa 1915, showing his preliminary blueprints and sketches. The Mariners’ Museum.
Figure 8. William Francis Gibbs’s prototype superliner design, circa 1919. One thousand feet long, weighing in at 70,000 tons, and having an estimated service speed of 30 knots, if built this ship would have been the largest and fastest liner in the world. Compared to previous ships, with their tall funnels and stacked upper decks, Gibbs’s design had a low, sleek profile that conveyed speed and power. This basic concept would evolve into the SS United States. The Frank O. Braynard Collection.
Figure 9. Admiral David W. Taylor, who launched William Francis Gibbs’s naval architecture career and provided him the formal training he never received in college. Photo courtesy of Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division.
Figure 10. J. P. Morgan (center) arrives at the 1912 Pujo hearings in Washington, D.C., accompanied by his daughter Louisa (left) and son J. P. “Jack” Morgan Jr. Jack Morgan put up the financing for William Francis Gibbs’s first ocean liner prototype. The J. P. Morgan Library.
Figure 11. Philip Franklin, president of the International Mercantile Marine as well as Jack Morgan’s right-hand man in the shipping world. The split between him and William Francis Gibbs led to the founding of Gibbs Brothers Inc., later Gibbs & Cox. Courtesy of Laura Franklin Dunn.
Figure 12. Lieutenant John M. Franklin, son of Philip Franklin and future president of the United States Lines, standing by one of his battalion’s tanks during World War I. Courtesy of Laura Franklin Dunn.
Figure 13. A young Vincent Astor, jauntily attired for mid-ocean promenading, aboard Mauretania, 1922. Deeply affected by the loss of his father in the Titanic disaster, Astor had a strong interest in naval design and used his vast wealth to make the United States Lines a powerful force in the shipping world. Corbis Images.
Figure 14. Rebuilding Leviathan, the former German imperial flagship Vaterland, from a battered troopship to luxury liner in Newport News, Virginia, 1922. His masterful management of the building of Leviathan into America’s flagship luxury liner launched William Francis Gibbs’s career as a naval architect. The Frank O. Braynard Collection.
Figure 15. A restored Levia-than enters the Boston Navy Yard dry dock, May 1923. The Frank O. Braynard Collection.
Figure 16. Leviathan’s first class smoking room, typical of the lavish period interiors of liners built before World War I. The Frank O. Braynard Collection.
Figure 17. Paul Cravath and his teenage daughter Vera, circa 1913. Her surprise marriage to William Francis Gibbs in 1927 shocked New York society. Encore Editions.
Figure 18. William Francis Gibbs (right, in his signature “Iron Hat” derby) supervising the construction of the Matson liner Malolo at Philadelphia’s Cramp Shipyard, 1926. The Mariners’ Museum.
Figure 19. Theodore Ferris, the “Dean of American Naval Architects” as well as William Francis Gibbs’s archrival in the American superliner competition in the late 1920s. The Mariners’ Museum.
Figure 20. Bremen, the revolutionary German liner that snatched the Blue Riband from Mauretania in 1929. The success of the sisters Bremen and Europa led to the construction of bigger, faster ships by the Italians, the French, and the British. Theodore Ferris came up with designs for two American superliners very similar-looking to these German ships, but they were never built. The Mariners’ Museum.
Figure 21. The burning cruise ship Morro Castle aground off Asbury Park, New Jersey, with thousands of curious spectators crowding the beach, on September 8, 1934. One hundred thirty-four passengers and crew perished when the ship caught fire on the final leg of a trip between Havana and New York. The disaster ended Theodore Ferris’s career and reinforced William Francis Gibbs’s obsessive fear of fire. The Mariners’ Museum.
Figure 22. The French liner Normandie in New York harbor. The most luxurious transatlantic liner ever built, she boasted a revolutionary, sleek hull design as well as turbo-electric propulsion. Although acclaimed as the most beautiful ship of the 1930s, Normandie rarely sailed more than half full. William Francis Gibbs and his assistant Norman Zippler conducted some industrial espionage aboard Normandie following her 1935 maiden arrival in New York. She lost the Blue Riband to Queen Mary in 1938. The Mariners’ Museum.
Figure 23. The first class lounge aboard Normandie. Three decks high, the room boasted light fixtures by Lalique and painted glass panels by Dupas. The split funnel uptakes allowed for an unbroken view from the lounge to the smoking room and its sweeping grand staircase. Such luxury both awed and intimidated the public. Normandie’s cavernous public rooms proved hazardous, as they allowed for the rapid spread of fire. Corbis Images.