Shipbucket

Yup.

The compass between the funnels was a magnetic compass, put there as far as possible from any metal (apart the funnels that is). On the bridge was a repeater (a device which was linked to the compass to show the headings, bearings and such). Also there was no need for going back and fro between compass platform and bridge, as they used voice-pipes.

I've never seen a liner that wasn't German with the funnels uneven like that. I guess Gibbs was also influenced by the NDL 4 stackers.

It was his first design after college. That a design by someone fresh out of school was taken so seriously really says something about Gibbs.

He knew ships, that's for sure.

Really shows how ships evolved. Gibbs went from the Boston, then America, and finally the Big U. Amazing how ships changed over the course of half a decade.

The exterior was extremely unimaginative, but the engines and propulsion were all revolutionary and attest to W.F. Gibbs' brilliance in the design of ships. Has anyone else read the book A Man and His Ship? Outstanding book by Steven Ujifusa from 2012 about Gibbs' quest to build a superliner with two world wars and the golden age of transatlantic travel as a backdrop.

tsd715 wrote:The exterior was extremely unimaginative, but the engines and propulsion were all revolutionary and attest to W.F. Gibbs' brilliance in the design of ships. Has anyone else read the book A Man and His Ship? Outstanding book by Steven Ujifusa from 2012 about Gibbs' quest to build a superliner with two world wars and the golden age of transatlantic travel as a backdrop.

Indeed. It is a very good book, I'd recommend it.

ailgin wrote:I've never seen a liner that wasn't German with the funnels uneven like that. I guess Gibbs was also influenced by the NDL 4 stackers.

He definitely was. He always admired speed over size (Boston, and the Big U combined both). He was probably most influenced by the Mauretania and Lusitania, although the exterior is more reminiscent of the Olympic. The biggest differences from the Olympic, on the exterior, were the unevenly spaced funnels and the lack of a large quarterdeck. He actually traveled to Europe on board the Mauretania before WWI.

That liner could have been built if another ocean liner company could've persisted on have her and her sister, SS Baltimore by late 1919 instead of the American Line company and it would touched off the Atlantic and Pacific Blue Ribbon competition between all national liner companies around in the inter-war years. When WWII comes, those two would be proud troopships for USA to the two UK Queens. After the war, they sail along until the early 1950s and probable saved as museum ships for the East and West Coasts.