Super-Oceanic

When the keel of a mighty ship is laid with the help of the British King-Emperor's only daughter, Princess Mary, loyal Britons are in a mood to demand that that ship must be completed, come what may.

Last fall Her Royal Highness journeyed into chill Ireland to the famed Belfast shipyards of Harland & Wolff especially to honor the White Star Line. She understood that they were going to build the largest ocean liner in the world, the gargantuan Oceanic of 60,000 tons. Graciously and with appropriate pomp Princess Mary inaugurated work on the Oceanic's 1,000-ft. backbone, or keel.

Last week it was startlingly announced at Belfast that the Oceanic as originally vertebraed by Princess Mary will not be built at all, that a still larger Oceanic will rise hulking in an adjoining shipway on a new and longer keel.

Snowy-haired, perspicacious Baron Kylsant of Carmarthen is chairman of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Co. which controls the White Star. Not without soundest reasons did he scrap the world's longest ocean liner keel. When the Oceanic was laid down, super-size rather than superspeed was the boast of luxury ships. For 22 years the trans-Atlantic speed record had been held unmolested by Cunard's gallant Mauretania while ship after ship surpassed her in size. Last month, however, Germany's new Bremen beat the old Mauretania (TIME, July 29), set a new trans-Atlantic liner record, suddenly made speed once more the public's test in judging a liner's smartness, her eclat. If the 60,000-ton Oceanic begun by Princess Mary should appear on the seas the year after next and prove slower than the 50,000-ton Bremen, vexed White Star officials would have on their hands not an asset but a debit. Clearly the Bremen has started an international speed war between all lines. At Belfast last week potent Shipwrights Harland & Wolff understood that Baron Kylsant would demand that they build for the White Star Line not only the largest but the fastest liner in the world.

The French answer to Britain and Germany has been voiced by alert Jean Tillier, assistant director of the French Line in the U. S. and Canada: "We are going to build a super-fast ship. I won't tell her speed, but she will be very much larger and faster than anything afloat today. The plans are now being completed. The date for the laying of her keel has not been set, but we know about all the other ships and we are certain that ours will be both the largest and the fastest."