Joyous Hoots

From the depths of the English Channel last week the grey conning tower and then the deck of a British submarine rose, spume-flecked, at an historic moment. His Majesty's sub had chanced to bob up directly between the two fastest liners in the world, both German: the nine-month-old Bremen bound for Bremerhaven, and her new sister ship, the Europa, maiden-voyaging to New York.

Two well-placed torpedoes would have made the British liner Mauretania again the Atlantic's speed queen. But the sirens of the German ships hooted joyously at each other, and His Majesty's sub slunk peacefully below.

Slightly more powerful and of slightly greater draft than the Bremen (product of Bremen's Weser shipyards) is the Europa (built by Hamburg's Blohm & Voss. builders also of the Leviathan, Majestic and Berengaria, all seized from Germany after the War). But to the casual eye the speediest sisters are exact twins, externally.

Bremen's innards were decorated in super-modernistic style by Fritz August Breuhaus, but Europa's interior is in a style of subdued modernism, product of Paul Ludwig Troost.

The North German Lloyd declined to state that Europa was trying to beat Bremen's speed record across the Atlantic, but actually she crossed in 18 minutes less than the Bremen's best time, thereby setting a world record of 4 days, 17 hr., 6 min. from Cherbourg to Ambrose Lightship. Meantime her owners announced that they were in the process of entering into a 50-year "commercial alliance" with the Hamburg-American line. Control of each company will remain with its present officers. The tonnages "allied" are so great that they will operate side by side as the third largest mercantile unit in the world, the second being P. & O., and 'the first Royal Mail, both British.

P: In Genoa last week Italians laid the keel of their largest ship, the Rex, of 47,000 tons, designed to compare favorably in speed with the 49,746-ton Europa, the 51,655-ton Bremen.

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