Big Bed

In the arrowhead of land between the rivers Test and Itchen six miles up the inlet called Southampton Water, the Port of Southampton points a great trap of docks, like a lobster's claw, toward the sea. With that claw in the past two decades Southampton has snapped up most of Britain's passenger ocean traffic, ended a 19th Century slump. For three centuries Southampton's too shallow basin, where King Canute may have spoken to the tide and whence the Pilgrims' Mayflower sailed, had lain nearly empty. Humiliated as a "decayed town," South ampton was further humiliated by becoming a bathing spa.

In Queen Victoria's time Southampton began to put out its claw in earnest. Dredges deepened the harbor. In 1892 the then London & South Western Railway took over the docks, so that by 1914 Southampton was No. 1 port of embarkation for Britain's armies. Last week Southamptonites, now eager for the title of world's No. 1 port, felt they were getting somewhere when King George came to open what Britain claims to be the world's biggest dry dock (1,200 ft. long by 135 ft. wide at the entrance).

Last week's was the first official royal visit to Southampton since Queen Victoria sailed in, nearly 50 years ago. On that occasion Victoria praised the plush carpet run out for her and the city fathers made the grievous social blunder of sending it to her as a souvenir. Last week a more tolerant sovereign was aboard the black steam yacht Victoria & Albert that slipped between green flats and gravel scarps up Southampton Water. It steamed past the claw, past the great moored ocean liners packed for the day with sightseers, past the Empress of Britain loaded with schoolchildren, past massed choirs singing "Rule Britannia." It sailed toward a great spur of dock enclosing a bay and 400 acres of reclaimed land. Here, on the spearhead of Southampton's $65,000,000 port improvement project was a dry dock, built for $6,250,000, fit to bed down a 100,000-ton liner such as does not now exist. Through its gate, liners will float into a huge masonry bed. A sliding caisson will drop behind them. Four 54-in. centrifugal pumps will take out water until the ship sits on the concrete bottom, propped upright so that its hull may be scraped.* Flanking the dry dock are a mile and a half of new quays. Nearby a monument marks the spot whence the Mayflower set out.

The King's yacht steamed last week through the open gate, breaking a red, white and blue ribbon, but the caisson did not drop behind it. The King in his Admiral-of-the-Fleet uniform led Queen Mary and the Duke & Duchess of York down the gangway to a royal box on the quay. He made a speech calling the dry dock a good thing. Chairman Gerald W.

E. Loder of the Southern Railway, which built the dock, made a speech agreeing that the dry dock was a good thing. The Lord Bishop of Winchester invoked a blessing. Somebody handed Queen 'Mary a silver chalice in which were mixed several kinds of Empire wines. She spilled the mixed wines over the side, watched them spread oilily among float ing cables of flowers. Southamptonites cheered themselves hysterical. The royal family climbed briskly back into the Victoria & Albert, steamed down Southampton Water toward Cowes.

Notably absent and unmentioned at last week's ceremony was the heroine for whom Southampton's mighty new bed was made, the Cunard Line's unfinished 73,000-ton liner "No. 534." It lay last week in its Clydebank, Scotland yards, unfinished for lack of a Government subsidy. Designed to make 30 knots, cross the Atlantic in four days flat to beat the North German Lloyd's Bremen & Europa, "No. 534" last rang with hammers two years ago. But at a luncheon after the ceremony last week Cunard's plow-chinned Board Chairman Sir Percy Bates uprose to say that No. 534 "had survived all sorts of criticism. The theory and design of the ship are correct. The ship is the right size; therefore her new dock is right."

Four days later France's President Albert Francois Lebrun zipped out of Paris in a special Bugatti Automotrice boat-train made by Bugatti Automobile Co. In three hours and 15 minutes he was in Cherbourg, 230 mi. away. This remarkable time advertised the fact that Cherbourg has already speeded up its boat-train service to Paris from 6 1/2 to 4 1/2 hr., will further speed it with Automotrices. President Lebrun's job last week was to open a new $8,000,000 deep water port and maritime station for France.

Cherbourg has no natural port, yet some 900 liners a year touch there, most of them unloading onto tenders. The town has protected them with an outside breakwater 27 mi. long, but slowly lost traffic to the great port of Havre up the coast. In 1926 the Cherbourg Chamber of Commerce, fat with embarkation and debarka tion fees paid by U. S. tourists, began to carve out a real harbor with an inside breakwater and two deep-water piers. It raised a huge $2,500,000 Gothic passenger terminal topped by a tower bearing the arms of the City of New York. Prime mover was Cherbourg Chamber of Commerce President Camille Quoniam, who has long worked to popularize the works of U. S. Philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson in France. Last week Cherbourg's new roadstead covered 3,500 acres of 42 to 46 ft. water. It was already fit to dock most transatlantic liners. The North German Lloyd's Europa & Bremen, the White Star Line's Majestic, the Cunard Line's Aquitania & Berengaria will continue to use tenders until the flanking moles are finished early next year.

For this local push to France's race for transatlantic traffic, President Lebrun was grateful. Last week, stately as King

George at Southampton, he led his retinue through Cherbourg's terminal with its American bar and soda water fountain, along the massive pier. He peered amiably at the ribbons of breakwaters. Then he reviewed a naval demonstration, ate a meal, zipped back to Paris.

*Southampton already has the world's largest floating dry dock, a hollow steel bed 860 ft. long. Water is pumped into its hollow walls until it sinks. The ship floats over it. Then the water is pumped out and the steel bed rises with the ship.

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