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Through all these years the Cunard Company had of course been submitted to very great competition in the transatlantic trade, not only by British lines, but by American and Continental shipping companies also; and in the year 1900 with the Deutschland and in 1902 with the Kaiser Wilhelm II, what has been called the “blue ribbon” of the Atlantic passed to Germany, these vessels having an average speed of 23½ knots. It was then decided that the supremacy in this respect, should, if possible, be regained by Great Britain, and, with Government help, and in return for certain definite prospective services if required, the Cunard Company laid down the Lusitania and the Mauretania. In 1907, these vessels making use of Sir Charles Parsons’ turbine engines, were put into service and soon afterwards attained a speed of over 26 knots, and the mastery, in respect of speed, of the Atlantic.

Canadian troops on “Caronia,” being addressed by their commander

Enormous as were the proportions, however, of these huge vessels, they were yet to be eclipsed by the Cunard Company’s later and most recent giant, the Aquitania, a vessel that might more fitly be described as a floating city of palaces, libraries, art galleries, and swimming baths, than the steamship child of the little Britannia of 1840. Let us for a moment compare them, remembering that only the ordinary span of a human life-time intervened between them. The Britannia was 200 feet long, a wooden paddle-wheel steamer of 1,154 tons, 740 horse-power, and a speed of 8½ knots. The Aquitania is 902 feet long, of 46,000 tons, with quadruple screws driven by turbine engines of a designed shaft of 60,000 horse-power, maintaining a speed of 24 knots. With her Louis XVIth staircase, her garden Lounge, her Adams drawing-room, her frescoes, her Palladian lounge, her Carolean smoking-room, and her Pompeian swimming bath, she can carry in the comfort of a first-class hotel more than 3,200 passengers, together with a crew of over 1,000.