SHIPPING: Queen of the Seas

In 1851, when the American paddle-wheeler Pacific set a record for the Atlantic crossing, steamboats could barely exceed the time of a fast sailing vessel. The Pacific's time: 9 days 19 hr. 25 min. She was the last U.S. speed queen—since her day, the British, the Germans, the French and the Italians have held the Atlantic records. Last week, a century after the Pacific's run, the new superliner United States raced east into the Atlantic from New York.

It seemed almost a foregone conclusion that she would exceed the mark of 3 days 20 hr. 42 min. set in 1938 by the Cunard liner Queen Mary on the run between Ambrose Lightship and Bishop Rock on the southwest coast of England. But merely nibbling an hour or so off the record would mean little. Ships like the Lusitania and the old Mauretania had guaranteed a 4½day crossing in the early 1900s. The Normandie and the two British Queens had cut it to four days in the 1930s. If she was worth the toil, treasure and time it had taken to build her, the United States had to come significantly closer to airline time.

She quickly showed that she was capable of making history. In her first 20 hr. 24 min. at sea (a steamship's running time is figured from noon to noon), she averaged 34.11 knots—as compared with the Queen Mary's average of 31.13—and covered 696 nautical miles. The next day, despite heavy fog which forced her navigators to rely on radar, she increased her speed to 35.6 knots, and covered 801 miles, the greatest distance ever traversed by a ship in 24 hours. On her third day out, she went even faster, averaged an astounding 36.17 knots—almost 41 statute miles an hour.

Shortly after 5 the next morning, her deep-voiced siren burst into a jubilant roar; she was off Bishop Rock, 2,982 miles from Ambrose Lightship, after a crossing of only 3 days 10 hr. 40 min. She had averaged 35.59 knots, had knocked 10 hr. 2 min. off the old mark. The Queen Mary's skipper, outward bound, sent her a sportsmanlike message: "Godspeed. Welcome to the Atlantic. Am sacking my chief engineer." Said the new ship's beaming skipper, Commodore Harry Manning: "I've still got more speed up my sleeve— we were just cruising."

The 3½day crossing was actuality, and a new era of steamship travel had begun.