And this is our war!
Margaretta Byrde.
Enough, perhaps, has already been written to show how intimately the Cunard Company was bound up with every phase, not only of our mercantile, but our naval effort at sea; how its long experience of maritime organisation, placed unreservedly at the country’s disposal, became an asset in the hands of the Government of almost incalculable importance, and how, in the course of its everyday unadvertised duties, it lost more than half its tonnage. It was not only at sea, however, and not wholly in connection with the problems of transport that the Cunard Company rendered such yeoman service.
The possessors of highly efficient repairing shops, engine works, furnishing departments, and laundries, these also were at once mobilised at the outbreak of war, and put to the most various and vital purposes.
Some of these, of course, were congruous with its useful efforts as a marine concern. Thus, amongst much other work of a similar nature, we find, for instance, that H.S. Sloops Buttercup and Gladiolus were refitted, their engines over-hauled, and their hull and deck plating repaired, while they were also provided with hydraulic release triggers in order to enable depth charges to be released from the bridge.
H.M. ships Riviera and Empress were fitted out as sea-plane carriers by the Company at Liverpool. The after-decks of both vessels were stripped and hangars, capable of accommodating about six sea-planes, were built on them. A mechanics’ repair shop was also installed and special cranes, for lifting sea-planes out of the water, were fitted.
Interior of the Aeroplane Factory (iii)
Russian refugees on the “Phrygia” in the Black Sea, Spring, 1919