THE “PRINCESS IDA” IN THE YEAR A.D. 19—
Early one morning in the spring of 19—a small party of ladies and gentlemen, anxious to avoid the east wind fiend by flying from their native shores to milder regions, travelled by the electric railway towards the mouth of the Thames, and, branching off at a point near Barking Junction, traversed the new line, running for miles alongside the splendid quays recently completed between Galleon’s Reach and Tilbury, where special berths were reserved for the leviathan liners that had begun running from the port of London to Cape Town.
Long before the station was reached inquiring glances had been cast riverwards for the first glimpse of the giantess Princess Ida.
“That cannot be the Princess Ida,” said an unbelieving and short-sighted member of the party to his sharp-eyed friend, who was pointing to something which in the distance looked like a couple of White Star Cedrics linked together and towering above the roofs of the warehouses that commanded the quays.
“Well, you will see for yourself presently,” he retorted. “Seeing is believing, isn’t it?” And as the train got nearer and nearer, wonder and admiration increased, and when a break in the line of warehouses gave them a clear view of the great vessel, her beautiful proportions, her polished hull gleaming in the sunlight, and her exquisite cleanliness, their excitement and enthusiasm rendered them speechless.
The Princess was berthed close alongside the river wall, and through a great sliding port in her side over a short, stout gangway like a drawbridge, neat motor-cars laden with luggage, and with passengers who had made the run direct from their London homes, passed in continually, emerging later from a corresponding port-hole some distance away. Of cargo there was none, the only resemblance to it being mails, sufficient in quantity, however, to fully load an ordinary small steamer. As these were not timed to arrive alongside from the General Post Office until two o’clock, the party had plenty of leisure to look around, and from what they had read about this wonderful ship, supplemented by much information supplied by a courteous and communicative official detailed as cicerone, they were able to give the following history and particulars of that interesting up-to-date creation of shipbuilding—the fair giantess Princess Ida.
She was constructed by the Thames Ironworks Company, a flourishing concern that worthily represented the marked revival of the shipbuilding industry in the world’s metropolis. The material used throughout, except for the lower masts, machinery, propellers, and rigging, was aluminium alloyed with copper. Her dimensions were as follows: length over all, 1,600 feet; breadth amidships, 164 feet; depth from upper deck, 110 feet; estimated gross registered tonnage, 33,500; but her lines were so perfect and graceful as to mask these enormous measurements.[10] She had an “entrance” forward like a clipper ship, and a “clearance” aft of the utmost fineness, the stem being rounded off in most beautiful curves. Her floor in the midship sections was flat, and resembled the letter U, and deep bilge keels helped to keep her steady, and enabled her to settle down upon her shore cradle without risk of canting or straining. Her horizontal outline revealed to nautical eyes just that amount of “sheer,” and no more, necessary for strength, rising almost imperceptibly to a graceful overhanging bow, from which pointed a tapering bowsprit, apparently short, but in reality a single massive spar of Oregon pine.
This style had been adopted by the owners because, as they argued, it added considerably to the beauty of the great ship, and as she probably would never enter a dock—using a shore cradle when it was necessary to cleanse the hull—a few score feet added to her length would make but little difference in the room she took up at the quays. The figure-head, of oxidised silver, was a beautiful half-draped representation of Tennyson’s fair Princess—
“All beauty compass’d in a female form.”