Five magnificent pole-masts, set up with thick wire shrouds and backstays, rose aloft from her deck, their lower part of steel, the upper section of polished and varnished American fir, terminating in gilded globes, one of them being specially set apart for the wireless telegraph apparatus. These masts, with a graceful “rake,” could not have been much less than three hundred feet high, but were in accurate proportion to the length of the Princess Ida, giving her the appearance of a Brobdingnagian five-masted fore-and-aft schooner. In an emergency, sails could be put up from them to keep the ship’s head to the wind and sea. No ventilators showed their unsightly mouths above the very broad teak top-rail, for they were not needed; but more than the regulation number of boats—about eighty, all hoisted electrically—hung from massive davits, some being electric launches. No great forty-feet wide funnels to hold the wind; no top-hampering superstructures broke the deck area, save the deck stairway houses and the wide bridge, with its chart-room, captain’s sanctum, and binnacle house, in which a wheel that a child could turn operated the steering-gear, consisting of a great toothed pinion wheel keyed to the enormous rudder, and worked by two electric motors used alternately.
From end to end was a double striped and fringed awning. The Princess carried a search-light of enormous range and power on her foremast, and her side-lights were disposed without any disfiguring effect on her starboard and port bows, and not in miniature Eddystones. Her anchor gear, worked by electricity, was the heaviest ever made, and resembled that of the largest battleship.
Over all floated the red merchant flag of Great Britain, 40 feet by 24 feet, the flag of the South African Commonwealth, the Blue Peter at the fore, and above the taffrail the beautiful blue ensign of the Royal Naval Reserve, while in honour of this her maiden voyage she was dressed rainbow-fashion with innumerable pennons.
The hull was built on the cellular principle, divided into water-tight compartments up to above the water-line, the decks or floors being ten in number. The mighty hold, and the space where bunkers would have been in an ordinary steamer, were filled with storage batteries; so that an immense area was at disposal for electric power, renewed daily by a wonderful chemical process, the weight of the batteries—in this case an advantage—taking the place of ballast, keeping the Princess Ida at an almost unvarying draught.
Relatively the machinery of the Princess Ida was simplicity itself. She had three propellers that looked inadequate to move so vast a bulk. There were no quadruple expansion-balanced engines with cylinders of 28, 41, 58, and 84 inches in diameter, and no bewildering gathering of cranks, pistons, rods, and levers, but the shafts were coupled direct to enormous electric motors which turned them with resistless force, without the loss involved in the use of a long propeller-shaft. There was no escaping steam, no heat, no stuffy stoke-hold and fierce boilers, no smell of oil and waste, and the ventilation was almost as perfect as on deck.
Going on board by the central gangway reserved for foot-passengers, one entered a splendid hall fifty feet high and a hundred feet square, resembling the lounge saloon of a big hotel, with glass dome-shaped skylight above—a winter garden with beds of flowers and groups of sea-loving palms at the side, kept-renewed throughout the voyage; seductive easy-chairs and couches scattered about; tables here and there, covered with periodicals and writing material; while at one end of a platform, used by the ship’s band, and forming a miniature stage, was a grand piano backed by a handsome curtain of peacock-blue plush, and, facing it, a fine organ, both instruments strictly reserved for public entertainments, theatrical and otherwise. The walls of this beautiful saloon were of polished New Zealand woods, Kauri pine predominating, than which a lighter and more elegant wainscot can hardly be imagined. Fireplaces with ornate overmantels burnt logs of wood—a sacrifice to conventionality and sentiment, as they were not required for warmth, the ship being lighted and heated throughout by electricity.
In general arrangement the interior of the ship reminded one of a modern hotel, and the illusion was heightened by the port-holes on the main or second deck being so arranged as to resemble plate-glass windows set in frames of great strength, and when the vessel began to move on the waters it was as if a section of the Cecil Hotel had floated off into the river. But, though beautifully furnished, the ship was not overdone with meaningless decoration. Mirrors were restricted in number, and there was but little gilding. Rare paintings of ships, birds, and flowers were on the walls, while wood-carvings in the style of Grinling Gibbons and delicate French bronzes beautified unsightly corners. All the decks were covered with india-rubber laid over fireproof planking, reducing noise to a minimum, those below the upper deck being carpeted; and as all the doors were sliding and shut noiselessly, the general effect of quietude was delightful, even the electric gongs being subdued in tone.
The style of upholstery throughout was that of the latest Victorian Era, modified to meet the requirements of life at sea. There was, of course, a very grand dining-saloon, and smaller ones for private parties; also a principal drawing-room, boudoirs, tea-rooms, and in the transoms (i.e. the aftermost part of the ship) one small and purely ornamental parlour in imitation of Princess Ida’s in her college—
“.... a court
Compact of lucid marbles, boss’d with lengths
Of classic frieze with ample awnings gay
Betwixt the pillars, and with great urns of flowers”—
where a statue of that divinity, seated on a throne, with a couple of tame leopards on each side, was placed as a kind of tutelary genius, to which the sentimental ladies on board made weekly offerings of the choicest flowers they could get.