THE LEVIATHAN
Formerly the German liner Vaterland, and taken over by the United States during the World War.
An automobile can turn around without difficulty in a street fifty feet wide. If the Majestic, however, found it necessary to turn around while under way without resorting to anything more than the use of her steering wheel she would require a channel more than a mile wide. In a much more restricted space than that, the utmost skill in reversing her propellers or the use of tugboats would be essential.
It is trite to remark that such a ship is a floating city, yet she actually is. Her passengers and crew together, at the height of the tourist season, number more than 5,000, but no town in the world of that population has such luxuries or comforts, such machinery or such artistic interiors as this great ship carries as its equipment.
In order to give an adequate idea of what this vast steel structure contains and is propelled by it will be necessary to divide it into two major parts—that is, the hull and the machinery, and the accommodations for passengers.
First let us take the hull and the machinery.
The hull of a ship is its prime necessity. Without a hull there can be no ship, just as without a foundation and without walls there can be no house, for a ship’s hull combines her foundation and her walls. In order, then, to understand the greatness of the gigantic liners we are discussing the first thing to understand is the hull.
All hulls of great size are built of steel. First a great steel framework is constructed, then it is covered with sheets of steel and many steel decks are built, and steel bulkheads are installed in order to give still greater strength.
In building such a ship the first thing necessary is a great yard large enough to accommodate the ship, and many shops in which parts of the ship are to be made or assembled. There is an incline constructed on which the ship will be built, and the incline is so arranged as to slant down to the water’s edge. The ship’s frame is first put up, and the first part of the frame is the keel. The keel is a long and very heavy backbone that runs the entire length of the ship and is the centre of the bottom. To the ends of this are fastened the great steel frames that rise high above the keel to form the bow and the stern—that is, the front and back of the ship. At narrow intervals between these two towering ends are erected the “frames” or ribs, which, in order to make them strong, are built up like great steel girders, running from the keel along the bottom and up the sides. When all of these are riveted in place a very good idea of the shape of the ship can be secured. Amidships—that is, halfway from the bow to the stern—these frames are very much like a broad and flat-bottomed U, but as they approach the bow they are more and more like huge Vs. Toward the stern they take more unusual shapes, somewhat like a V except that a little above the bottom on each side they curve sharply out and back in a semi-circle in order to go around the shafts on which the propellers are carried.