No outsiders were allowed to see what the gauges read. The New York Herald Tribune told readers that William Francis Gibbs was “passing the entire voyage watching the engines and seeing that no unauthorized person gets a peek at readings.”4
It was not a luxury cruise. The ship’s head chef, Otto Bismarck, was supervising a New York City boot camp preparing a legion of cooks, pastry chefs, and waiters for the ship’s maiden voyage. Meanwhile, service in the first- and cabin-class dining rooms was hardly up to snuff. In the first-class dining room, a reporter from the New Yorker munched on fried chicken prepared by an interim chef known as “Clamchowder Jack.” “Waiters mostly riggers,” the New Yorker writer complained, “not very continental in manner.”5 The cooks managed some creativity: at lunch, Gibbs, Franklin, and others found loaves of bread shaped like an alligator and a sea turtle sitting on their table in the first-class dining room.6
As the sun shone down on the choppy Atlantic, Walter Hamshar of the New York Herald Tribune went looking for a deck chair. He was disappointed; the aluminum-frame chairs had not yet been brought aboard. Getting a drink also frustrated him. “The first-class smoking room and bar made life pleasanter for the guests who came for the ride,” he wrote in his dispatch, “but there was considerable congestion that is not likely to occur when the liner’s other public rooms and bars are opened during regular service.”7
Slightly before 3 P.M., United States arrived at the trial site. Manning ran the ship on five-mile courses at low speed for the next six hours, against and with the wind. Everything went smoothly.
At the trial site, the crew of the Coast Guard cutter Conifer watched United States make her initial passes, purple rays of twilight streaking her white superstructure and two finned funnels. Lashed to the cutter’s deck were two Raydist buoys. When dropped into the ocean, these devices would send out electric impulses that would bounce off United States and measure her speed with great precision. As they prepared the buoys for launch, those aboard the tossing cutter were stunned at the sleek ship’s beauty as she sliced through the stormy seas.
As night fell and the wind howled against the bridge windows, Manning decided to call off the high-speed trials until the next day; it was too rough for the cutter’s crew to launch the Raydist buoys. In the meantime, Manning circled the ship around the trial site, keeping her in a holding pattern until dawn. The lights of the liner cast an eerie glow through the mist whipped up by the gale. On board, the guests either turned in early or gathered around the pianos in the public rooms. As the sea crashed against the hull, a guest in the cabin-class lounge stood up to recite Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach”: “The sea is calm tonight, the tide is full, the moon lies fair upon the straits….”8
Of course, the sea was not calm, and by daybreak, the gale had still not let up. In fact, it had gotten worse. The wind was now gusting at over 45 knots, almost 60 miles per hour, but it was now or never. Manning decided to move his ship into position for the official builder’s speed trials.
On the bridge, General Franklin, Woodward, and Admiral Cochrane could barely contain their boyish excitement. Manning looked calm. Astor wore his perpetually sour expression. William Francis retained his composure, despite his growing excitement. Cochrane could not help himself and insisted, “Let’s find out what she can do!” Manning ordered Chief Engineer Bill Kaiser to throttle United States’ four Westinghouse turbines to 158,000 shaft horsepower, as specified in the construction contract. A strapping, six-foot-two Virginian, Kaiser had started his career as a lowly machinist aboard Leviathan nearly thirty years before. He remembered the trials off the Florida Coast in May 1923, in which William Francis Gibbs claimed that Leviathan had beaten Mauretania’s speed record. That was for publicity’s sake. This was for real. Kaiser was now in charge of the most powerful set of engines ever placed on a ship, designed and built by American workers and American industry, without question the best both had to offer. Kaiser put down the phone, responded to the bridge’s signal “Full ahead,” and ordered the boiler room to give him full steam pressure. The gauge began to rise slowly. And then the four turbines began to roar, shaking the grating beneath his feet.
United States made thirteen runs along the five-mile course, with and against the wind. She was slicing through the churning ocean at an incredible speed, smoke pouring from her stacks, her bow kicking up great waves that blew onto her decks.
As the ship raced back and forth along the course, Franklin and Newport News executive vice president William Blewett moved to the warmth of the captain’s cabin for a quiet chat.
“Jack, what do you think?” Blewett asked.
“We don’t own her yet,” Franklin said laughing, his face flushed with excitement. Not until the official trials in June were over would United States Lines take possession of the completed ship.
“Damn you,” Blewett answered, as the ocean tore by the ship’s windows. Manning had opened her engines up to the contract-specified power level, but Franklin knew there was significantly more in reserve. The high winds and pounding waves might put too much stress on the engines and propellers if she went full blower.
“Well, if you need advice about weather,” Franklin told Blewett, “there’s a man just above you on the bridge, Captain Manning, who can supply the facts.”
Blewett sent a crewman up to the bridge.
He came back to the captain’s cabin, and delivered Manning’s response.
“You turn her up. I’ll tell you when to shut her down!”
Manning then phoned Kaiser in the engine room and told him it was time to work up to her Navy-rating full power: 241,000 shaft horsepower, or a gear-crunching 200 tons of thrust on each propeller shaft. The steam pressure in the turbines would approach 1,000 pounds per square inch and would be heated to about 875 degrees Fahrenheit. Any leak would mean instant death for the entire engine room crew.
Kaiser watched the gauges carefully, clenching a cigar stub between his teeth. The two high-pressure turbine rotors, studded with thousands of blades, slowly built up to 5,800 revolutions per minute. The steam then fed into the two low-pressure turbines, which spun at 3,200 rpm. Reduction gears, which connected the four shafts to the turbines, then had to slow the eighteen-foot propellers down to 180 rpm. Never had a set of delicate reduction gears reduced the revolutions to the propellers by a ratio of thirty to one. Shafts had fractured and propeller blades fell off on many other liners. As Kaiser’s men slowly inched her up, the ship’s stern began to vibrate from the terrific force of the four propellers thrashing through the stormy seas.
United States was now thundering through the gale at over 34 knots.9 Congressmen, executives, and reporters up in the first-class observation lounge noticed that their drinks were now trembling on the cocktail tables. Out on the decks, guests leaned over the railings and guessed they were going as fast as 35 knots, but could not find out for sure. The bridge was off-limits, and no one from the shipyard, the United States Lines, or Gibbs & Cox would answer any questions.
After fifteen minutes of building up to Navy power, Kaiser saw the emergency indicator lights flashing on the main control panel.
He picked up the phone to the bridge.
In the captain’s cabin, one of Kaiser’s overall-clad men appeared.