“The lights for the reduction gears in the after engine room are flashing,” he told Franklin and Blewett. “We need more oil on the shafts. You’ll have to shut her down.”
Slowly, United States glided to a stop. As she wallowed in the rough seas, Manning, Franklin, and Gibbs conferred about what to do next.
After much discussion, the team decided to put off the maximum power run until the official trials, scheduled for early June.
The cutter’s crew picked up the two Raydist buoys, and the captain signaled Manning that they too were setting a course back to Newport News.
As United States sailed home, reporters played a guessing game about the ship’s speed. Up on deck, one reporter joked to an acquaintance that the ship had made 50 knots, an impossible feat.10
“My!” was all he could say.
Suddenly, a great gust of wind blasted across the fantail. The reporter’s notes tore loose from his hands, flew over the railings, and fluttered into the boiling sea, followed by several hats and a wallet.11
Down in the cabin-class dining room, George Horne of the New York Times had more than speed on his mind as he picked at Clamchowder Jack’s fried chicken. Turning his eyes toward the room’s visual centerpiece, a backlit sculpture depicting allegories of the seasons and constellations, he spied artist Seymour Lipton’s exceptionally well-endowed representation of Taurus the Bull.
Horne stormed out of the dining room. Lipton’s work, he roared, was a gross violation of common decency.12
The liner returned to her shipyard berth in Newport News on the evening of May 16, brilliantly illuminated against the night sky.
All over the nation, but especially in New York and Washington, people picked up newspapers on May 17, eager to read about the trials. “In the last three days the United States has undergone rigorous tests,” Horne wrote in the Times. “Into a 35-mile-an-hour wind she raced at a speed above 30 knots. The sea was moderately choppy, but she barely quavered and not one of the 1,700 persons reported seasickness.”13
When asked by Horne about the ship’s chances at capturing the Blue Riband, Admiral Cochrane replied tersely that the trials had “confirmed our conviction that the United States is the fastest and finest liner in the world.”14 Cochrane also admitted that “reduction gear bearings in two of the four engines gave indication of overheating, a circumstance that frequently happens in new machinery.”15
Over the next week, United States’ inboard reduction gears would be adjusted. The gears’ bearings were slightly out of line, something easily fixed. With luck the weather would be better for the official trials in June.
Shipyard workers also made another adjustment, of a nonmechanical nature, to the ship. Not long after the trials, Horne found a package on his desk at the Times. When he tore off the wrapping paper, he found himself holding a stylized aluminum bull’s penis, mounted on a mahogany plaque. Originally belonging to Taurus the Bull, it was a gift from William Francis Gibbs, with thanks for protecting the moral and other sensibilities of the traveling public.16
“In my business, if I didn’t have a sense of humor I would have been dead long ago,” Gibbs once said.17
Like many people who work around the sea and ships, William Francis Gibbs was superstitious. He would never sit at a table for thirteen. He would never write a letter with thirteen paragraphs.18 He also firmly believed that it was bad luck for a woman to come aboard before the maiden voyage. That ironbound superstition held firm for both the May 14 builders trials and June 9 official trials: No women allowed. Not naval engineer Elaine Kaplan, who had designed the propellers. Not even his wife, Vera, who had to be content with a quick tour before departure. She joined more than twenty thousand other visitors, most of whom were locals who, according to the Newport News Times-Herald, were the “friends and relatives of men who had put in long hours in her building.”19
Vera’s tour was more private and thorough than one given to the average shipyard worker’s wife. “On the ship were scenes of great activity,” she wrote in her diary. “A great many men were scrubbing floors, or polishing this or that. Most of the furniture was in already. The movie theater was a gem; soft gray, with fluted walls, the chairs were most comfortable.”
Vera also peeked inside the private dining room on the promenade deck, with its dark blue walls, red curtains, and crystal glass sculptures by Charles Lin Tissot. “One room had black walls with brilliant diamond stars of illuminated glass,” she observed. “It was as though they were magnificent snowflakes, but no, they were heavenly bodies.” Then there was the vast first-class ballroom, which she described as a “triumph,” with its “glass screens, pure crystal, engraved with the most exquisite designs.”20
Before leaving the ship, she strolled into the first-class dining room. Only five hundred guests would sail on these second trials, and they would find the dining setup much more sophisticated and polished than on the first. The tables were fully set with gleaming crystal, silverware, and plates adorned with black stars and the eagle seal of the United States Lines. Beneath the Gwen Lux sculpture Expressions of Freedom, Vera saw a large, painted sugar model of the ship, three feet long, placed on the buffet.21
On June 9, at 6:38 A.M., the ship pulled away from her pier and sailed down the James River for a second time. After a morning of calibration tests and compass adjustments, United States made a series of normal runs until eleven that evening. The reduction gears did not overheat, and Gibbs said that he was pleased, and that the “ship had exceeded his expectations in almost every respect.”22
But only those on the bridge and the engine room knew what her true top speed was. The people aboard were left to guess by watching the water rush by. Was she making 35 knots, 40 knots… even 50 knots? No one could be sure.
Commodore Harry Manning kept his enthusiasm in check. The next morning, the seas were calm and the wind was gusting gently, perfect weather for Manning to run two punishing tests. The first was the “crash astern test,” in which the engines were suddenly thrown into reverse while the ship was plowing ahead at full speed. The second was the “crash ahead test,” in which the engines were thrown into forward motion while backing at full speed. The purpose of these maneuvers was not just to test the machinery, but to find out how long it took for the ship to come to a complete stop. Finally, after a day that would have shredded the machinery of most other big liners, Manning announced he was satisfied.23 So did Gibbs.
When United States pulled into her fitting-out berth that evening, it was jammed with cheering shipyard workers. On board, a couple of huge brooms, spray-painted silver, were lashed to the top of the aluminum radar mast, symbolic of a “clean sweep.” It meant that United States had broken all sea speed records during her second set of trials. Again reporters tried to find out what speeds the ship had achieved, but her designer and his coterie remained as tight-lipped as ever.
Vera Gibbs was waiting for her husband behind the security rope. As darkness fell and the ship was illuminated, Vera did not see a mass of steel and aluminum, but “a fairy palace… a shiny presence that had suddenly just happened,” whose sleek form was surrounded by latticed cranes and shipyard lights twinkling behind them.24