Nearby, Vera spotted a small boy gazing at the liner. “I think she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen!” the six-year-old shouted.
The main gangway doors swung open, and Vera watched people getting off the ship. “The first person I saw come off,” Vera wrote, “was Admiral Lee, then W.F.’s secretaries, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Connelly, and then, after a while, W.F. and Frederic Gibbs. Everyone coming off more than cheerful.
“When W.F. came off he had to wait for somebody,” Vera went on. “[H]e perched himself on a post right by the side of the ship, and there he sat with his knees up to his chin, just looking at his ship—He was inside the lines, so we could not speak to him. Therefore, he was left in peace, just looking at the big and beautiful thing he created.”25
This was the moment Gibbs had lived for since he was a small boy gazing up at the hull of St. Louis on the stocks at Cramp Shipyard. From that day forward I dedicated my life to ships, he had said. I have never regretted it.
“We all looked at her as a child gazes at a Christmas tree,” Vera wrote, “full of wonder.”26
21. CREWING UP THE BIG SHIP
A great ocean liner like United States, William Francis Gibbs once said, was a giant musical instrument, “with a thousand each playing a part.”
As the liner neared completion, the United States Lines began to handpick a thousand men and women to crew up its new superliner for her maiden voyage.
There were three departments: deck, engine, and steward. Finding qualified men to fill slots for the first two was relatively easy. There were plenty of qualified and unemployed sailors looking for work, many of whom served in the merchant marine and the Navy during the war.
The stewards department, by far the largest and most visible to passengers, was another matter. The United States Lines lacked a consistent tradition of grand service; its passenger ships had nearly all been medium-sized and hence less popular with the social set. Even Leviathan’s passengers complained that service did not match the ship’s grandeur. Cunard’s Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth boasted staff that cut their teeth on the company’s legendary liners of the past, most notably the now-vanished Mauretania, Berengaria, and Aquitania. The same was true of ships of the French Line. As a result, many Americans preferred to travel on European liners, because they thought their own countrymen lacked the manners of their British, French, and German counterparts. In part because of the existing passenger prejudice, the United States Lines made a decision during the 1930s to hire a large number of naturalized German immigrant stewards and cooks. This backfired in 1940, when several of them aboard America were caught stealing blueprints that showed the location of her gun mountings. After the incident, the company stopped hiring German-Americans, but by 1952 it resumed recruiting them for the stewards department. A few other Europeans were taken on for the crew roster, all eager for the higher pay and longer vacations offered by American union contracts.
One German-American on the payroll was the much-feared chief chef Otto Bismarck (no relation to the German chancellor), who had started out scrubbing pots and pans aboard Leviathan thirty years earlier. The cooks who worked under him dreaded the sight of his tall white chef’s hat floating above the hustle of America’s first-class galley. As befitting his name, Bismarck ran his kitchens like a Prussian drill sergeant, blowing a whistle when it was time to hose down the ranges. Yet he produced results: the German chef’s culinary creations rivaled the haute cuisine on any ship afloat, including that of the French Line’s chic Ile de France.
For added cachet, the company contracted out the personnel for the three orchestras (one for each class) to Meyer Davis, who supplied musicians for society functions up and down the East Coast. Of course, the largest and most polished ensemble would entertain first-class passengers, many of whom were familiar with his effervescent dance music. “What we provide is an atmosphere of orchestrated pulse which works on people in a subliminal way,” Davis said of his music. “Under its influence I’ve seen shy debs and severe dowagers kick off their shoes and raise some wholesome hell.”1
After the company had picked the crew, both old hands and new hires would go through an intense six-week training program. Here they would learn how to run the United States in the grand style of the Continental ships without sacrificing American friendliness. The staff would serve passengers in a manner that was “attentive but never conspicuous.”2
For the eight hundred or so stewards, stewardesses, bellboys, bartenders, waiters, chefs, musicians, and other personnel needed to crew up United States, a job aboard a big superliner meant higher tips from wealthy passengers, known as “bloods.” The new ship would also have a two-week rather than three-week turnaround, meaning more frequent family visits and shore leave. Finally, the crew quarters would be completely air-conditioned, a huge perk during summer crossings. America was only partially air-conditioned, and its crew quarters were rank during the peak summer travel season.
Some things wouldn’t change, however. The hours would be long, and the stewards department would be on call twenty-four hours a day, whether to deliver a meal or drink to a finicky celebrity in the middle of the night, or scrub acres of linoleum floors, polish the metalwork, dust sculptures, wipe glass panels, or operate one of the many elevators. The worst was dealing with seasick, drunk, and sometimes belligerent passengers.
But above all, Gibbs insisted that his ship was to be cleaner than its European counterparts. Pristine was the word. And the crew quarters would be more spacious and comfortable than any other afloat. During the ship’s construction, Big Joe Curran, head of the National Maritime Union, declared to General Franklin that the ship’s crew quarters were “a substantial improvement over any quarters on any vessel in the past,” and that “I can assure you they are satisfactory and she should prove to be a happy ship.”3
One of the lucky men hired to work on United States was Assistant Bell Captain Bill Krudener, whose uncle Harry Tate had also helped found the National Maritime Union with Big Joe Curran. Born in 1928, Krudener grew up in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. When he graduated from high school, he accepted an offer from his uncle and decided to go to sea. In 1949 after getting his union book, he also got a new commission: bellboy aboard the newly refurbished United States Lines flagship America. Krudener, stocky and dark, had a charming smile and demeanor that made him popular with the passengers. Among the people he once served was Truman’s secretary of state Dean Acheson, who showed Krudener exactly how he wanted his martinis mixed. During the crossing, Krudener helped with Acheson’s parties held in his suite. Eleanor Roosevelt was once a guest, along with a couple of members of Congress. The fast pace and quick wit of the conversation amazed Krudener.
Krudener enjoyed life at sea. When America was docked at Le Havre, he and Chief Steward Herman Müller were standing at the cabin-class gangway as some college girls came aboard to return to New York. They had traveled the other way a month earlier.
“Oh Bill, so nice to see you again!” they said, throwing their arms around him. “Here’s our cabin number, you know where to find us. Let’s have some champagne.”