“They are my cousins,” Krudener said with a smile as the girls skipped down the corridor.
“How many cousins do you have?” Müller asked. “Everyone on this ship seems to be your cousin!”
Fraternization between crew members and passengers was strictly forbidden. But Müller couldn’t fire Krudener, who was a hard worker and nephew of Harry Tate.
In 1952, Krudener and other members of America’s stewards department got a notice from United States Lines: those who wanted could transfer to the company’s new flagship United States. As assistant bell captain aboard United States, Krudener would be working under the watchful eye of Chief Steward Müller, another German-American who brought to his work both precision and an iron fist. Sloppy service could ruin a liner’s reputation, especially among the fickle ones in first class, who were accustomed to getting anything they wanted, at any time of the day or night.
One who chose to transfer was America’s assistant chief steward, a tall, stony-faced Swede named Andrew Malmsea, who supervised the special six-week “boot camp” at the U.S. Maritime Service Station in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. The facility boasted a fully equipped galley, a simulated main dining room, mock-up cabins, as well as classrooms. The stakes were high. Since the maiden voyage would be a very high-profile event, there could be no complaints about sloppiness, confusion, or disorder. In addition to General Franklin and Vincent Astor, the first-class passenger list included Margaret Truman, the president’s daughter.
Krudener didn’t like living six weeks in barracks. “We knew how to do this stuff already,” he said, like making beds the “right” way. “Everything was explained about how they wanted things done.” But at least he could visit relatives in nearby Flatbush. He also liked his new uniform: a navy cutaway coat highlighted by epaulets, gold braid, and gray lapels; close-fitting blue-gray pants with twin red stripes running down each leg; then there was a starched white shirt, and a black bow tie.4
On June 6, 1952, members of the press descended on Sheepshead Bay to get a taste of what passenger life would be like aboard United States. A reporter from the New York Times was impressed. In addition to the food being “excellent,” he wrote that “matches were always ready whenever a cigarette was taken out, water glasses were filled, and a continuous supply of butter attested to the attentiveness of the stewards.” While the waiters were trained to properly serve Chef Bismarck’s meals, the bellboys were taught how to mix drinks and “even tie a fumbly-fingered passenger’s bow tie.”5
The galley staff also learned how to operate a new cooking contraption known as a RadaRange. “A housewife’s dream,” according to one newspaper, the primitive microwave could cook a steak to well-done in a few minutes. But the device still had bugs. “Chef Otto Bismarck invented a sauce that made steaks look charcoal-broiled,” recalled one crew member, because “without it, the steak did not look appetizing.”6
In the end, Krudener was glad that he received additional training, but he couldn’t stand Malmsea. Chief Steward Müller’s assistant always addressed bellboys as “Bells” rather than by their first name. “Snob,” Krudener recalled. “He just had this look that made you want to kick him in the ass.”
Commodore Manning didn’t show up at the boot camp to rehearse what he would do on board—which was a lineup and inspection of the stewards department before the start of each voyage. Pants had to be creased and pressed, fingernails clean, and bow ties straight. Krudener knew Manning from his three years as assistant bell captain on America. “He was like a little Napoleon,” he said about the commodore. “He was one of those people who wanted to show their authority over the littlest thing.”
On June 17, Krudener joined five hundred other Sheepshead Bay graduates at Penn Station to board a special train to Newport News. “It was one big wild party!” Krudener recalled of the trip. “They had to rebuild the train cars after we left!”7
The train pulled directly up to the outfitting pier. The sight of the ship’s two finned funnels towering above the rooftops and gleaming in the June sunlight took the crew’s breath away.
“It was just so massive, you couldn’t believe it,” deck steward Jim Green remembered. “The America looked like a tugboat compared to United States.”8
After stepping off the train, Krudener and the rest of the stewards departments clambered up the gangways to drop off their gear in their cabins and began to set up the ship for the two-day delivery voyage to New York. Food had to be loaded on board, sheets and linens cleaned, upholstery and carpets vacuumed, and liquor cabinets stocked.
Krudener believed that African-Americans were treated reasonably well by the National Maritime Union, and he experienced no real racial tensions aboard ship. But many of the ship’s African-American crew decided it was best to stay on United States rather than venture into Newport News after dark. On the outfitting pier were two water fountains, one labeled “White” and the other “Colored,” a clear indication that the Virginia town was part of the segregated South.
During the next few weeks, as workers added the last touches of exterior paint, the United States Lines outfitted the ship’s passenger areas for the maiden voyage, a task comparable to furnishing New York’s Waldorf-Astoria. The steward’s manifest included 2,200 aprons, 900 cook’s caps, 3,000 laundry bags, 7,000 passenger and 3,000 crew bedspreads, 125,000 pieces of chinaware, 57,000 pieces of glassware, 170,380 napkins, 10,000 coat hangers, 6,000 pillows, 44,000 bed sheets, and seven caskets for the ship’s morgue, a grim necessity on all modern transatlantic liners.9 Most of the passenger items were emblazoned with the black eagle insignia of the United States Lines, first introduced by Clement Griscom for its predecessor company, the American Line, in the 1890s.
There would also be 1,200 “freeloaders,” as Krudener called them, on board for the big party on the delivery voyage from Newport News to New York: admirals, generals, congressmen, senators, shipyard executives, and others who begged and cajoled for a berth, preferably one in first class. Walter Jones, United States’ publicity director, had also invited more than 160 reporters, an offer not easy for any member of the press to refuse. True to Gibbs’s superstition, because this sailing preceded the maiden voyage, no women were invited. Indeed, there were no women passengers at all; the only two aboard were members of the crew. Women would not be allowed as passengers until the liner’s official maiden voyage.
“It was some party,” sniffed Assistant Bell Captain Krudener.10
Two trains carrying guests left New York’s Penn Station on June 21 in the mid-morning and arrived in Newport News that evening. Among those who boarded United States for the run up to New York was a harried-looking Charles Sawyer, President Harry Truman’s secretary of commerce.
Sawyer was happy to get away from his desk. Even as the public eagerly anticipated the maiden voyage, he was waging an intense battle with President Truman to keep the ship’s precarious financial arrangement from collapsing. Whether the arrangement would hold was still to be determined.
22. TRUMAN ON THE ATTACK
In June 1952, when the new superliner had completed her trial runs, the contract between the U.S. Maritime Administration and the United States Lines had been in place for over two years. President Truman and his comptroller general, Lindsay Warren, continued to insist that the owners of United States had cheated the American taxpayers out of millions of dollars. The original agreement, Warren asserted, was “riddled with impropriety.”1 Moreover, the president’s top naval aide warned Truman that if the government sold the ship to the company at the original $28 million, it would result in “serious criticism” of the administration.2