At 5:30 P.M., John Brennan of the United States Lines announced to the three thousand people still waiting on the street that the ship was now closed to the public. An enormous groan came up from the crowd.
Brennan promised the disappointed people who already paid for admission that they would get their money back. As they moved away from the pier, they glanced over their shoulders at the great liner that loomed over them.8
Despite the great show, not everything had been on display. All throughout the day, the doors to the engine rooms and bridge remained locked and secured by guards. Gibbs did not want any Russian spies or—worse, perhaps—rival naval architects who might try their hand at the escapade he himself had pulled at Normandie’s maiden arrival in New York.
The onboard parties went on for nearly two weeks, as did the loading and provisioning. “We worked every day,” Krudener recalled. “They were showing off the ship to all the celebrities.” Although he collapsed in his bunk exhausted every night, the assistant bell captain still felt that “it was quite a wild, good time.”
Deck steward Jim Green was awed by the New York and Washington elite who swarmed aboard the ship. Every day there was one glittering luncheon and dinner party after another for shipping executives, bankers, and politicians. Before one gala affair, Green passed the first-class dining room and saw an enormous ice sculpture in the form of an eagle, perched above a buffet stacked with caviar, aspic, and cheeses.
The parties went on late into the night as the Big Ship rested at Pier 86, her twinkling lights reflected on the Hudson River. Her public rooms echoed with laughter and clinking glasses as the nation’s rich and powerful enjoyed themselves.
William Francis Gibbs still loathed these sorts of events. They were unpredictable, loud, and full of conversation for which he had no patience. He loved being the font of all knowledge at his office, or speaking at professional dinners, but he hated being the center of attention in other settings, even on board his dream ship.
The staff of Gibbs & Cox knew this full well, so they decided to throw him a party that he would like. At 4 P.M. on July 1, the United States design team filed into the tourist-class theater. The team, which included Elaine Kaplan, contributed money to purchase a special gift for him.
Matthew Forrest, the hull designer who had worked with William Francis since Malolo entered service in 1927, made the opening remarks from theater stage.
The gift sat on a pedestal, wrapped in cloth and adorned with striped ribbons and bunting. Its recipient stood to the left of the stage, his white hands clasped over his threadbare black suit jacket.
“Mr. Gibbs,” Forrest began, “we hope this is not a complete surprise to you. This gathering is not intended to hide your light under a bushel, but it is merely the desire of old associates who have been with you from ten to over thirty years, to have a moment with you by themselves, without benefit of publicity, and we are gathered here and represent the Staff as a whole and are mindful of those who are not with us today who have left us in the past, and who could not be here.”9
The statue was unveiled. It was a scaled-down replica of the ancient Greek statue called “The Winged Victory of Samothrace.” A winged female alighting on the prow of a warship, it honored a victory at sea by the ancient democratic city-state of Athens.
As “a symbol of achievement,” the staff felt, “it is considered especially suitable for this occasion.”
Forrest presented his boss with a scroll signed by everyone who worked on United States from design to completion:
Naval architect, marine engineer, and brilliant executive who has given impetus to the beginning of a new epoch in the creative art of ship design and construction…
Throughout the years he has followed closely the history of disasters at sea and devoted unceasing efforts to the study of ship design to promote greater security and safety for the sea traveler….
To William Francis Gibbs, we pay homage for this, his greatest achievement….
We, his associates, by the presentation of this symbol, honor his advancement in his profession and hold dear our association with him and the example he has set in leadership that has inspired and prepared us to collaborate with him on even greater ventures in the future.
To deafening applause, Gibbs took the podium, and then motioned for Frederic to join him. Hundreds of eyes trained on his gaunt frame. His staff wondered what this reticent man would say.
“The fact is,” Gibbs began, “that this ship is the product of many minds, much enthusiasm, of people who with head and hand have joined in a great project and thus presented to their fellow citizens an example of something which has been denied these fellow citizens for 100 years.”
He then apologized to all “their wives and their sweethearts for keeping them in the office long after they should have left; for making them work on Saturday, for complaining bitterly about their stupidity, because none of them is stupid—and for doing all those things that a taskmaster does in driving the Egyptians to build a pyramid.”10
That same day, General Franklin asked for a special meeting in the United States Lines boardroom at One Broadway. It was forty-eight hours before sailing day. Among the directors present was Vincent Astor. “The atmosphere was electric for in the back of our minds was the idea of the Blue Riband Trophy,” Franklin recalled. He ordered his personal secretary and a notary public to record the meeting.
Two guests arrived in the boardroom and took their seats at the long, gleaming table. First was Commodore Manning, trim and resplendent in his blue uniform, his steel-blue eyes alert and ablaze. Second was Chief Engineer Bill Kaiser, lumbering and red-faced.
Manning hated being called away from his ship. And he dreaded the prospect of these men telling him what to do. He held his tongue.
Franklin called the board meeting to order. “I think this is a very fast ship,” he said, “and she can break the record, east and west. Captain Manning, what do you think?”
“I agree, sir,” Manning replied.
“Well, how many revolutions will you need?”
“One hundred and sixty-five, sir,” Manning responded.
Franklin’s tone then hardened. “I want to make one thing perfectly clear. The complete safety of the passengers and the ship is number one priority. You will shut her down if you encounter heavy weather or fog.”
Manning noticed the secretary was busy typing, and the notary was ready to certify an agreement.
“I instructed that the document be removed from the company vault and publicized for the official record if, in the event, the ship went down,” Franklin wrote in his memoirs. “Regardless of the trophy, I could not allow the U.S. Lines to be placed in an irresponsible position.”11 Astor and Franklin had not forgotten the Titanic disaster, which had taken place almost exactly forty years earlier.
As much as he respected Manning as a sailor, William Francis Gibbs had misgivings. Earlier he had urged the company to make its position clear. “I warned them that in my opinion no attempt should be made to operate at high speed until they had had several crossings at moderate speed and that the crew had been thoroughly broken in.”
But ship and passenger safety was only one reason Gibbs didn’t want the record broken in dramatic fashion. For the tight-lipped creator of United States, it was a matter of national security: no one must know how fast the ship could really go. The previous year, at lunch with United States Lines vice president John Brennan, he made clear just what he didn’t want to happen on the maiden voyage. “I said they could beat it by a reasonable amount, or make the average 32 knots,” Gibbs wrote, “but that they should under no circumstances indicate this to the British by performance what the power of this ship is.”12