Anyone looking for adventure in other classes was disappointed when they read in the Ocean Press that day that “regulations prohibit your going into classes other than in which you are booked. Should you be observed, it is the duty of the staff to ask you to leave.”26
“Go back up through the gates,” Krudener would tell people he suspected were sneaking in from tourist class.27
Disregarding what he was told, Don Iddon journeyed into tourist class, where he asked a young British woman what she thought of United States. “It’s all together different,” she sniffed. “The Queens have dignity, royal dignity, you might say. They are stately and very British and majestic, you might say, Mr. Iddon.”28
Yet some of the passengers in first class were unhappy, as the number of top-tier berths given to company executives and Gibbs & Cox staff had created a dance-card problem: there were too many men in first class. Cabin class, on the other hand, had too many women. Walter Hamshar of the Herald Tribune noted that “the shortage of dancing partners in the two classes will be adjusted by the time Independence Day festivities get under way,” probably meaning that some lucky single women in cabin class got a coveted invitation to dance in the first-class ballroom.29
The Independence Day Dinner capped the first full day at sea, and custom dictated full evening wear: black tie and gowns in first class. The ship’s hairdressers and manicurists struggled to keep up with demand. Everyone was in a festive mood despite the dreary weather.
Before putting on his dinner jacket and heading to the first-class dining room, George Horne of the New York Times sent a telegram update to his news desk, reporting that the liner had reached the land-based equivalent of 39.8 land miles an hour, and that “no merchant vessel has ever traveled so fast for a sustained period as far as records are known.” Despite such speed, passengers could not believe “the minimum of vibration and the absence of a sense of speed” as the ship hurtled through the Atlantic.30
Commodore Manning remained quietly confident. When asked about his expectations for the next day’s run, he simply responded: “Tomorrow is another day.”31
Those who placed bets wondered if United States had broken Queen Mary’s 1938 one-day record of 738 nautical miles, or an average speed of 32.08 knots.
But on the next day, Saturday, July 5, the fog refused to lift. Even so, United States averaged 35.60 knots and clocked an astonishing 801 nautical miles, shattering the first of the British rival’s records. She was traveling toward England so fast that the ship’s clocks, controlled centrally from the bridge, were advanced 90 minutes that night rather than the usual 60—on transatlantic liners, this was a way of gradually adjusting passenger sleeping patterns to the ship’s destination time zone. But a good number of his fellow travelers did not care how fast they were going. Horne reported that many passengers who “dined and danced in Independence Day celebrations” were sleeping off their hangovers until late morning.32
For Manning, the sleep deprivation was beginning to put dark circles under his eyes. Yet he refused to leave the bridge, and kept drinking coffee. He hoped that the fog would lift the next day, since he knew that the ship had more power in reserve.
That day, Captain Harry Grattidge of the New York–bound Queen Mary sent Commodore Manning a telegram reading: “Welcome to the family of big liners on the Atlantic!” Manning glanced at it, and then turned his eyes back to the heaving gray horizon.33
The morning of July 6 showed overcast skies and gray seas, with a 20-knot headwind blowing from the east. But the fog had burned off. Manning asked Kaiser for more steam. The ship that day would be passing several big foreign-flagged liners heading in the opposite direction, including the French Line’s Liberté (the former Europa) as well as the westbound America.
Down in the engine room, Kaiser watched the pressure gauge move higher as the whine of the four turbines grew shriller, almost reaching a shriek. “It wasn’t only confidence in the SS United States we were gaining as we whipped into the home stretch,” Kaiser said, “but also confidence in ourselves. The foreign flags had had a monopoly on this sea-queen business entirely too damned long. We could build ships to beat them, and we had men smart enough to run the ships too! Every ‘man jack’ down in those engine holds was fighting for something, just as Manning had fought and was fighting in the bridge.”34
Those up early enough felt the ship shudder as she picked up even more speed. “That ship just took off,” musician Walter Scott recalled when the fog lifted. “It was unbelievable to me the incredible speed it was traveling.”
Some guessed she was exceeding 40 land miles per hour through the moderate swells.
Second Officer Asterio Alessandrelli took out his 16-millimeter camera and stepped out on the bridge. He leaned over the port wing and captured quick shots of the ship’s wake foaming violently astern. He then pointed his lens forward toward the bows: spray kicked up onto the foredeck as United States plowed ahead into the steel-gray Atlantic, studded with whitecaps.35
At 11 A.M., stewards served cups of hot chicken bouillon on tables or carts pushed along rows of deck chairs. After the fog finally lifted, the hardier passengers braved the winds howling across her upper decks, but it was still too windy to play shuffleboard, quoits, or deck tennis. A few played Ping-Pong in the shelter of the enclosed promenade.
At the noon press conference, the reporters managed to get a few words out of Gibbs. “My expectations are rather high, and the ship is running them hard,” he said tersely, then headed back to the bridge with Manning.36
America appeared on the horizon heading in the opposite direction, making a steady 22 knots. As the two running mates passed abeam of each other, they exchanged raucous salutes from their whistles. Within a few minutes, America had vanished astern.
But another westbound liner was closing in on United States from the opposite direction, and judging by the image on the bridge radar screen, she was a big one. Late on the afternoon of July 6, as darkness closed in, three red and black funnels appeared in the distance, belching clouds of black smoke. As she grew closer, passengers could see her prow was kicking up a huge, cresting bow wave.
When the announcement came over Queen Mary’s public address system that the ship about to pass was the new American vessel, passengers watching a movie in her first-class cinema got out of their seats and ran to the starboard rails.37
Queen Mary was making about 29 knots as she swept past United States at 5 P.M. The two ships had a combined speed of over 70 land miles an hour.
Manning let loose a long bellow from his whistles, Queen Mary’s Captain Grattidge responded, and the two ships cut loose with a spine-tingling bass chord that sounded over the Atlantic for miles. The Union Jack dipped from the Queen’s mainmast in salute, followed by the Stars and Stripes from United States’ radar mast. Within minutes, Queen Mary’s cruiser stern disappeared into the twilight, and the passengers on both ships left the railings and headed below. It was time to dress for dinner.