scarcely to be moving the liner broke it in two just as a toy model breaks a piece of cotton. Or, again, one may look at this same ship lying at her mooring buoy on the Cheshire side of the Mersey and be lost in wonder at her graceful curves. With such sweet lines you could not doubt that she was also speedy. But it is not until one sees a good-sized steam-tug go shooting by the buoy that one obtains any idea as to measurements. The buoy is as big and bigger than the tug, and, therefore, how many more times must the liner herself be bigger than the tug? You see another steamer alongside this mountain of steel and the steamer is nothing remarkable. But presently as she comes down by the landing-stage, past a smaller liner brought up to her anchor in the middle of the river, you find that that little steamer is several sizes bigger than a moderate coaster. It would have been so easy to make this finest ship in the world look also the largest; it is a much finer achievement to have made her look, what she is, the handsomest. [Illustration: STERN OF THE “MAURETANIA.” _From a Photograph. By permission of the Cunard Steamship Co._] Passing then to some of the details of these leviathans, we find that they measure 790 feet long, 88 feet broad, whilst the depth from the topmost deck to the bottom is 80 feet. Choose out some high building or cliff 150 feet high, and it will still be 5 feet less than the height of these ships from the bottom to the top of their funnels. Their displacement at load draught is 40,000 tons; they each develop 68,000 horse-power, and draw, when fully loaded, 37½ feet of water. When crew and passengers are on board each ship represents a community of 3,200 persons. They are fitted with bilge keels, double bottoms, water-tight doors, and there are eight decks in all. To hold such massive weights as these ships exceptionally powerful ground tackle is necessitated. The main cable alone weighs about 100 tons, and there are about 2,000 feet of this, or 333 fathoms. The double bottom of the _Mauretania_ averages in depth 5 to 6 feet, and she has five stokeholds containing twenty-three double-ended and two single-ended boilers; the coal bunkers are arranged along the ship’s sides in such a manner as to be handy and as a protection to the hull in case of collision. Three hundred and twenty-four firemen and trimmers are engaged in three watches of four hours in the stokehold.