construction, each plate being 32 feet long. But for the excellence of her construction she would never have been able to emerge successfully from her famous duel when she sank the _Cap Trafalgar_ off the South American coast during the first autumn of the recent Great War. Events happen so quickly, and one sensation follows so rapidly on another, that we are apt sometimes to get quite a wrong perspective. To me the _Carmania_ is one of the most interesting ships afloat. For nine years before the war she did most excellent work as one of the finest passenger ships, carrying many thousands of people across the Atlantic in comfort and luxury. Then came the war, and _Carmania_ became an armed merchant cruiser and was sent into South American waters. She met the Hamburg-South America liner _Cap Trafalgar_, a very similar ship, also armed as a merchant cruiser, off the island of Trinidada, and then fought a terrific duel which lasted eighty minutes, during which the Cunarder was pierced by seventy-nine shells, set seriously on fire and generally made desolate. But she sank the _Cap Trafalgar_, and to-day, and since the war, _Carmania_ has resumed carrying her thousands across to New York in perfect luxury again, with verandah cafés, costly furniture, palm trees and the rest, just as if nothing serious had ever happened. Truly the modern ship is an amazing creature. [Illustration: [_By courtesy the Cunard Line._ BERTHING A BIG LINER. The “Mauretania,” assisted by tugs, coming alongside the quay at Southampton.]