In Germany were two such vessels, one of which was already built and had been running for a year or two, and the other, a still bigger ship, was not yet finished. These two ships were handed over to Great Britain, the former being the _Imperator_, 52,022 tons, launched in 1912, which used to call at Southampton on her way from Germany to New York. The other ship was the 56,551-ton _Bismarck_, whose keel had been laid by the Kaiser in the year 1914. The _Vaterland_, as mentioned in another chapter, measuring 950 feet and 52,282 tons, was acquired by the United States. The _Imperator_ now became the _Berengaria_, and was taken over by the Cunard Company; the _Bismarck_ became the _Majestic_, and was put into the White Star service in the spring of 1922. She was built at the Blohm and Voss yard, Hamburg, and with her enormous tonnage and length of 956 feet is the biggest ship in the world. [Illustration: [_By courtesy the Cunard Line._ S.S. “BERENGARIA.” This Cunarder is the ex-German “Imperator,” 52,022 tons, launched 1912. She measures 919 ft. long.] Though built in Germany, which learned the art from Great Britain, these two ships are now the pride of the British Merchant Fleet, and they are, together with the _Mauretania_ and _Aquitania_, consumers not of coal, but of oil. The _Berengaria_ measures 919 feet long, is practically 100 feet in beam, and represents an enormous amount of capital; but she was laid aside for six or seven months so as to have a complete overhaul and to be converted from coal-burning. With that fuel she had been able to do a little over twenty-three knots, and her best average speed has since been 23·38 knots for the whole voyage; her fastest trip being five days, eighteen hours, forty-seven minutes. You can imagine the responsibility of her captain, handling such an enormous steel island. Let us forget for a moment such things as her new ballroom, able to accommodate 250 dancers. Let us forget, too, the cafés, gymnasia, palm courts, Turkish and swimming-baths and the numbers of private suites, the velvet carpets, and baronial halls; let us just think of her as a ship. Eighty-five feet above the water is the sun-deck promenade, and away above that again rises the bridge. Here are all sorts of gadgets, such as a bell that rings automatically when the temperature of the sea drops below a certain degree, and so the warning is made to the officer of the watch that icebergs are about. Tell-tale lamps act as fire-indicators, and another bell rings to call attention to the fact that there is smoke in some section of the ship. Steam pressure is then made to drive water down a pipe to spray around the particular compartment. There are telephones galore, from the bridge to the engine-room, boiler-rooms, baggage-hold, purser’s office, engineer’s office and, via the ship’s central exchange, to all parts of the ship.