_Berengaria_, like _Vaterland_, had a good deal of trouble with her water-tube boilers, which were similar to the German naval pattern, but in _Majestic_ British engineers introduced some modifications whilst she was still being completed at Hamburg. The point is this. Whereas these water-tube boilers are all right for a man-of-war, which normally steams at fifteen knots and only occasionally is whacked up to twenty-one and above, the liner is driven hard all the time, and has to maintain her full speed day and night until she gets across the ocean. The amount of oil-fuel required for _Berengaria_ to cross the Atlantic once is about 6000 tons, and this is carried in side or wing-bunkers. A hundred tons an hour can be supplied to each of the four boiler-rooms, and the engines are, of course, turbines. It is said that £1,000,000 was the price the White Star Line paid for the _Majestic_, and she was a great bargain at that, for she would cost four times that amount to be built to-day. There are forty-eight boilers, and she can carry enough oil-fuel for the round voyage Southampton-New York-Southampton. This means not merely greater efficiency in regard to steaming, but saves time and expense in bunkering and cleaning ship, for it takes only six hours and very few men to get the 7000 tons on board. Her best average speed in a passage is over twenty-four knots, and her quickest voyage five days, nine hours, forty-two minutes. When she was handed over to the Reparations Commission under the terms of the Peace Treaty her speed was returned as twenty-three knots. But the White Star officials were not a little surprised to find, while bringing the ship to Southampton from Hamburg, that her turbines would develop much more power than they were credited with, and that she was really a 25-knot ship. In fact, on one occasion she did an average of twenty-seven knots for over five hours eastward-bound. [Illustration: [_By courtesy the White Star Line._ S.S. “OLYMPIC.” This 46,439-ton White Star liner was completed in 1911. During the war she sank a German submarine.] [Illustration: [_By courtesy the White Star Line._ S.S. “MAJESTIC.” This 56,551-ton White Star liner is the ex-German “Bismarck,” and is the biggest ship in the world. The illustration shows her coming out of dock at Southampton.]