The accommodation for passengers is probably the most perfect that has
yet been provided on an ocean steamer, for here the experience of all
previous developments has been utilised. The dining-room is an apartment
100 feet long and 64 feet broad, furnished in handsome dark old
mahogany, to seat 430 persons. The upholstery is tastefully designed,
and the fittings generally are elegant; but the peculiar feature is a
splendid dome rising to a height of thirty-three feet from the floor to
the upper deck, and designed to light both the dining-room and the
drawing-room on the deck above it. The grand staircase which conducts to
these apartments is of teak-wood; the drawing-room is in satin-wood
relieved with cedar and painted frieze panels. The smoking-room on the
promenade deck is as unlike a ship's cabin as can be imagined; it is,
in fact, a reproduction of an old baronial hall of the Elizabethan
age, with oaken furniture and carvings. The other public apartments,
library, boudoir, &c., are all more remarkable for quiet taste and
artistic effect than for the gorgeousness of gilded saloons affected on
some lines, but the prevailing feeling is one of luxurious comfort. The
staterooms for first-class passengers occupy the main, upper, and
promenade decks, and they are as much like real bedrooms as the old type
of 'berths' are not. Besides the single bedrooms, there are suites of
rooms for families or parties, finely appointed with ornamental woods,
rich carpets, and with brass bedsteads instead of the old wooden bunks.
All the sleeping-rooms are as light, lofty, and well ventilated as the
sleeping-rooms on the old liners were the reverse.
The first-class passengers are placed amidships; the second-class are
placed aft; and the steerage, forward. The steerage accommodation is
superior to anything yet provided in that class; while the second-class
accommodation is quite up to the usual first-class, with spacious,
beautifully furnished staterooms, a handsome dining-room in oak, an
elegant drawing-room in satin-wood, and a cosy smoking-room. Indeed,
some of the second-class apartments look as if they were intended to be
utilised for first-class passengers in times of extra pressure.
These are details of interest to possible passengers and to those who
have already experienced the comforts and discomforts of the Atlantic
voyage. But the great interest of the ship, of course, is in her immense
size and enormous power. The navigating-bridge from which the officer in
charge will direct operations, is no less than sixty feet above the
water-level, and from there one obtains a survey unique of its kind. The
towering height, the vast expanse of deck, the huge circumference of the
funnels, the forest of ventilators indicative of the hives of industry
below, the great lighthouse structures which take the place of the old
angle-bedded side-lights--everything beneath you speaks of power and
speed, of strength and security.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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