Five magnificent pole-masts, set up with thick wire shrouds and backstays, rose aloft from her deck, their lower part of steel, the upper section of polished and varnished American fir, terminating in gilded globes, one of them being specially set apart for the wireless telegraph apparatus. These masts, with a graceful “rake,” could not have been much less than three hundred feet high, but were in accurate proportion to the length of the _Princess Ida_, giving her the appearance of a Brobdingnagian five-masted fore-and-aft schooner. In an emergency, sails could be put up from them to keep the ship’s head to the wind and sea. No ventilators showed their unsightly mouths above the very broad teak top-rail, for they were not needed; but more than the regulation number of boats--about eighty, all hoisted electrically--hung from massive davits, some being electric launches. No great forty-feet wide funnels to hold the wind; no top-hampering superstructures broke the deck area, save the deck stairway houses and the wide bridge, with its chart-room, captain’s sanctum, and binnacle house, in which a wheel that a child could turn operated the steering-gear, consisting of a great toothed pinion wheel keyed to the enormous rudder, and worked by two electric motors used alternately. From end to end was a double striped and fringed awning. The _Princess_ carried a search-light of enormous range and power on her foremast, and her sidelights were disposed without any disfiguring effect on her starboard and port bows, and not in miniature Eddystones. Her anchor gear, worked by electricity, was the heaviest ever made, and resembled that of the largest battleship. Over all floated the red merchant flag of Great Britain, 40 feet by 24 feet, the flag of the South African Commonwealth, the Blue Peter at the fore, and above the taffrail the beautiful blue ensign of the Royal Naval Reserve, while in honour of this her maiden voyage she was dressed rainbow-fashion with innumerable pennons. The hull was built on the cellular principle, divided into water-tight compartments up to above the waterline, the decks or floors being ten in number. The mighty hold, and the space where bunkers would have been in an ordinary steamer, were filled with storage batteries; so that an immense area was at disposal for electric power, renewed daily by a wonderful chemical process, the weight of the batteries--in this case an advantage--taking the place of ballast, keeping the _Princess Ida_ at an almost unvarying draught.