Good progress is being made with the construction of the new Cunard White Star liner, as yet merely distinguished by the number 1029, in the shipyards of Cammel Laird and Ca, Birkenhead, according to information, reaching the local office of the company. The keel of the new ship, which will be over 30,000 tons gross (similar in size to the famous old Mauretania), was laid down on May 24 this year, and it is expected that she will be launched in the summer Of next year and ready for service in 1939. She will be nearly 750 feet in length. y Increased deck space for games and promenading and also increased interior passenger accommodation are ensured by a number of special features which are being incorporated. She will have, for instance, a terraced bridge superstructure, a cruiser stern, and only two large funnels, instead of three or four, in keeping with the latest trend in large ships, As in the case with all big vessels, statistics covering the number of rivets used and so on make fascinating reading. To pick one or two at random, nearly 500,000 of the 2,500,000 rivets have now been put into position; nearly 60 miles of pitch pine planks will be brought into use as external and internal staging; she is now resting on 4,000 cubic feet of pitch-pine keel blocks, and a further 6,000 cubic feet of pitch-pine will be required later as "bilge shores" to take the bottom and lower side weight of the vessel; thousands of tons of steël are being used in her construction; and hundreds of steel plates, averaging 30 feet long by 7 feet wide and each weighing about 3% tons, are being fitted into place.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.