America's Bid

For the first time in 100 years it looked as if U.S. shipbuilders might recapture the transatlantic speed record for ocean liners.* The ship that would do it, if any could, was the new $70 million S. S. United States, biggest liner ever built in a U.S. yard, which will make her maiden voyage for the U.S. Lines Co. on July 3. Last week she slipped from her dock in the Newport News shipyard for her first trial run.

The skipper, Commodore Harry V. Manning, held her to a fairly leisurely pace until the liner was some 100 miles off the Virginia Capes. Then he turned up her engines to something like full speed.

The four propellers, with a mighty thrust, churned up a boiling wake, and the great ship tore through the water at well over 30 knots with barely a tremor. Overheated bearings forced Commodore Manning to postpone the full-speed test. But some salts aboard estimated that at one time the ship was making about 35 knots, and would be capable of more with the engines full out. (The Queen Mary, current transatlantic champion, made her record run in 1938 at an average speed of 31.69 knots, hit a top full day's speed of 32.08.) Said Vice Admiral Edward L. Cochrane, chairman of the Federal Maritime Board who was a passenger: "The trials confirmed our conviction that the United States is the fastest liner in the world."

*The S.S. Baltic, which set a transatlantic average speed of 13.34 knots in 1852, was the last U.S.-built ship to hold the record.

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