Mauretania, twenty years ahead

At the turn of the century the fastest ships on the North Atlantic were German. Cunard's answer, agreed with the British government in 1902 and paid for with a state loan, was a pair of express liners: Lusitania and Mauretania. The loan came with a condition: in wartime, the ships could be turned into armed cruisers.

Mauretania was built by Swan, Hunter & Wigham Richardson at Wallsend, on the Tyne, and launched on 20 September 1906. She was driven by steam turbines, and for four years she was the largest ship in the world, until Olympic was launched in 1910.

Her maiden voyage left Liverpool on 16 November 1907, into a storm, and the record did not come. It came on the way back, eastbound, in December. The westbound record followed in 1909, and she held both for twenty years.

The war took her off the run. In 1915 she carried troops for the Gallipoli campaign, then served as a hospital ship, painted white. Back with Cunard in 1919, she moved from Liverpool to Southampton, and in 1921–22 she went home to the Tyne to have her boilers converted from coal to oil.

In July 1929 the German Bremen crossed to New York faster than Mauretania ever had, and the twenty years were over. She kept sailing until September 1934. On 1 July 1935 she left Southampton for the breakers at Rosyth, and on the way she stopped for half an hour off the Tyne, where she had been built. Crowds came out to see her.