Imperator, Largest of Ocean Craft, Soon to Be Launched.
Ship Will Be 900 Feet Long Monster of the Seas, With 50,000 Ton Capacity, to Have Many Luxurious Features.
Berlin.—Records for size in the ocean steamship world are not held long nowadays. We find a new “Goliath of the Ocean” of German construction. The new ship now building for the Hamburg-American line is to be called Imperator, and will be launched on the Elbe, Mr. Kerns tells us, in a few months—”such a vessel,” he says, “as hitherto man’s eye has not beheld,” ‘ The Imperator will have a gross tonnage of 50,000, outdoing the Olympic and Titantic (45,324 and 45,000). The length of the Imperator over all will be about 900 feet. Says Mr. Kern, according to Land und Meer:
“It would be impossible for a man at the bow of the Imperator to recognize with the naked eye another standing in the stern. If we think of the Imperator set up on end beside the cathedral of Cologne, the heavens reaching lower would come only to the second funnel of the steamship. To get a still better idea of the size of the vessel, it may be compared with one of the largest warehouses in the world the new store of Tietz on the Alexanderplatz in Berlin, which, although forty houses were demolished to make room for it, could be placed entirely inside of the Imperator. The steamship, when complete and fully laden, will displace 50,000 tons. The following figures show how much larger she is than the vessels which once held the world’s record for size:
“The Deutschland, once the largest ship of the Hamburg-American line, which at the time she was built, and for ten, years after, was one of the wonders ,of the world, displaced 6,500 tons; the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria, of the same line, 24,600 tons, and the giant of English ocean liners, the Mauretania, 32.000. Each of the funnels of the Imperator will be so large that a steamer like those which ply on the river Spree could sail through it lengthwise.
“The term ‘floating hotel,’ often applied to such ships when it is desired to emphasize their bulk, would convey, in the case of the Imperator, an impression far short of the truth. For where in all the world is there a hotel that can hold 5,000 persons at once? None exists of anywhere near such capacity. It is the population of a small city.
“One of the features of the Imperator is entirely new and unprecedented. The first cabin passengers on this ship will have the use of a roomy swimming pool in a beautiful Pompeian hall. Near by is a suite of rooms for gymnastics.”
It will have a promenade deck nearly a quarter of a mile long, a great entertainment hall two stories high, holding 700 guests, a conversation room, a smoking room, a ladies’ hall, a winter garden and a Ritz-Carlton restaurant, serving a la carte. It goes almost without saying that the Imperator will be driven by turbines. What will be the next step on the part of the designers of steamship leviathans? Will the English outbid their German cousins once more; and If this keeps on, how soon shall we reach the sea monster of 100,000 tons?
Essex County Herald, Island Pond, VT, April 19, 1912