RMS Aquitania, the most luxurious ocean liner ever imagined, had its maiden, cross-Atlantic voyage in May 1914. One hundred years ago this week Sydney's The World's News marvelled at this marvel.
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"BRITAIN'S greatest liner is a wonderful new Cunarder called Aquitania. For sumptuousness, the ship has yet to be built that can equal her. Even the third-class passengers on the Aquitania are provided with proper beds.
"The whole world has been ransacked for ideas for the vessel's decoration and furnishing. The smoking-room for first-class passengers is just like some fine old baronial hall. You never would think you were in a ship at all.
"Another feature of the Aquitania is the garden lounge. What the decorators have aimed at is to represent an old garden. The very walls, if you please, have been dressed to imitate old stone, and against the walls has been fixed trellis-work on which we see a lot of roses climbing just as they do in old English gardens.
"Everything that exists in the most up-to date hotels is to be found in this ship. Need a shave? The hairdresser awaits you in a quaint old barber's shop of the Georgian period.
"[Lessons have been learned from the Titanic] and the Aquitania is as safe as a ship can be made. She is, as they describe, a ship within a ship. She has literally a double hull in all the vital places, so that if she struck a rock and scraped her whole side out she would still float.
"She is fitted with turbine engines of 60,000 horse power. Think of it! The power of 60,000 horses, working all in unison like a well-drilled army, turns those four propellers which thrust her through the sea at twenty-three knots an hour."