First Class Cabin Plan Cunard RMS IMPERATOR / BERENGARIA - April, 1920
Item History & Price
| Reference Number: Avaluer:45270656 | Modified Item: No |
| Cruise Ship & Ocean Liner: Cunard | Country/Region of Manufacture: United Kingdom |
This large tissue foldout deck plan documents a very specific moment in the career of the great steamship S.S. IMPERATOR / R.M.S. BERENGARIA. The two places on the plan where had been printed the original German name "'IMPERATOR'", as she had been christened by her original owners the Hamburg American Line, are pasted over with new printed banners with the vessel's new name "'BERENGARIA'". She was thus the first Cunarder to be named after a British queen (in this case, Richard the Lion...heart's consort) and a name ending in "-ia" in keeping with the Cunard tradition. Her between-the-war consorts were the MAURETANIA of 1907 and the AQUITANIA of 1914.
A prize of war to replace the torpedoed LUSITANIA, BERENGARIA was probably the most successful of all the former German liners which were confiscated by the victorious allies to be purchased by Cunard, White Star and the United States Lines.
This plan shows her Ritz Carlton Restaurant still in place as are the dozen lifeboats on C-Deck. The restaurant would soon become a ballroom and by the mid-1920's, all of the lifeboats on C-Deck had been installed above on the Boat Deck.
One of the things that Cunard did not do over the course of several extensive refurbishments of this once largest ship in the world (a laurel taken from the ill-fated TITANIC a year after she sank and relinquished a year later to IMPERATOR'S sister VATERLAND, later USL's LEVIATHAN) was to replace the original faulty wiring. Plagued increasingly by little fires here and there, a large fire in her First Class Salon in the late 1930's finally decided her fate and Cunard put her up on the auction block from where she went to her demolition.
A prize of war to replace the torpedoed LUSITANIA, BERENGARIA was probably the most successful of all the former German liners which were confiscated by the victorious allies to be purchased by Cunard, White Star and the United States Lines.
This plan shows her Ritz Carlton Restaurant still in place as are the dozen lifeboats on C-Deck. The restaurant would soon become a ballroom and by the mid-1920's, all of the lifeboats on C-Deck had been installed above on the Boat Deck.
One of the things that Cunard did not do over the course of several extensive refurbishments of this once largest ship in the world (a laurel taken from the ill-fated TITANIC a year after she sank and relinquished a year later to IMPERATOR'S sister VATERLAND, later USL's LEVIATHAN) was to replace the original faulty wiring. Plagued increasingly by little fires here and there, a large fire in her First Class Salon in the late 1930's finally decided her fate and Cunard put her up on the auction block from where she went to her demolition.
