The day a ship returns safely has always been important to seafaring men. It’s especially important if she has made a new record of some kind. All the seamen in New York harbor were excited when the passenger liner United States came in after crossing the Atlantic faster than any other liner had ever done. And they all showed their respect in the traditional way.

On tugs and freighters, on tankers, on other liners, skippers passed down the word, “Break out the bunting!” This meant take out all the brightly colored signal flags and hang them on the stays. (On page 91 you can find out what the signal flags are.) The United States had her bunting out, too. When she appeared in the harbor, every vessel there greeted her with tremendous whistle blasts. Fireboats filled the air with high curving streams of water from all their nozzles.

Aboard the United States, the members of the crew were more excited than any one else in the harbor, but their work went right on through all the happy hullaballoo. The AB’s got ready to tie their huge ship up. Others, from the black gang to the steward’s department, were busy with last-minute jobs. Working together as one huge team, they had made the world’s fastest crossing. On the trip from New York to England, the United States averaged 35.9 knots. (That means she travelled nearly 42 land miles an hour. Seamen never say “knots per hour.” They just say knots.) Before that the passenger liner Queen Mary held the record. It took the United States 10 hours and 2 minutes less than the Queen Mary to cross the ocean.

The United States is really more than a ship. With a thousand people in her crew and two thousand passengers, she is a floating town. Besides the seamen who do their regular seamen’s work, there are crew members with special jobs. In the ship’s shopping centers, storekeepers sell souvenirs, and all kinds of things that passengers want and need. Movie operators work in her two theaters. A children’s nurse takes care of children in the nursery. A veterinarian cares for pets on board. Guards watch over the swimming pool. A doctor and a registered nurse are ready in the ship’s hospital to help anyone who is sick. Air conditioning experts see that every room in the ship is kept at the right temperature. Everything from the engine room to the dog kennels is air-conditioned.

Curtains, chair covers and rugs on the ship are made of material that doesn’t burn. There is no wood at all in the ship except in the butchers’ chopping blocks and in the pianos. But suppose a passenger drops a match into a wastebasket in his stateroom. There’s an automatic smoke-smelling gadget that sends a signal to a room on the bridge. The officer there turns on the fire alarm, then pulls a lever which closes that particular stateroom door and blocks the fire off.

There are lifeboats for all three thousand people in case of emergency. These lifeboats are driven by propellers—but they have no engines. People supply the power for the propeller. They push handles back and forth. Even on this most modern ship in the world, there are boats that move in the oldest way—by muscle power.

The four propellers of the liner herself are each as tall as a two-storey house. They are turned by enormous steam turbine engines. Smoke from the boilers goes out through unusual-looking stacks. Inside each one are giant filters that take away most of the soot. Besides, there are wings called vanes at the top of the stacks to help keep the smoke from swirling down onto the deck.

Although the United States is about five city blocks long and twelve decks high, she looks as light and graceful in her way as the old clipper ships. The clippers were American sailing vessels that got their names because they went at a very fast clip. A hundred years ago they held speed records all over the world. No wonder the captain of the United States proudly said that his seamen were carrying on the clipper ship tradition.

Many people think the clippers were the most beautiful ships ever built. Certainly they were the first sailing ships to be planned by men who used scientific ideas in their work. At that time, science was bringing modern machinery of all kinds to the world. Inventors had already put steam engines into ships, but they had not yet studied what was the best shape for a speedy vessel. And speed was becoming very important as more people and cargoes crossed the oceans.

No one knew whether steamships could go fast. But some shipbuilders believed that sailing ships could go faster than ever before. They built the record-breaking clippers. Soon the magnificent vessels began to have races all the way from China to New York and London. It was many years before steamships caught up with the clippers, but in the end they proved to be faster. More important, they could keep going whether there was any wind or not.