RMS Lusitania

1 · POSITION

Saturday 7 September 1907 was the day the Lusitania was to begin her maiden voyage from Liverpool that evening, and she arrived in New York early on 13 September. She had been built by the John Brown shipyard on the Clyde. The University of Liverpool's Cunard exhibition records that ships of her generation were advertised as floating palaces. Her loss, whose centenary fell on 7 May 2015, is a dated fact; her rooms are the subject here. [1, 2, 4]

2 · A DINING SALOON WITH A BALCONY

The surviving illustration of the first class dining saloon is catalogued by the museum as a grand room with a balcony and ornate decoration, and it shows passengers seated beneath that balcony. Writing home from the maiden voyage, the passenger Cecil Minnitt called the staterooms “exquisite” and all the other rooms he went into “so beautifully furnished”. He added that one got no idea of her size until reaching the top. The record is a photograph and a letter. [1, 2]

3 · THE DAY AT SEA HAD A SHAPE

The Liverpool exhibition sets the Edwardian crossing in a round of afternoon tea, palm courts, string quartets and frequent changes of outfit. News reached passengers through a paper printed on board; copies of the Lusitania Daily Bulletin survive for the crossings between 19 August and 2 September 1912. Menus and printed programmes were issued with decorative covers. Deck life ran to games as well as to tea, and the ordering of the day was itself part of the offer. [4]

4 · THE CLASSES WERE MOVED, NOT FIXED

Her accommodation was altered while she was in service: extra first class staterooms were added, and the room for them came from cabins that had been third class. Bookings ran to capacity and beyond in the peak season. Passengers who crossed often are recorded as treating her as a sort of home away from home. Many of the crew remained aboard for months or years, and the museum describes the ship's company as like a big family. [3]

5 · ⚑ CANDOUR

⚑ The pages read here do not establish who decorated the public rooms, and they say nothing of her lifts, her Verandah Café or her Regal Suites; those are absent from this entry rather than denied. The dining saloon rests on one photograph and its caption, not on a plan. Home away from home and like a big family are the museum's phrases. The added staterooms could not be dated, and no page read here gives the position of the sinking. [1–4]