Samuel John Milton Brown

(British, 1873-1965)

'The Pride of the Port'

Footnotes

Most likely intended as an advertising poster and very probably commissioned by the Cunard Steamship Company, this impressive work is surely the artist's masterpiece in addition to being his largest known work? Exquisitely executed and meticulously detailed, it shows the obviously brand new Mauretania as she slowly turns in the Mersey, assisted by two tugs at her stern, to approach the Cunard Pier so as to be facing downstream when she casts off. The misty and atmospheric outline of the Liverpool waterfront suggests an autumn morning and it is equally likely that the scene is meant to indicate the liner's maiden departure from her home port.

Of all the great liners that once plied the North Atlantic, the Mauretania was perhaps the most famous. Conceived with her equally celebrated sister ship Lusitania, the two ships were built as a British response to the increasing threat to Cunard's domination of the transatlantic passenger trade posed by the brash White Star Line which, in 1901, had passed into American ownership. Mauretania, at 31,938 tons, was launched on 20th September 1906 and was ready for trials exactly a year later. Her builders, Swan Hunter, handed her over to Cunard on 7th November 1907 and she sailed from Liverpool on her maiden voyage to New York on 16th November. On the return passage, she established a new record for the eastward crossing with an average speed of 23.69 knots, amply justifying the faith that had been placed in her giant turbine engines. In May 1908 she broke the record for the westbound crossing, only losing it to her sister a few months later. Regaining it in September 1909, when her average speed on the westward passage reached 26.06 knots, this new record was to stand for a remarkable twenty years until broken by the German liner Bremen.

Financed by a Government loan like her sister, Mauretania was requisitioned for war service in 1914 and operated as both a troop transport and a hospital ship. Eventually released in May 1919, she resumed peacetime sailings only for them to be interrupted in July 1921 when she was severely damaged by fire whilst at Southampton. Repaired, remodelled and converted to oil-firing, she returned to service in March 1922 and once again set new speed records which averaged 25.5 knots. Despite her advancing age, she was rapidly becoming an institution among the travelling public and became a living legend as the 1920s drew to a close. When she eventually lost the 'Blue Riband' to the Bremen in July 1929, she took up the challenge to recover it immediately with her fastest-ever crossings over the measured distance. Her average speed on the homeward run of 27.2 knots narrowly failed to catch Bremen's 27.9, but it was an astonishing achievement for the twenty-two year old veteran against the new German contender. In 1930, against a background of deteriorating economic conditions, she was withdrawn from the North Atlantic and put onto cruising. In May 1933, her hull was painted white to reflect this new rôle but she only survived two more years until sold for scrapping in 1935. The public mourned her as affectionately as they had honoured her in her prime. She had won for herself a place in maritime history such as no other steamship had ever done and it was not in the least surprising that even long after she had been broken up, she was still commonly known as "The Grand Old Lady of the Atlantic".

Despite the artist's care in portraying her, it seems curious that he did not paint a name on her towering stern and it has been suggested that this was because Brown's image was, in fact, intended to be a generic representation of both the magnificent sisters which were being completed together. Although designed as "absolutely identical running mates", there was actually one very noticeable difference between them, namely their engineroom (upper deck) ventilators. Mauretania's, as evidenced here, were larger, taller and in every way more prominent than those on Lusitania although it is perfectly reasonable that Brown would not have known this when he began the work to promote these two great liners as they prepared to enter service.

We are grateful to Michael Naxton for his assistance with cataloguing this lot.