284 DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF PASSENGER STEAMERS. 



INTERIOR DECORATION. 



No paper of this character can be complete without reference to such an important 

 feature of passeng-er ships. The first requisite from the point of view of the passenger, 

 after that of the general good or bad repute in which the line and ship he sails on is held, 

 is that the general arrangement of the accommodations shall be such as to contribute to his 

 comfort — enough promenade space and open decks for games, ample ventilation at all times 

 and heat in winter, well-arranged staterooms and public rooms, access to all parts under cover. 

 An essential factor in all this is the interior decoration. We have had very few papers on 

 this subject, but one in 1915 by Mr. H. B. Etter stands out as a valuable and interesting 

 contribution to the transactions ; a careful reading of this paper will repay anyone interested 

 in the subject. 



The architectural or decorative atrocities of a hotel can frequently be recovered from by 

 seeing nearby grand and varied scenery, or by absence for short periods. Not so with a 

 ship; once you start, the scenery is, generally speaking, the sea and then more sea. Also, 

 you are there to the end of the voyage, and if it is a three or four-week voyage, third-rate 

 efforts at decoration can try men's souls. 



As in Pullman cars, so in ships, we have happily gotten away far from the days of 

 heavily applied ornamentation, just as in our houses we demand decoration and furniture 

 which combine grace and usefulness; plaques of dead fish on dining-room walls spoil the 

 digestion of fewer people than they did a generation ago. So in ships it has been realized 

 more and more that good interior architecture and decoration do not necessarily involve ad- 

 ditional expense, or rather expense beyond an immediately appreciable return in the en- 

 hanced reputation of the vessel in question in attracting passengers. Compare the beauty and 

 general attractiveness of the United Fruit Company's steamers with the vast majority of our 

 prewar coastwise passenger vessels. The United Fruit Company has not lost trade by the 

 quality of its ship's arrangement and decoration; it is by no means a weak and struggling 

 line, made so by wasting its substance on expensive interiors. Visit or travel on one of its 

 steamers and then do the same on any of several coastwise liners ; the wood and paint are 

 there, but the decorative effects that could have been gotten from the same wood and paint 

 are not. 



Of the later periods which lend themselves to ship decorative architecture the Tudor 

 and Flemish are found most frequently in smoking rooms ; the periods of Louis XIV, XV 

 and XVI of France in the music rooms, lounges and galleries. Read the published descrip- 

 tions and visit modern liners; it is hard to realize the variety of styles which can be 

 adapted to ship decorations. From classic and Gothic in lesser amounts we pass on to a 

 weEdth of the Renaissance of Italy and of France, to the English and Dutch evolutions and 

 lastly to our own Colonial, the keynote to the decoration of our postwar ships of the Ameri- 

 can Legion class. 



We have heard lately of ships that were overdone in the lavishness of their appoint- 

 ments ; perhaps so. A ship designed and built for a one-week trip does not need as much 

 in the way of accessories as one that is to be a floating home for four or five weeks at a 

 stretch. Let ships be designed each for its own trade, with due consideration to climates 

 passed through, to the likes and dislikes of the people carried, to the length of voyage. A 

 rational answer to these questions will settle both the decorative and elaborateness questions. 



The impression may have been given that copying the past is the only way to decorate 

 a ship; this is not intended. Certain it is that the past, so far as it has been spared by the 



