The Great Gamble

In true "Glasgow weather," some 30,000 Glaswegians gathered one day last week at the rain-drenched, mist-shrouded shipyard of John Brown & Co. There they cheered as Princess Elizabeth, in a new green coat and beret-like hat, with young Philip Mountbatten at her side, swung a bottle against the towering bow of the new Cunard White Star liner Caronia. Down the ways slid the 34,000-tonner, the biggest passenger ship launched anywhere since the war. The hull was towed to a dockyard basin, where it will need another ten months of outfitting before it is ready for service.

The $14 million Caronia...

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