SHIPPING: Back in the Major League

With a hefty, two-handed swing, the wife of Senator Tom Connally last week smashed a magnum of California champagne against the bow of the biggest, fastest, most luxurious ship ever built in the U.S. Then, before 10,000 flag-waving spectators at Newport News, Va., the 51,500-ton, 990-ft. United States was "launched," i.e., she was towed from the flooded drydock in which she was built (she was too big for the ways of any U.S. shipyard) into the James River, and gently nudged by twelve tugs to her finishing pier.

By next summer, the United States Lines will put its superliner—now...

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