RMS Berengaria : Cunard's 'Happy Ship'

At the turn of the twentieth century a race was on between the European shipping companies to build the largest liners in the world. From Cunard had come the Mauretania and Lusitania, from White Star the Olympic, Titanic and Britannic and from the Hamburg Amerika line came Albert Ballin''s trio of liners; Imperator, Vaterland and Bismark. The first of these three Hamburg Amerika liners was, when launched, the largest ship in the world, capable of carrying 5,000 passengers in varying qualities of accommodation from emigrants in steerage to millionaires in her suites. Imperator had a short useful life of only one year before war started in 1914. Docked for the duration she was, at the end of the war, passed to the British Government and sold to Cunard as a replacement for the ill-fated Lusitania. Recomissioned and overhauled she became the flagship of Cunard and was renamed Berengaria, after Richard the Lionheart''s wife. She joined her new consorts, Aquitania and Mauretania on the Atlantic shuttle service and was a common sight on the Atlantic for the next seventeen years. Sent for scrapping in 1938, she was broken up to the keel by 1939 and the hull was scrapped after the Second World War.