The "Ile de France" on Her Maiden Trip: Although Not So Large as Many American and English Liners, She Is One of the Most Luxurious
The steward has in his charge more than 10,000 tablecloths, 45,000 napkins and 5,000 aprons for the use of the cooks, stewards and stewardesses.
If the napkins were hung on a single line, side by side, the line would have to be seventeen miles long, and the tablecloths would occupy a line nineteen miles long.
If the ship's linen, including the bed room linen, could be hung on a line at the rate of six pieces a minute on the basis of an eight-hour day and five-and-a-half-day week, it would take twelve weeks to complete the job.
There are 80,000 pieces of china and crockery carried by the ship, including 30,000 plates, 16,000 cups. 13,000 saucers, 10,000 cooking dishes, 2,700 pitchers and 2,400 tea and coffee pots. Glassware totals 29,000 pieces, including 8,000 tumblers, 7,000 wine and spirit glasses (one notes that water seems to be more popular than wine), 7,000 salt, pepper and mustard containers and 1,600 water bottles.
Food by the ton and by the carload is needed to stock the "Majestic" for a round-trip voyage over the Atlantic.
The ship can carry a total of 4,100 passengers and has a crew of about 1,000. To feed these 5,100 people for a single round trip, the ship's refrigerators are stocked with seventy-five tons of meats in addition to ten tons of ham and bacon, twenty-eight tons of fish and about eighteen tons of poultry.
The vegetables served with these meats will include thirty tons of potatoes, seven tons of carrots and turnips, ten tons of cabbage, several tons of onions and half a ton of hot-house tomatoes.
Stores for a voyage include 1,000 each of plover, quail, snipe and pheasant, 750 each of partridge and grouse and 500 wild ducks, a total of 6,000 game birds.
The chef has for his menus 600 boxes of apples, 400 boxes of oranges and grapefruit, sixty boxes of pears and a ton of hothouse grapes. To prepare his desserts he has a ton of American ice cream, and has three tons of jams and marmalades.
The baker has for his ovens thirty-five tons of flour. The list of supplies includes eight tons of sugar, five tons of butter, three tons of coffee and tea, 80.000 eggs and 500 gallons of milk.
Smokers on board need not fear lacking cigarets. They are consuming a supply of 250,000 cigarets and 2,240 pounds of tobacco on a voyage, which ought to be enough for any reasonable group.
GIANT NUGGET KEPT BY BANK AS GOLD RESERVE
Weighing more than eighty ounces and valued at $1,408, a gold nugget forms part of the reserve for a national bank in Baker, Oreg. It is one of the largest nuggets ever found and was mined near by.
