SS Europa 1930

 NDL's SS Europa began her maiden voyage from Bremen via Southampton-Cherbourg to New York on March 19, 1930, bulldozing her way across the Atlantic Ocean at an average speed of 27.91 knots, crossing in 4 days, 17 hours and 6 minutes.

She took the westbound Blue Riband from sister-ship SS Bremen, and held it until Bremen broke the record again in 1933.

Low, rakish funnels were all the rage at the time; they worked well for motorships, but unfortunately often proved impractical for steamships.

After receiving numerous complaints about soot and exhaust gases falling on passengers on the open decks, NDL raised Europa's original low-profile funnels by 15 feet.

There were similar complaints about other low-funneled steam-turbine liners in the 1930s, resulting in smokestack extensions for Bremen, Manhattan, and America, among others. The short funnel fad literally went up in smoke.

During Europa's post-war conversion to the French Line's Liberté, CGT redesigned her funnels again, adding fins. A fourth and final version debuted in 1954, when French naval architects capped her two stacks with huge steel domes, engineered to divert soot away from the decks.

Three and a half years of hard work at St. Nazaire had erased the heavy and somber German style of the new French Line flagship's interiors.

Now, Liberté's extra-tall "bouffant" funnels arguably helped do the same for her exterior appearance, tempering the Bauhaus minimalism imposed at the Blohm & Voss shipyard in the late 1920s, with a certain French je ne sais quoi.