AQUITANIA ‘DOWN THE YEARS’

Aquitania’s long life ensured that she had to adapt to keep up with the times. When she returned to service in 1920, after the war, Cunard took the opportunity to improve her accommodation to ensure her popularity; after immigration declined in the early 1920s, the focus switched to attracting passengers to the new ‘tourist third cabin’ accommodation provided in the second half of the decade. Several new public rooms for these passengers were provided in the 1929 refit. In the early 1930s, second class and tourist third cabin gave way to tourist class – a single designation – and then in 1936 the North Atlantic Conference renamed first class as ‘cabin class’ onboard Aquitania, as she recovered from the depression and Queen Mary arrived on the scene. These changing circumstances explain many alterations that were made over the years.

The purpose of this short article is to take a brief glance at several changes in the second and first class areas, by comparing them as they were in 1914 to their appearance in 1938, which was the final complete year before Aquitania was withdrawn from the express service to serve in the war. It is not intended to provide an exhaustive analysis of every change, in each passenger class, made during every single refit, as it is beyond the article’s scope to do so. An even more extensive use of images would render the download times intolerable – even for those with a fast internet connection.

Hopefully, the images presented here will be worth the wait.

SECOND AND ‘TOURIST’ CLASS

By the time this deckplan was issued in 1938, a number of changes had been made. Rather than use the expansive deckhouse for passenger staterooms, they had been removed and new public areas substituted. In 1929, Cunard had installed new public rooms to try and attract tourist third class passengers, and the new smoke room was one of the improvements in this area of the ship. Subsequently, the second class designation was removed entirely and tourist class replaced both second and tourist third cabin classes. From 1936, her first class accommodation was termed ‘cabin class’ by the North Atlantic Passenger Conference, and passenger numbers rose as she recovered from the depression in the late 1930s. It is also interesting to note that the staterooms between the two staircases, around the well above the original second class dining saloon, had been enlarged by this time. The deckplan’s colour-coding helped passengers understand each stateroom’s facilities: red designated double bedrooms; green designated single rooms; blue designated ‘rooms with upper and lower berths’ and the dull pink designated ‘rooms with three berths’. Brighter pink designated public rooms. (Author’s Collection.)

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FIRST AND ‘CABIN’ CLASS

Although creased, this deckplan shows the location of the original first class grill room. (The Shipbuilder, 1914/Author’s Collection.)

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