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Those cabins got Cantor's closest attention. They
are where the passenger lives, he feels, and they
should be as much like home, with a fillip of ad
venture, as modern design and budgetary limits can
make them. The flexible plan he worked out with
Yourkevitch can be adjusted or modified when con
struction gets under way, but for now it lists 2,000
two-passenger staterooms, 100 singles, 300 triples,
and 350 for four persons each. Along with air-conditioning
controls, private closed-circuit television,
decor of bright eye-pleasing colors and light woods,
and room to relax, every cabin on the world's largest,
fastest steamships will have its own bathroom, com
plete with stall shower.
Yourkevitch warmed to Cantor's bid for youth
groups and family trade, but privately won
dered whether such handsome quarters might
run away with the cost factor. He needn't have.
From his sleeve, Cantor drew an ace. During his
many years of hotel operation, the New York tycoon
watched a trend in transient hotels that finally
erupted after World War II into the motel boom.
Many of the 58,000 motels that now blanket the U.S.,
Cantor knew, built their more than 1,000,000 rooms
via the prefab route. Some hotels did the same thing.
Why not do it with the superliners?
Cantor went to the Pullman Company to find out.
Executives there assured him it would be no prob
lem. When each of the twin mammoth bottoms is
ready to receive them, Cantor's thousands of prefab
staterooms all fixtured, decorated, draped, rugged,
and furnished will be trucked to the yard, hooked
up with lines already installed in the hull and bolted
into place. Cost: a small fraction of what it takes to
outfit luxury liners half the size by today's pains
taking hand and piecework methods.
Will all those cabins leave room for much else in
Cantor's superliners? Yes. For one thing: a cafe
teria. A large kitchen at the center of each ship will
serve 1,500 people at a clip there, and another 1,000
in a formal dining room. In addition there will be
two self-service canteens on each deck, and four
bars and cocktail lounges. Since food will be an
extra item over and above the $50 fare, Cantor has
made these arrangements so that his clientele can
eat well at a top figure of $4 per person per day, or
$16 maximum for the entire voyage.
But that's only a start Each ship will also have:
two indoor swimming pools and another outdoor
one; a 'skating rink; two theaters; outdoor sports
equipment; a concert hall; and facilities for religious
services. There will be shopping centers with mer
chandise from both sides of the Atlantic for sale at
economy prices. A convention hall for business
groups will have a capacity of 4,000; rollaway doors
will permit partitioning it for smaller gatherings
and conferences.
The top deck of each liner will have a clear space
of 450 feet by 80 feet, to the rear of the smokestack,
for outdoor sports and sunbathing. Under it will be a
double-decked, glassed-in aircraft-hangar space,
which in peacetime will be the convention hall
described above. In time of war both ships with 20
airtight compartments apiece to make them as un
suitable as possible can be converted within three
days to aircraft carriers or division-strength troop
ships. No costly major renovations would be
necessary for the conversion.
fANTOR is determined that every passenger who
boards the Peace or the Good Will shall
enjoy the utmost safety that scientific ingenu
ity can offer. Besides radar, fathometers, ship-to-shore
radio and similar electronic safety devices,
each ship will carry standard lifeboats to accommo
date all 7,350 persons aboard, plus life jackets for
everyone. In each lifeboat there will also be two
extra inflatable lifeboats of Swedish design which
have been tested as even safer than wooden lifeboats
and can take care of all hands should the original
double-enders broach and swamp or otherwise meet
disaster in heavy seas. Each wooden lifeboat and
each of its auxiliary inflatables which blow up in
stantly with a twist of an attached metal bottle of
carbon dioxide gas carries a week's supply of
rations, water, flares, and drugs.
Cantor has set up a Carter Hotels subsidiary called
Sea Coach to operate the superliners and is already
planning low-cost, two-week vacation packages.
All-expense tours can be arranged for as little as
$330. If he desires, the tourist need lay out only $30
in cash. The rest he can pay off in 10 monthly
installments.
While the 56-year-old Cantor is a ball of fire on
every other aspect of his superliners, he is conserva
tive about accepting reservations until the keels are
laid and the ships abuilding. The bookkeeping head
ache is part of it Legal problems are another.
Probably a sense of playing hard-to-get enters in.
In any case, the Dutch Travel Verein has happily
ignored Cantor's ban on reservations and offered
him a fat cash deposit to tie up thousands of cabins
for its members for three years from the date of
first sailing of the big ships.
Cantor says Adm. John Will, head of the Navy's
Military Sea Transportation Service in Washington,
is so keen about the saving the superliners would
mean to the Government in its world-wide transfers
of personnel that the admiral is guaranteeing Sea
Coach 150,000 passengers a year.
One offer among many of a kind that particularly
pleases Cantor is his assurance from Youth Hostels
that it will implement its international travel pro
grams with up to 200,000 bookings on his superliners
each year. He realizes that among the millions of
Americans who would love to travel in Europe, but
till now could not afford it, students and young
people have always ranked high.
For a start, the 95-percent-untapped transatlantic
tourist market will find his twin superliners operat
ing between Boston and Zeebrugge, Belgium. One
reason: Boston has superb port facilities that are far
less jammed than New York's. Another reason:
Boston is 174 miles nearer to Europe. As for Zee
brugge, it is a roomy, good-weather port with un
cluttered access to the Continent in every direction.
Eventually, with port improvements, which the
"cafeteria ships" themselves may bring about, New
York will probably become an alternative destina
tion. Within his lifetime, Cantor expects to extend
his superliner service to South America and the
Pacific "isles of Paradise."
But right now he faces some interesting snags. As
far as building the ships and putting them into serv
ice is concerned, Cantor is confident of succeeding.
What troubles him is getting it done the right way.
In Cantor's book, that means seeing to it that his
marine giants sail under the Stars and Stripes in
stead of some foreign flag.
How could that happen? Very easily. Yourkevitch
estimates that it will cost $135,000,000 to build each
superliner. For decades now the law has empowered
the Federal Maritime Board of our Maritime Ad
ministration in Washington to subsidize ship con
struction. Cantor's vast project unfortunately goes
beyond the law's scope, but it is so obviously worth
while for millions of ordinary American citizens, so
fraught with prestige for our badly lagging position
as a first-class merchant marine power, and of such
Family Weekly, Novrmbtr 30, 195J
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