Above: Majestic lived up to her name. The White Star Line were proud to operate the largest liner in the world. (Author’s Collection.)

Majestic’s reign as the world’s largest ship lasted from her maiden voyage in 1922 until Normandie’s appearance in 1935, if we count the title for the largest ship in service. Her size can be appreciated in her technical measurements and capacities. For instance, the space deducted from her gross tonnage figure to ascertain the net tonnage figure is almost equal to Mauretania’s entire gross tonnage when she entered service as the largest ship in the world back in 1907; and even then Majestic’s net tonnage was greater than Adriatic’s gross tonnage in 1907. Quite simply, Majestic had a greater gross tonnage than Adriatic and Mauretania combined. Although, like Olympic, she had been designed primarily for comfort and luxury rather than speed, by 1925 Majestic’s recorded speed left no doubt that she was also very fast. Her fastest eastbound crossing averaged 25 knots, while her best day’s run up to that time came closer to 26 knots.

The specifications in this file were recorded prior to the 1928 refit, as the gross tonnage and net tonnage figures were subsequently amended by hand. However, the vast majority of the information is applicable to Majestic right up to 1936, by which time she had surpassed two hundred round trips to New York. Oddly enough, the á la carte restaurant’s 133 seats are sometimes omitted from documents counting the ‘saloon seats’ in first class. The fact that this was an extra-tarriff facility seems irrelevant, since Olympic’s á la carte restaurant was usually included in her specifications.

Some dimensions will vary from other sources, due to different methods of measurement. For example, the length between perpendiculars was given on Majestic’s Certificate of Registry as 915 feet 5 inches, rather than the 912 feet seen here, and to complicate matters slightly her British Register entry from 1922 gave it as 915 feet 6 inches (as reproduced in RMS Majestic: The ‘Magic Stick’, page 89). Her ‘length on deck’ according to Lloyd’s 1885 rules was given as 913 feet 6 inches. Many variations stemmed from different methods of measurement, or rounding, and further explanation of these methods can be found at Dave Gittins’ website. Similarly, some secondary sources might give the ship’s breadth as 100 feet or 100 feet 6 inches depending on whether they use the moulded or extreme breadth. One White Star Line brochure rounded it up to 101 feet. Her overall length has been given between 956 feet and 954 feet 6 inches, as well, depending on the sources used. The dramatic variations evident in some of the different methods of measurement are evident from the competition between Leviathan and Majestic in the 1920s, as they competed for the title of the ‘world’s largest ship’. The fact of the matter was that under any comparable measurement, Majestic was the larger of the two, yet Leviathan’s owners tried to claim the title for their ship based on her American-based gross tonnage.