Free Voyagers of the Titanic by Richard Davenport-Hines

over five decks: the promenade deck (A), bridge deck (B), shelter deck (C), saloon deck (D), and upper deck (E). Two grand staircases, three electric elevators, and sundry stairways provided access to the different decks. The expanse of decks amidships ran for almost two-thirds of the total length of the ship. With the exception of the officers’ quarters on the boat deck, the second-class smoking room at the after end of B deck, and the second-class library and third-class lounge and smoking room on C deck, most of this superstructure was dedicated to the needs of first-class passengers. In first class everything seemed spacious: the public rooms were vast, the corridors were wide and high, the stairs and landings were broad; nothing was cramped or mean. “She has everything but taxi-cabs and theatres: Table d’Hôte, Restaurant à la Carte, Gymnasium, Turkish Baths, Squash Court, Palm Gardens, smoking-rooms for ‘Ladies and Gents’, intended I fancy to keep the women out of the men’s smoking-room which they infest in the German and French steamers”—so wrote Frank Millet, an American on the maiden voyage, who was reminded of the Jacobean interior of the Duke of Rutland’s seat, Haddon Hall. “As for the rooms they are larger than the ordinary hotel room, and much more luxurious with wooden bedsteads, dressing-tables, hot and cold water, etc., electric fans, electric heater. The suites with their damask hangings and mahogany oak furniture are really very sumptuous.” 12
    In addition to the first-class public rooms listed by Millet there were a dining saloon, lounge, reading and writing room, lending library, veranda café, barber shop, photographers’ dark room, and clothes-pressing room. There was a lounge for the first-class ladies’ maids and gentlemen’s valets. There were quarters for first-class dogs. The Titanic included the first swimming pool to be installed on board a ship. Instead of a crude sick bay, its medical facilities included an operating theater. White Star had been at the forefront since the 1890s in raising standards for second- and third-class transatlantic passengers. On the Titanic the public saloons on the lower decks were spacious, welcoming, and spic-and-span, creating a festive holiday mood, while the berths were as airy, hygienic, and agreeable as Andrews’ team of designers could devise. The ship’s power plant supplied electricity for evaporation and refrigeration, four passenger elevators, a telephone system, the Marconi wireless station, hundreds of heaters, eight electric cargo cranes, electric pumps, motors, and winches.
    The interiors were a medley of styles that were intended to give an eclectic rather than bastardized effect. “You may sleep in a bed depicting one ruler’s fancy, breakfast under another dynasty altogether, lunch under a different flag and furniture scheme, play cards, smoke or indulge in music under three other monarchs, have your afternoon tea in a veranda which is modern and cosmopolitan, . . . [and dinner] in imperial style,” one publicist wrote approvingly. 13 The first-class suites had beds rather than berths, telephones, and (instead of round portholes) panoramic windows that looked out over the blue sea like the windows of a cliff-top castle. Instead of stoves or radiators, there were open grates in which coal fires burned brightly. The suites had varied styles: Second Empire, Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI, Tudor, Early Dutch, Old Dutch, Adams, Hepplewhite, Regency, Italian Renaissance, Georgian, Colonial, Jacobean, and Queen Anne.
    The sixty-foot-high main staircase was supposedly in William and Mary style, but Frenchified à la Louis XIV, with ironwork relieved by bronze flowers and foliage. Atop the staircase was a large dome of iron and glass, beneath which, on the uppermost landing, there was a carved panel containing a clock flanked by bronze female figures representing Honor and Glory crowning Time. The first-class dining saloon