Sentiment for Sale

Last week the President of France and some 2,000 other bigwigs of Paris journeyed to Havre in special trains. There they boarded the 79,000-ton S.S. Normandie, seated themselves in the huge dining salon for a monster party which lasted all night, included entertainment by 170 stage-folk. This week the Normandie makes her maiden voyage to the U.S.

Same day at Southampton another group of people boarded another ship, which in her day had also been a Queen of the Seas. As they gathered round a long table under the dome of the main lounge, they were anything but gay. Most of them were solemn-faced businessmen in sack suits; a few were middle-aged women in fur coats. Like those on the Normandie, they had come for sentimental reasons--to bid for the fittings of R.M.S. Mauretania before that old & honorable ship should make her final journey to the shipbreakers' yards.

This, the eighth day of the auction, marked the last and saddest chapter in the Mauretania's career. Her furniture and paneling of oak, mahogany and walnut, in French, Italian and 18th Century English styles, were disposed of. Now up for sale were such sentimental souvenirs as lifeboats, lifebelts, steering wheel and her name itself. Lifeboats brought $31 to $101 each, the steering wheel $150. The scramble for lifebelts bearing the ship's name puffed the price to $42 each. The siren, which blared the Mauretania's way into port for 22 years as speed champion of the North Atlantic, sold for $252. Also knocked down for handsome prices were the ship's bell, signal flags, navigation instruments.

Biggest bidder was a Guernsey hotelman named Walter Martin. Bidder Martin bought 750 lots, including the contents of the captain's cabin, which cost him $930. But his No. 1 prize was a piece of the port bow bearing the ten metal letters MAURETANIA. For that he gladly paid $750. The letters from the starboard bow sold individually for $20 each. Total realized: $70,000.

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