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Wasn’t this the worst possible time to build the world’s most luxurious liner to date? When people were threatened to lose their home, they did not dream of travelling the world.

When Wall Street was crumbling to smithereens, headlines no longer busied themselves with the new speed-record on the transatlantic route. When people met in the streets, they spoke of bread, not ships. Times changed, topics changed, headlines changed. The foundation of the middle class was wiped out and the working class all but perished in the mass hunger. The New York stock market crashed in October 1929 and the global economic crisis gripped the world by its throat. In 1928, the French shipping company Compagnie Générale Transatlantique decided to build a new super ocean liner, the likes of which the world had never seen before. Names, such as White Star’s Olympic and Cunard’s Mauretania were the stuff of legends in their heyday, but when the roaring 20’s were uttering their final roars, times called for a new generation of modern ocean liners to replace the now dated ships on the North Atlantic route.