Matt and Kevin:
Thanks for relaying the quotes from these books, but in perfect candor, I don't think either author (Warren or Preston) really looked into the matter. They simply heard a rumor and repeated it because it was believable. In order to settle the matter, somebody who's making the claim that the upper level of the dining room was in reality an a la carte restaurant has to present evidence from a primary source -- something published/written by Cunard at that time that establishes the presence of an a la carte restaurant. Something I have yet to see after thirty years of research.
Positive evidence would include: an a la carte menu, waiter's pad, receipts, memo, or receipt of ticket deduction, passenger applications to dine in such an establishment, mention of it in correspondence, an advertisement in any of the company's literature or
deck plans for such a restaurant, reference to an outside restaurant staff such as the one on Titanic, internal memoranda for its installation, administration, supply, operation, or repair.
I can only repeat that I have seen hundreds and hundreds of original documents for Lusitania and have never seen even a hint that a separate a la carte restaurant existed. I realize that the lack of such a restaurant put the Lusitania at a disadvantage vis a vis the competition and so did Cunard in 1912. To prove that Cunard realized this, memos survive that explore the possibility of converting the Verandah Cafe on Lusitania and Mauretania into gyms, but the scheme was rejected. I suspect that if Lusitania were at least considered for an a la carte restaurant, this scheme too was probably rejected for the following reasons:
Galley Capacity: The main galley was probably too small to serve two independent restaurants (fixed menu on Upper Deck and a la carte on the Balcony) plus second class aft. Get out your
Olympic Shipbuilders and compare the floor space between the
Olympic's Restaurant and Galley on B Deck -- the two rooms are almost the same size. Lusitania's galley would require at least a 25 to 50% size increase to handle the more elaborate menus.
Serving Pantries: These are the rooms in which the orders are assembled by the waiters for presentation to the diners and dirty dishes taken away and cleaned after the meal. Compare again the size of Lusitania's pantries to Titanic's. Lusitania's small cul-de-sacs must have been a nightmare for the stewards to move in and out of and created major delays in serving time. Premium service out of these little closets would have been impossible and lead to passenger complaints.
Profitability. The seating capacity of the dining balcony was probably too small to justify the cost of its installation and operation.
Bad Will: It is not widely known, but a la carte restaurants were resented by the non-diners in first class. An internal memorandum that discusses the design of the
Queen Mary in the 1920s questions the wisdom of such an establishment on the new ship since the presence of a "first-class, first-class dining room" irked many passengers who were paying premium ticket prices for "ordinary" first-class food.
As a footnote, the Preston description of the Dining Rooms strikes me as too facile to be accurate. My research into food presentation for Cunard suggests that the company was willing to be generous with the quality and quantity of foods offered first class but NEVER to the point of wasteful extravagance. "Generous supply of Caviar on demand" -- yes. Definitely. "Mounds of caviar" just for the empty show -- no. Her mention of "dishes of juicy oysters nestling on beds of crushed ice" shows a 21st century assumption that ice was available in infinite supply. In fact, the ice making capacity for the machinery on Lusitania was pitiful by today's standards. Oysters were kept in a cold locker and served on a chilled plate. There just wasn't enough ice onboard for that kind of show.
Preston gives her game away when she gets to "marble-columned restaurant." Alas, the pillars were carved wood painted in plain white paint. More research and fewer travelog cliches would have been welcome.
If I have come down overly hard of Diane, its simply because writers get carried away and their assumptions take on a life of their own.
Only now, fifty years after "A Night to Remember" came out can we publicly say that
Walter Lord made an innocent goof when he talks about having to sand the name TITANIC off the surviving lifeboats. The lifeboat names were, of course, brass plaques, but just 10 years ago to suggest that Lord was wrong about something was considered a high-heresy. Heated words inevitably followed and the better-class of researchers just kept their mouths shut.
I expect modern authors to be more diligent in their research since they are willing to accept a great deal of money for their books.
But more important, silly: simple errors like these are a vote of "no confidence" against the author. Every researcher makes mistakes and authors have the liability of seeing them committed to eternity because they are printed. Those errors can be most easily forgiven when they are a rare thing in a book. When I see them in clusters, however, they rase the question "if these simple facts are wrong, what else is?"
Bill Sauder
