"Edwardian" Splendour

The P&O Steam Navigation Company's S.S. Persia was one of a class of five identical steamships: India, China, Arabia and Egypt. They each carried 320 passengers in First Class and 160 in Second.

Thomas Edward Collcutt, an architect of the Arts and Crafts Movement, was born in Oxford on 16th March 1840 and devoted a lifetime to creating buildings and interiors that were widely recognised for their richness in style, finishes and furnishings.

Thomas Collcutt's interior design for the five ships of the Egypt class followed the same basic layout, which emulated the deck plan of the Oceanic, with six decks in total. The first to be launched, the SS India, was built by Caird & Co. of Greenock and was 7,911 gross tons, over 3,000 more than the Kaiser-i-Hind. It was 500 feet in length and 54 feet in width, and could accommodate 314 passengers in first saloon class and 212 in second. The first class passengers were situated amidships, and the second class accommodation was placed towards the front of the ship. The interiors were decorated to Collcutt's designs by a specialist firm; in the case of the Egypt it was George Jackson Ltd, with the shipbuilders' Caird & Co.'s carpenters. The first class dining room of the Egypt was in fashionable taste and bears striking similarity to London's Holborn Restaurant.

It seems the tiles on many of the ships of the Egypt Class were designed by the famed ceramicist, William Frend de Morgan (1839-1917). Below is a ceramic tile from one of his P&O commissions.