SS Great Eastern
She also had six masts (said to be named after the days of a week – Monday being the fore mast and Saturday the spanker mast), providing space for of sails (7 gaff and max. 9 (usually 4) square sails), rigged similar to a topsail schooner with a main gaff sail (fore-and-aft sail) on each mast, one "jib" on the fore mast and three square sails on masts no. 2 and no. 3 (Tuesday & Wednesday); for a time mast no. 4 was also fitted with three yards. In later years, some of the yards were removed. According to some sources she would have carried . This amount of canvas is obviously too much for seven fore-and-aft sails and max. 9 square sails. This (larger) figure of sail area lies only a few square metres below that the famous Flying P-Liner "Preußen" carried – with her five full-rigged masts of 30 square sails and a lot of stay sails. Setting sails turned out to be unusable at the same time as the paddles and screw were under steam, because the hot exhaust from the five (later four) funnels would set them on fire. Her maximum speed was 24 km/h (13 knots).
RMS Empress of Britain (1930)
For the latter role her size was kept small enough to use the Panama and Suez canals, though at 760.6 feet (231.84 m) and 42,348 gross tons, she was still large. When passing through Panama, there was only between the ship and the canal lock wall. "Empress of Britain" was powered by four steam turbine engines driving four propellers. The two inboard propellers took two-thirds of the power, the outboard propellers one-third. For cruising two engines were shut down, and the two outboard propellers removed to reduce drag, since speed was not as important on a cruise. With four propellers, her speed during trials was , although her service speed was stated at making her the fastest ship from England to Canada. Running on inner propellers, her speed was measured during trials at . The efficiency of this arrangement became clear in service – for transatlantic service, she consumed 356 tons of oil a day, while on her 1932 cruise, consumption fell to 179.