Lu had wanted to hold his press conference on the Pride of America. But the engine-room explosions had blown away plates below the waterline, settling the liner to top-deck level in the water, and the harbour surveyors forbade the meeting as too dangerous. Instead the ship-owner led a small flotilla of boats out to the still smoking, blackened hull, wheeling around and around in constant focus for the cameras, the customary silk suit concealed beneath protective oilskins and the hard-hat defiantly inscribed ‘The University of Freedom’. John Lu was by his side.

The millionaire waited four days after the fire for the maximum number of journalists to gather and then took over the main conference room in the Mandarin Hotel to accommodate them. He entered still carrying the hat and put it down on the table so that the title would show in any photographs.

He was more impatient than at previous conferences, striding up and down the specially installed platform, calling almost angrily into the microphone for the room to settle.

Finally, disregarding the noise, he began to talk.

‘Not a fortnight ago,’ he said, ‘I welcomed many of you aboard that destroyed liner out there…’

He swept his hand towards the windows, through which the outline of the ship was visible.

‘And I announced the purpose to which I was going to put it.’

The room was quiet now, the only movement from radio reporters adjusting their sound levels properly to record what Lu was saying.

‘This morning,’ he started again, ‘you have accompanied me into the harbour to see what remains of a once beautiful and proud liner…’

He turned to the table, taking a sheet of paper from a waiting aide.