to convince British shipbuilders to use the hull design he had developed in Russia for the project of , claiming it would be equivalent to a power boost of 1/6, but his idea was rejected. Only six years later did he get the opportunity to work based on his qualifications. He was employed by the large shipbuilding company Penhoët, which soon afterward was commissioned to design and construct a massive new transatlantic liner called the . Yourkevitch decided to design the body plan of the ship independently, which played a very significant role in his future life. Work on the project started in 1929. To prove the superiority of his ideas, Yourkevitch believed he had to work until late at night. "He created his work in primitive, refugee-style surroundings, where the drawing board was the most sacred object. On the walls, on the floor and on the desks there were volumes of correspondence, tables, diagrams…" remembered one of Yourkevitch's friends. After more than five years of labor, calculations and checking, the project was adopted. "I had to sustain a long fight: the forms I suggested were so different from the ones that were generally accepted, that I had to argue in their favour to the end. It cost me a lot of emotions," Yourkevitch later confessed. The testing, which started first in Paris and then continued in Hamburg, proved the superiority of Yourkevitch's model. It was the fastest of 25 models that had been proposed, mainly by French specialists. Many were struck by the novelty of its hull, which combined a bulbous bow with the Clipper-style of the top of the hull. With France initially unaffected by the Great Depression, Compagnie Générale Transatlantique ("CGT" or "The French Line") started the construction of what would become the Normandie in 1931, and she was launched in 1932. But as the Depression reduced demand for transatlantic travel, CGT slowed her fitting-out, and she did not enter service for two and a half years. On her maiden voyage in May 1935 from Le Havre to New York City, she crossed from the Bishop Rock to Ambrose Light in four days, three hours, and five minutes at an average speed of almost 30 knots, bettering the previous record by over a knot, and earning Normandie the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing. She later lost it to , and then took it back before losing