Cunard Deputy Chairman Lord Mancroft was keen to install a Stock Exchange on Q4, but this was dropped in view of the many technical and professional difficulties it posed.
Cunard’s Berengaria was the first liner to have a Stock Exchange facility when, in 1928, Michael Meehan, who had a commission brokerage business with headquarters in New York and branch offices across the United States, approached Cunard about running a floating exchange on Berengaria. RCA organised the technical side of the communications needed, and on 25 July 1929 the New York Stock Exchange gave its approval with the office opening onboard Berengaria when she left New York for Southampton on Thursday 8 August 1929 operating from what had been stateroom 89, on the Promenade Deck between the Lounge and Ladies Salon. RCA installed a 500-watt radio transmitter / receiver in a room adjacent to the ships’ main radio installation. The communication headquarters was at Tuckerton in New Jersey with a support station at Chatham, on Cape Cod. Michael Meehan paid the wages of two Cunard wireless operators which gave him exclusive us of their time whenever the brokerage was open with one operator receiving incoming quotations while the other transmitted buy and sell orders with marked up shares being written on the blackboard fitted at one end of the office.
