RMS Queen Mary
RMS Queen Mary is a historical retired British ocean liner that operated primarily on the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967 for the Cunard Line. It is currently a hotel, museum, and convention space in Long Beach, California, United States. It is on the US National Register of Historic Places and member of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Built by John Brown & Company in Clydebank, Scotland, she was subsequently joined by in Cunard's two-ship weekly express service between Southampton, Cherbourg and New York. These "Queens" were the British response to the express superliners built by German, Italian, and French companies in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Queen Mary sailed on her maiden voyage on 27 May 1936 and won the Blue Riband that August; she lost the title to in 1937 and recaptured it in 1938, holding it until 1952, when the new claimed it. With the outbreak of World War II, she was converted into a troopship and ferried Allied soldiers during the conflict. On one voyage in 1943, she carried over 16,600 people, still the record for the most people on one vessel at the same time.
Following the war, Queen Mary returned to passenger service and, along with Queen Elizabeth, commenced the two-ship transatlantic passenger service for which the two ships were initially built. The pair dominated the transatlantic passenger transportation market until the dawn of the jet age in the late 1950s. By the mid-1960s, Queen Mary was ageing and operating at a loss.
After several years of decreased profits, Cunard officially retired the Queen Mary from service in 1967. Bought by the City of Long Beach to function as a restaurant, museum, and hotel, she left Southampton for the last time on 31 October 1967 and sailed to the Port of Long Beach where she was permanently moored. After undergoing extensive refurbishment and modifications, Queen Mary opened to the public in 1971 and has remained operational since.
Construction and naming
With Weimar Germany launching and into service, the United Kingdom and its shipping companies did not want to be left behind in the shipbuilding race. White Star Line, Cunard's chief British rival, began construction on the 80,000-ton Oceanic in 1928, while Cunard planned a 75,000-ton unnamed ship. Cunard's Chief Naval Architect, George Mcleod Paterson, was the principal designer.Construction on the ship, then known only as "Hull Number 534", began in December 1930 on the River Clyde by the John Brown & Company shipyard at Clydebank in Scotland. John Brown assisted in the design and construction of the vessel, which was his first major project in the shipyard. Work halted in December 1931 due to the Great Depression and Cunard applied to the British Government for a loan to complete 534. The Government granted the loan, providing enough money to complete the unfinished ship, and also to build a running mate to provide a two ship weekly service to New York.
One condition of the loan was that Cunard merge its operations with the White Star Line, which was also struggling due to the depression and had cancelled construction of its Oceanic. Both lines agreed to the merger, and, on 10 May 1934, the companies created a third company, Cunard-White Star Line, to manage their newly combined fleet. Work on 534 resumed immediately with a launch scheduled for 1934. Prior to the ship's launch, the River Clyde had to be specifically deepened and widened to cope with her size, undertaken by the engineer D. Alan Stevenson.
On 26 September 1934, Her Majesty Queen Mary launched Hull 534 as RMS Queen Mary. Eighteen drag chains slowed the ship down the slipway, which checked the liner's progress into the River Clyde. The ship was named after Mary of Teck. Until her launch, the name was a closely guarded secret. Cunard intended to name the ship Victoria, in keeping with company tradition of giving its ships names ending in "ia", but when company representatives asked King George V's permission to name the ocean liner after Britain's "greatest queen", he said his wife, Mary, would be delighted. Accordingly, the delegation had no other choice but to report that 534 would be called Queen Mary. The name had already been given to the Clyde turbine steamer, so Cunard made an arrangement with its owners and this older ship was renamed Queen Mary II.
Following her launch, workers began fitting out the Queen Mary. She received 24 Yarrow boilers in four boiler rooms and four Parsons turbines in two engine rooms. The boilers delivered 400 pounds per square inch steam at 700 °F, which provided a maximum of to four propellers, each turning at 200 RPM.
Workers completed most of Queen Mary's work by March 1936 and she left Clydebank for her sea trials. During those trials, she achieved a speed of 32.84 knots. She then prepared for her maiden voyage. The LOA Queen Mary measured, making her the world's largest passenger ship. Her rival, was LOA, but only measured 79,280 GRT. However, CGT later modified the Normandie to increase her size to 83,243 GRT, reclaiming the title of world's largest passenger ship. Completion of Queen Mary ultimately took years and cost 3.5 million pounds sterling, then equal to $17.5 million.
Pre-World War II
Commanded by Sir Edgar Britten, Queen Mary sailed on her maiden voyage from Southampton on 27 May 1936. She sailed at high speed for most of her maiden voyage to New York until heavy fog forced a reduction of speed on the final day of the crossing, arriving in New York Harbor on 1 June 1936.Queen Mary design received criticism for being too traditional, especially when Normandie hull was revolutionary with a clipper-shaped, streamlined bow. Except for her cruiser stern, she seemed to be an enlarged version of her Cunard predecessors from the pre-First World War era. Her interior design, while mostly Art Deco, seemed restrained and conservative when compared to the ultramodern French liner. Nonetheless Queen Mary proved to be the more popular vessel than her rival, in terms of passengers carried.
In August 1936, Queen Mary captured the Blue Riband from Normandie, with average speeds of westbound and eastbound. In 1937, Normandie received a new set of propellers and reclaimed the Blue Riband. However, in 1938, under the command of Robert B. Irving, Queen Mary took back the Blue Riband in both directions, with average speeds of westbound and eastbound, records which stood until lost to in 1952.
Interior
of Messrs, Mewes and Davis, and Benjamin Wistar Morris designed the Queen Mary's interior spaces. The Bromsgrove Guild constructed much of the ship's interior, while H.H. Martyn & Co. built the staircases, foyers, and entrances. Among the facilities available on board Queen Mary, the liner featured two indoor swimming pools, beauty salons, libraries and children's nurseries for all three classes, a music studio, a lecture hall, telephone connectivity to anywhere in the world, outdoor paddle tennis courts, and dog kennels. The largest room on board was the cabin class main dining room, spanning three stories in height and anchored by wide columns. The ship had many air-conditioned public rooms on board. The cabin-class swimming pool facility spanned over two decks in height. This was the first ocean liner to be equipped with her own Jewish prayer roompart of a policy to show that British shipping lines avoided the antisemitism evident in Nazi Germany.The cabin class main dining room featured a large map of the transatlantic crossing, with twin tracks symbolising the winter/spring route and the summer/autumn route. During each crossing, a small motorised model of Queen Mary would travel along the mural to indicate the vessel's progress en route.
As an alternative to the main dining room, Queen Mary featured a separate cabin class Verandah Grill on the Sun Deck at the upper aft of the ship. The Verandah Grill was an exclusive à la carte restaurant with a capacity of approximately eighty passengers and converted to the Starlight Club at night. It was designed and painted by Doris Zinkeisen and Cecil Beaton described it as "By far the prettiest room on any ship". Also on board was the Observation Bar, an Art Deco-styled lounge with wide ocean views.
Woods from different regions of the British Empire were used in her public rooms and staterooms. Accommodation ranged from fully equipped, luxurious cabin class staterooms to modest and cramped third-class cabins. Artists commissioned by Cunard in 1933 for works of art in the interior include Edward Wadsworth and A. Duncan Carse,
as well as Algernon Newton RA whose painting Evening on the Avon hung opposite Bertram Nicholls' Sussex in the Long Gallery.
World War II
In late August 1939, Queen Mary was on a return run from New York to Southampton. The international situation led to her being escorted by the battlecruiser. She arrived safely and set out again for New York on 1 September. By the time she arrived, war had been declared and she was ordered to remain in port alongside Normandie until further notice.In March 1940, Queen Mary and Normandie were joined in New York by Queen Mary new running mate, fresh from her secret voyage from Clydebank. The three largest liners in the world sat idle for approximately two weeks when Queen Mary left for Sydney, Australia. Once there, along with several other liners, was converted into a troopship to carry Australian and New Zealand soldiers to the United Kingdom.
In the conversion, the ship's hull, superstructure, and funnels were painted navy grey. As a result of her new colour, and in combination with her great speed, she became known as the "Grey Ghost". To protect against magnetic mines, a degaussing coil was fitted around the outside of the hull. Inside, stateroom furniture and decoration were removed and replaced with triple-tiered wooden bunks, which were later replaced by "standee" bunks.
A total of of carpet, 220 cases of china, crystal and silver services, tapestries, and paintings were removed and stored in warehouses for the duration of the war. The woodwork in the staterooms, the cabin-class dining room, and other public areas were covered with leather.
Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were the largest and fastest troopships involved in the war, often carrying as many as 15,000 men in a single voyage, and often travelling out of convoy and without escort. The Queens' high speed and zigzag courses made it virtually impossible for U-boats to catch them, although one attempted to attack the ship. On 25 May 1944, U-853 spotted Queen Mary and submerged to attack, but the ship outran the U-boat before it could do so. Because of their importance to the war effort, Adolf Hitler offered a bounty of 1 million Reichsmarks and Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross, Germany's highest military honour, to any U-boat captain that sank either ship.
On 2 October 1942, Queen Mary accidentally sank one of her escort ships, slicing through the light cruiser off the Irish coast with a loss of 338 lives. Queen Mary was carrying thousands of Americans of the 29th Infantry Division to join the Allied forces in Europe. Due to the risk of U-boat attacks, Queen Mary was under orders not to stop under any circumstances and steamed onward with a fractured stem. Some sources claim that hours later, the convoy's lead escort, consisting of and one other ship, returned to rescue 99 survivors of Curacoa crew of 437, including her captain John W. Boutwood. This claim is contradicted by the liner's then Staff Captain Harry Grattidge, who recorded that Queen Mary Captain, Gordon Illingsworth, immediately ordered the accompanying destroyers to look for survivors within moments of Curacoa sinking.
Later that year, from 8–14 December 1942, Queen Mary carried 10,389 soldiers and 950 crew. During this trip, on 11 December, while from Scotland during a gale, she was suddenly broadsided on her starboard side by a rogue wave that might have reached a height of. An account of this crossing can be found in Carter's book. As quoted in the book, Carter's father, Dr. Norval Carter, part of the 110th Station Hospital on board at the time, wrote in a letter that at one point Queen Mary "damned near capsized... One moment the top deck was at its usual height and then, swoom! Down, over, and forward she would pitch." It was calculated later that the ship rolled 52 degrees, and would have capsized had she rolled another three degrees.
From 25 to 30 July 1943, Queen Mary carried 15,740 soldiers and 943 crew, a standing record for the most passengers ever transported on one vessel. This was only possible in summer as passengers had to sleep on deck.
During the war, Queen Mary carried British Prime Minister Winston Churchill across the Atlantic three times for meetings with fellow Allied forces officials. He was listed on the passenger manifests as "Colonel Warden". On one crossing in 1943, Churchill and his staff planned the Normandy Invasion and he signed the D-Day Declaration aboard. Churchill later stated that the Queens, "challenged the fury of Hitlerism in the battle of the Atlantic. Without their aid, the day of final victory must unquestionably have been postponed." By the war's end, Queen Mary had carried over 800,000 troops and travelled over 600,000 miles across the world's oceans.