The Queen Mary

No, folks, the Queen Mary is not docked in Cincinnati. But ten days ago--including last Sunday--I was not in Cincinnati, but in southern California, and that is where the Queen Mary has been docked since it took its 1002nd, and last, sea voyage in 1967. Touring the Queen Mary was one of the highlights of our brief trip to San Pedro, California, which is part of the Port of Los Angeles. We got to the Queen Mary via a short car trip from our hotel in Harbor City (directly north of San Pedro) to Scenic Harbor Drive in Long Beach. Scenic Harbor Drive is not the most scenic harbor drive I have ever taken in my life--we drove through acres of wharves and cargo areas on our way. But stepping onto the Queen Mary was like stepping into another era.

Several eras, in fact. Plans for a ship that would carry people and post between England and the United States began in 1926; construction started in Clydebank, Scotland in 1930 but was halted in December 1931 because of the Depression. Two years later Cunard agreed to a merger with its main competitor. the White Star Line (which had earlier lost the Titanic) and construction resumed. The ship was named Queen Mary and launched in 1934; it took its official inaugural cruise and then its first transatlantic cruise from Southampton to New York in May 1936. For four years it plowed the North Atlantic, carrying luxury passengers to and from the U.S.--see the historic menu collection at the New York Public Library for what they ate! Our tour showed us a "typical" stateroom suite with living room and study and two bathrooms and two bedrooms--one for the maid. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor, we were told, sailed often on the Queen Mary and kept 80 pieces of luggage in their stateroom, with an additional 75 in the cargo hold.

Of course there were also second class and third class passengers on board, and they did not have such luxurious quarters. One westward crossing in 1939 was singled out as carrying several refugees from Germany to the United States, and an uncertain but safer future.  In early 1940 the Queen Mary departed from its usual route and went to Australia for fitting out as a troop ship. During WWII the Queen Mary carried more than 800,000 troops, sleeping in bunks packed horizontally together so tightly that a soldier could not roll over from side to side during his eight-hour-allotment--and then he had to get out for the next shift of soldiers to get eight hours of sleep. In April 1943 Winston Churchill traveled on the Queen Mary to meet President Roosevelt, sharing the ship with 5,000 German POWs being sent to U.S detention camps.

Following the conclusion of the war, nearly 15,000 war brides and their children were transported to the U.S and Canada on the Queen Mary, and in 1947 she began her first post-war peacetime voyage. There recommenced an era of leisurely and, with varying degrees, luxury travel, but in the late 1950s jet travel began to encroach on the dominance of even the fastest ship on the ocean. In May 1967 Cunard announced that the Queen Mary would be retired and sold, and in July the offer of $3.45 million from the city of Long Beach was accepted.

On September 22, 1967 the Queen Mary left New York for her final transatlantic crossing. I was there. There was excitement and wonder in the air as we looked down the harbor to the berth where the Queen Mary was docked. Sadly, I was not appropriately impressed by the occasion; I was on my own first transatlantic voyage, leaving on the S.S. United States to spend a college year in London.

Queen Mary Shuffleboard Court

In Long Beach we wandered through part of the ship with self-guiding audio players and then assembled for a group tour with a live--and very lively--guide. After the tour we had a light bite to eat at the café on the Promenade deck, reminiscing about earlier cruises we had each taken separately, and then finished off with the specialty Queen Mary banana split.  More touring over Sun and Sports decks.

I had been thinking about the Queen Mary experience, and then this morning, CBS's Sunday Morning featured a piece on the ship, and it reminded me again especially of its wartime history. You can see that at http://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-salute-to-the-queen-mary/.