The RMS Queen Mary is sometimes written off as a cruise ship of a bygone era,
a relic of the past that holds no value. Those who admire the artifacts and locations left behind
from the second world war often focus on either the great power, engineering, or the tragedy
that are associated with these treasures of time. It is these coveted characteristics that are
The Queen Mary didn’t carry the biggest guns, or fight in the toughest naval battles…she
didn’t sink and experience great loss of life aboard her decks, nor did she pursue enemy vessels
and strike them down with her sharp bow stem. And so when the admirers of the Queen Mary argue that
she is an important and relevant vessel of our war time heritage, the naysayers scoff,
and compare her to an over-sized ferry boat of the war, or worse…the American naysayers
claim this British ship has little to do with our American wartime heritage...and
again, they couldn’t be more wrong. In this three-part series, we will discuss this mighty
ship’s involvement in the war, the fantastic stories of events that took place aboard the ship,
what it was like to be a military serviceman being transported on the Queen Mary, and lastly,
the ship’s wartime legacy. The hope is that by the time you finish this three-part series,
you’ll see not only just how important the Queen Mary is to our American heritage,
but also as a wartime artifact of great importance to people around the world.
The Royal Mail Ship Queen Mary was built in John Brown Shipyards in Clydebank,
Scotland starting in the year 1930. She was commissioned by the Cunard Steamship Line and
intended to be part of a weekly transatlantic service alongside her younger runningmate
RMS Queen Elizabeth. The great depression had caused a major set-back in construction
and it wasn’t until Cunard was forced to merge with their rival White Star Line,
that there was government funding to complete the ship and start work on the second one.
The British government granted the loans necessary to finish the two ships because they would be
built to strict British Admiralty standards for use in war time, should the situation ever arise.
Indeed, growing tensions in Europe due to the increasing control of Adolf Hitler and
the Nazi party, led to a turning point where war could break out at any time. Millions of people
fled the occupying forces, the largest group of refugees was Europe’s population of jews.
The fastest and easiest way to get across the Atlantic to countries like Canada and the United States,
was by transatlantic ocean liner such as the RMS Queen Mary. She was a ship with a maximum capacity
of roughly 3,000 persons, but due to the sheer number of people trying to escape the continent,
Cunard threw out their comfortable capacity limit in order to accommodate as many
refugees as possible. Sometimes carrying upwards of 4,000 innocent civilians.
On August 30th, 1939, the Queen Mary set sail from Southampton, destined for New York, stopping off
at Cherbourg, France to pickup passengers. Though this was her typical voyage ritual,
the normal gaiety and warm atmosphere of the ship, was replaced with a somber and cold reminder that
danger loomed over them. When the Mary left the harbor of Cherbourg on her way to New York,
she was carrying nearly 5,000 people aboard. Wealthy businessman J.P. Morgan Jr. offered his
own stateroom to a family sleeping in the hallway, in order to help make them more comfortable.
Just a day away from New York, on September 3rd, everyone aboard had gathered around
the ship’s various radios and intercoms to hear British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
declare war on Germany. Earlier that day, German U-boats sank the SS Athenia,
and so the passengers of the Queen Mary knew they were now a moving target. Commodore Robert Irving
requested to speak privately with a celebrity passenger on the ship, asking him if he wouldn’t
mind performing for his fellow passengers to help take their mind off of the heavy atmosphere.
The celebrity happily obliged, that man, was comedian Bob Hope, and after performing his
routine for first class passengers, he then repeated it for second and third class.
Having a brief moment of levity, helped to ease the sting of worry and dread that everyone undoubtedly felt.
On September 5th, the Queen Mary slipped quietly up the Hudson River to her dock at Pier 90,
while normally she was greeted with cheers of pride from crowds of locals, this time she was
cheered with tears of relief that New York’s favorite ocean liner returned in one peace.
The Mary was ordered to stay in New York, since at the time, the United States was a neutral country,
and unlike the docks at Southampton, the Queen Mary wouldn’t be bombed and sunk if she stayed
put in American waters. Most the ship’s crew enlisted in the war effort and were sent back,
but a skeleton crew had to stay behind the keep the Queen Mary maintained during
her months of inactivity. Very soon work began to paint the entire hull a dull grey.
With great surprise another superliner steamed up next to her on March 7th, 1940, it was her younger runningmate,
Queen Elizabeth, recently finished with construction, and an unexpected guest.
The Queen Elizabeth was in Scotland, her fitting-out process mostly complete, and she
was awaiting orders to sail to Southampton for her sea trials. When she received the orders,
they said with all confidentiality that the Captain was instead to make a break for New
York in an attempt to get past the German U-boats off the coast. You see, even Hitler knew that the
two Queens were a threat, they were the largest, fastest ships in the world, and so, on the day the
Queen Elizabeth was due to arrive in Southampton, a brigade of U-boats was awaiting her arrival…
but the Queen never showed up to the party, she was already halfway to the United States.
And there she surprised the world when she suddenly docked alongside her elder runningmate.
For a moment, Cunard’s two Queens rested next to their rival Normandie…together these
three mighty vessels, the largest and fastest liners in the world, would never meet again.
The crew of the Queen Mary received their orders from the offices of the British Admiralty,
confidential orders meant only for the Captain. Without publicity, the most valuable artwork,
china, silverware, carpeting, and decorations were removed from the ship and put in storage on the Pier.
Then on March 21st 1940, The Queen Mary slipped down the Hudson
making a sharp southward turn as she went out to sea, avoiding the U-boats off the coast.
She was on her way for war conversion in Singapore, stopping for fuel in Trinidad,
Capetown, and Trincomalee, before finally arriving in Singapore where she was converted to a troopship.
Much of her furniture was removed, and new equipment was added
such as 12 rocket launchers, 33 anti-aircraft guns, and extra wooden lifeboats, in addition to her 24 larger steel lifeboats.
They installed a degaussing strip along her hull which
neutralized the ship’s magnetic field, making her less likely to trigger an underwater mine.
The Queen was then refloated and sent straight to Sydney, Australia. There she underwent fitting out
for war, this meant installing thousands of folding bunk beds, covering the ship’s most
valuable wall paneling with protective leather, turning the ship’s ballroom into a hospital ward,
converting her two swimming pools into dormitories, refitting the exclusive
Verandah Grill into a naval war office and installing a radar tower above the ship’s bridge.
On May 4th, 1940 the Queen Mary left Sydney loaded up with 5,000 Aussie troops. She was part of a
convoy being led out to sea by an escort from the Royal Australian Navy, once in open water though,
the Queen Mary, loaded with the most troops out of the convoy was on strict orders to sail at
full speed on a zig-zag course to Scotland. Throughout the War, Queen Mary’s biggest
defense against enemy ships was her speed, combine that with the zig-zag course she took,
and with her grey-painted hull, it made her well camouflaged and could she sail in and
out of enemy range so quickly, they would have never have a chance to hit her with torpedoes.
The zig-zag course was always pre-determined, it was designed to make it impossible for
enemy forces to calculate the predicted path or even the destination the ship was en-route to.
While many troopships relied on fast escort ships for protection,
the Queen Mary could often outrun her own escorts, which is why they only sailed
far enough to see her pickup speed in open water, before turning back.
Because she was often working solo in the open ocean, she was under strict orders to never stop for anything.
If she were to stop, she would be a sitting duck, putting the thousands of men onboard in danger.
In the beginning years of the war, her main job was to shuttle troops from Australia to
either Scotland to drop off the men to protect the British homeland, or to shuttle them to the battle
happening at the Suez Canal, Britain’s lifeline to their extended empire in India.
However, as the battle at Suez continued, it became too dangerous to bring the Queen Mary through the Red Sea,
so her final two voyages of that battle, were to drop the men off at Bombay where they would be
shuttled to the Suez Canal on smaller vessels. It was the important delivery of thousands of
troops that allowed British forces to push back the enemy and maintain control of Suez.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941, the United States soon entered the war.
On December 22nd, leaders from Great Britain and the U.S. met to discuss strategy.
It was Sir Winston Churchill, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, that suggested
the two Cunard Queens could be used to shuttle American troops to their military hub in Sydney.
The U.S. Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall was impressed that the Queen Mary
was carrying upwards of 5,000 troops despite being designed for a passenger capacity of half that amount.
But Churchill suggested the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth could each transport whole divisions,
which meant upwards of 15,000 men on a single voyage. General Marshall was shocked,
and quickly replied, “If you had to give the order, Mr. Churchill,
would you take a risk and send a division of men on this ship,
knowing that if it were torpedoed, there would only be lifeboats for a fraction of that number?”
Without pause, Churchill snapped back and said, “Yes, if it meant shortening the war one day!”
With little more to say on the matter, General Marshall agreed with Winston Churchill’s plan,
and on February 18th, 1942, the Queen May set sail from Boston with 14,000 American Troops
onboard, on her way to Sydney, with a scheduled stop for fuel in Trinidad.
The voyage would last 40 days, and soon after she set sail, word had reached the ship that a
German U-boat had entered the harbor at Trinidad and sunk two ships.
The Queen Mary immediately was rerouted to Rio de Jeneiro, Brazil.
In June of 1942 German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
and his regimen of Afrika Korps had cornered the British Eith Army against the coast of the Mediterranean.
If the holding line at El Alamein was taken by the Germans, they would soon have
control of Alexandria and the Suez Canal. Right as the Germans had cornered them at the beach,
and hope was nearly lost, the allied forces could see a large ship appear along the horizon,
speeding to the rescue with the might of her 200,000 horsepower steam turbine engines was
the Queen Mary. She delivered over 10,000 troops to the battle, over-powering Rommels forces,
and taking back control of the Mediterranean stronghold. It was at this heroic moment that
the stately ocean liner had decided the fate of a key battle in the war.
The transport capacity of the two Cunard Queens greatly alarmed Adolf Hitler, before the two ships
were requisitioned for the war, no vessel had ever transported more than 10,000 men at a time,
but with the ability to transport whole divisions, the allied forces were gaining the upper hand.
Hitler put out a bounty on the two ships, any submarine captain who could sink either of the
Queens would be rewarded with the equivalent of 1 million reichsmarks and the iron cross
with oak leaves. With more vigor than ever, enemy submarines around the world hunted
down the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, suffice it to say, none were successful.
As the war raged on, the two Cunard Queens became an integral part of the United States war effort,
the Queen Mary alone could transport twice the number of American troops
than the United States’ largest troopship, the USS Westpoint, also known as the SS. America.
Many of the U.S. servicemen who traveled aboard the Cunard Queens
said that despite the Mary’s tendency to roll all too easily in mild seas,
they still preferred her over other ships, not only because her accommodations were superior
than other converted troopships, but because her speed all but guaranteed their safe passage.
Next time, on Part 2, we learn what life at sea was like for the thousands of soldiers
aboard the Queen Mary, and we’ll hear the most shocking military secret they tried to bury
about the ship’s involvement in a tragic incident resulting in a substantial loss of life.