The RMS Queen Mary was once the very definition of British opulence on a merchant vessel!
Her mighty hull has seen it all, the great depression, luxurious travel in the art deco era,
wartime voyages, rogue waves, and the exotic ports of the early 20th century.
So much happened to this ship in the 31 years she was at sea,
if only her hull could speak… In this episode of Queen Mary Highlights,
we will briefly delve into some interesting fun facts about her hull and how it works!
The Queen Mary was laid down on December 1st of 1930 in the John Brown Shipyards of Clydebank,
Scotland. At the time of her design, she was intended to be the largest ocean liner ever built,
and originally the engineers had planned to use the hull design of RMS Aquitania
as a blueprint, but after much deliberation, it was decided that with a ship of this scale,
a new design was necessary. The length overall was going to be 1,019.5 feet which is (310.7 meters)
and the ship would have a beam of 118 feet, which is (35.9 meters). The Queen Mary would
exceed Titanic’s length by 137 feet and surpass her width by 26 feet. John Brown Shipyards had to
construct a new slipway that would be large enough for the Queen, and they would invest
money in a much larger crane, the Titan. The steel hull plates, ranging between
2 ½ to 10 meters long, were all laid in a pattern that allowed them to overlap each other.
Over 10 million rivets held the ship together, most of them were hammered in by the strength
of men, but in certain areas of the hull, stronger rivets were required to be hammered in by machine.
RMS Queen Mary was built to British Admiralty standards
so she could be used in wartime should the situation have arisen,
therefore her hull was designed to be stronger and more resilient, with redundant safety features
that would have otherwise been too costly for most ocean line companies to afford. For instance,
not only were her cargo and engineering spaces divided into 18 watertight compartments
but she was also given a double hull. Now, most ships had what is called a double bottom keel
for extra strength, this means there is a dual layer of steel plates running along the keel, but
Queen Mary’s double hull continued up the sides of the ship, stopping at D Deck. The space in
between the layers of the keel was 6 feet, which is almost 2 meters, and that area was divided into
a series of watertight compartments designed to hold ballast for keeping the ship level.
The double-walled hull was further divided into larger watertight compartments ranging between
6 to 16 feet in depth, many of which were used as tanks for storing either ballast or fuel oil.
This double hull meant that even if one layer was breached, the inner layer could keep the ship
watertight, and because the layers were divided into compartments,
flooding of the affected tanks didn’t necessarily mean the ship would capsize as a result.
One very noticeable feature you might have seen is the upwards curve at both ends of the ship,
this is called sheer. Prior to the mid-20th century, it was a common sight for Ocean
Liners to have sheer, the upwards curve helped strengthen the ship against the forces that
acted upon the Liner when it would crest the massive waves during storms and heavy seas.
The workers at John Brown waited until after Queen Mary was launched from its slipway,
to cut out most of the portholes, sidelights, and hatches, because engineers feared the
gargantuan size and weight of the ship could damage itself during the launch. At one point,
half the ship would be in the water, and the other half still on land, creating a
force that would try to fold the ship in half. The Mary’s hull was designed with bilge keels
for stability. Bilge Keels are lengthy fins that protrude from the bottom corners of the hull,
they help to prevent rolling by keeping the ship upright.
Most ocean liners of the time were constructed with bilge keels, and Queen Mary was no different.
It would later turn out that Queen Mary’s bilge keels did little to dampen her reputation for
frequent rolling even in mild weather, she would later earn the nickname The Rolling Mary.
Queen Mary’s steel hull plates ranged in thickness between 1 ¼ to 1 ¾ inches,
for my friends using metric measurements that’s a thickness between 3.1 and 4.4 centimeters, this
was necessary to give the ship rigidity in ocean storms, especially when cresting huge swells.
The ship’s hull was designed to make her fast and help her capture the Blue Riband, the title
granted to the fastest passenger vessel to race the North Atlantic run. For this reason, she
adopted a more raked bow than her predecessors, and you will notice that unlike other superliners
of the 1930s, Queen Mary had a forward Well Deck. A Well Deck is a recessed deck, in this case,
it’s forward on the ship, between the Forecastle and the Superstructure. It’s seen on many ships
of the early 20th century, and the design is meant to break up a wave that rides over the bow.
On Queen Mary, her A deck 3rd class lounge was built with a broad curve designed to push the
water away from the superstructure. To be honest, it worked but wasn’t as effective as planned,
therefore her younger companion, RMS Queen Elizabeth would be built without a Well Deck.
Another thing that baffles some ocean liner enthusiasts is that Queen Mary was not built
with a bulbous bow. For context, bulbous bows are steel appendages that is added to the bows of many
ships, just below the waterline. It’s designed to cancel out the effects of a bow wave in order to
reduce drag along the length of the ship because the flatter the waterline is along the hull,
the less surface it has to push through the water.
The decreased drag helped a ship to go a little faster, but mainly it was intended
to save fuel by reducing the amount of energy needed to run a ship at speed.
German liners Bremen and Europa were the first superliners to use a bulbous bow,
and it was because bulbous bows were still a new concept for ocean liners, that Cunard chose to
use more traditional hull features. However, there is also another reason why they decided
not to try a bulbous bow on the Mary and the reason is that they gave her a cruiser stern.
Now sterns on ships are not just for decoration, they serve a purpose.
Titanic, for instance, had a clipper stern, some people say she had a fan tail stern.
The choice behind using this type of stern was that it reduced drag at the waterline
because of the sharp point it came to, and then above the water, the rounded,
bowl-shaped edge helped the stern of the ship to ride over a wave that came up from behind.
The Mary’s rival, SS Normandie was given a fantail stern which served a similar purpose.
The Cruiser stern that Queen Mary received, was also a relatively new concept for a superliner.
The design came from military cruisers, the stern extends just below the waterline,
giving added buoyancy, and extending up above the water, the wedge shape helps
divert large swells away from the ship. And the reason this was chosen for Queen
Mary is because of that added buoyancy at the waterline. You see, when a ship is at speed,
the hydrodynamic forces have a tendency to dig the stern deeper into the water. This puts more drag
against the hull. But with the hull extending further out, and adding more flotation to the
stern, the ship doesn’t dig as deep, and therefore you reduce drag against the hull.
So while Normandie managed to reduce drag by getting rid of the bow wave,
Queen Mary reduced drag by raising the stern higher out of the water when at speed,
thereby reducing drag. Cunard felt that the cruiser stern would help Queen Mary win the Blue
Riband…and frankly, they weren’t wrong. In 1958, the Mary underwent extensive work to
add stabilizers in an effort to counteract her rolling. These were a set of four retractable
fins that were hydraulically operated. On the bridge a gyroscope sensed the angle of roll,
then adjusted the stabilizers to right the ship. These were removed when the ship retired in 1967.
Many people criticize Queen Mary’s hull design, saying that even for her time,
it was antiquated and odd looking. They don’t like her Well Deck or her Cruiser Stern,
and they think it's odd that Cunard didn’t invest in the latest hull design by using a bulbous bow.
People say that her hull is not very economic or fuel efficient, and with that, I would have
to agree. You see, Cunard was a company that like many others, was concerned with the costs
of running its operations. However, when their flagship RMS Mauretania lost the Blue Riband,
there were no other British-owned ocean liners that could compete with the foreign ships that
raced across the Atlantic. Great Britain as a whole was staring Cunard in the face, they didn’t
want the embarrassment of the British Empire no longer commanding the fastest ships of the ocean.
So Cunard was put in a tough position. In the end, they chose to all but abandon their desire for
fuel efficiency and instead, invest their money into a ship with tried-and-true hull designs,
and one that would slice its way across the sea with sheer brute force. So no,
Queen Mary’s hull was not fuel-efficient, and the ship was not designed to be, not necessarily.
She was simply designed to be luxurious and to win the Blue Riband from SS Normandie,
and she was…and she did. The companion liner RMS
Queen Elizabeth was designed not to compete for the Riband, but instead to offer all the grace
and luxury of her older teammate, while being both the largest passenger ship ever built and
extremely fuel-efficient. This has led some people to wonder if Queen Elizabeth was secretly
faster than Queen Mary, but I have another video specifically dedicated to that topic,
links to it are in the top corner of your screen, and also in the description below. Thanks for
watching, and be sure to like and subscribe for more information about the age of steam.
Phew! Maybe second upload is the charm? The first version had quite a few errors, I couldn't
just leave it and not try to fix it. The good news is I was able to add more information to it.
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