There’s a question that’s been bothering me lately. How did the Queen Mary go from this:
To this:
Aside from Titanic, the Queen Mary is arguably the most influential
and recognizable ocean liner to ever sail
the Atlantic. She was a vital asset during World War II, transporting hundreds of thousands of
troops. Winston Churchill credited her with shortening the war by a full year. Throughout
her decades-long career,
she was considered by the rich and famous to be the only way to cross the Atlantic.
And when she reached the end of her celebrated time with Cunard,
something unheard of happened. She was saved. And she’s still around today. But
the grandeur of her former life is long gone and her future is very much in doubt.
So how did we get here?
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Ocean liners have a shelf life. As time passes,
they fall out of fashion as passengers move on to new liners with new features and amenities.
Maintenance and operation costs mount as what was once state-of-the-art becomes
old and tired. And eventually, even the most beloved liners go to the scrapyard,
turned into something more useful. The old joke was that they were turned into razor blades.
The Mauretania was the pride of the British merchant fleet. She held the
Blue Ribband for two decades. But when the economic winds shifted,
even the beloved Mauretania became expendable, despite pleas from influential people like US
President Franklin Roosevelt to save her. Ultimately, these pleas were ignored:
The Mauretania was scrapped in 1935, along with another great, the RMS Olympic,
Titanic’s nearly identical sister. Imagine if a carbon copy of the Titanic was around
today. But ships become expendable. And the Olympic was sent for scrap even though her
engines were said to be as sound as ever. She became just another outdated British liner.
But the Queen Mary was different. Launched on September 26th, 1934,
the Queen Mary had reached 30 years of service by the mid-1960s. While jet travel was still
relatively new, it’s impact on the travel industry was swift and as you probably know,
the 1960s saw a rapid decline in passengers on the transatlantic routes.
The Queen Mary was not just an outdated ocean liner, she was an outdated mode of travel. On many
voyages, she carried fewer passengers than crew, and by 1965, the once wildly profitable Cunard
Line was operating at a heavy loss. Their greatest assets, the mighty Queen Mary and her sister,
Queen Elizabeth, were now their greatest liabilities and plans were well underway on
a modern new Queen that could replace these aging liners and claw passengers back to ocean travel.
With the modern and costly Queen Elizabeth 2 under construction, the cash-strapped
Cunard Line was faced with the question of what to do with the legendary Queen Mary
and her sister.
In April 1966 the Cunard Line announced that they would soon retire the Queen Mary.
Several scrapyards submitted offers to purchase the liner but the winning bid
came from a surprising place– Long Beach California. Cunard was happy to save the
beloved liner from the scrap yard but they were also pleased that it happened to be the
highest bid. Money was the motivating factor, not preservation, that was just a happy bonus.
The Queen Mary sailed her last transatlantic voyage on September 27th,
1967. Over the course of her long career,
she carried over 2,112,000 passengers and traveled an astonishing 3,792,227 miles.
On October 31st, 1967, she left Southampton for her long voyage to her new home in Long Beach
where she would undergo extensive renovations to convert her into a floating hotel and museum.
Almost everything below her C Deck was removed including her boiler rooms,
forward engine rooms, turbo generator rooms, stabilizers, and her water softening plant.
Only her aft engine room and shaft alley were preserved for the museum.
Her fuel tanks were filled with mud to maintain her center of gravity. Her
funnels had to be removed to complete these renovations and it was quickly
discovered that they were so decayed that they had to be scrapped and replaced.
Most of her first-class staterooms would be converted into hotel rooms and her lounges
and dining rooms became banquet spaces. Many public rooms such as her drawing room,
library, and music studio were stripped and turned into retail spaces. None of
her tourist class, second class, or crew cabins were preserved.
Clearly, the changes were extensive and much of the liner’s original fittings were lost forever.
The ship was opened for tours on May 8th,
1971. While the ship was owned by the City of Long Beach, her museum, restaurants,
and hotel functions were contracted out and operated by three separate companies.
Her new 400,000 square foot museum space was occupied by the Jacques Cousteau’s Museum of
the Sea, which opened its doors to the public on December 11th, 1971 with only a quarter of
its planned exhibits ready on opening day. The living sea museum was never popular with guests
and for some reason, they had problems keeping the fish housed in their exhibits alive. The
attraction would soon close after only a few years of operation.
Pacific Southwest Airlines or PSA, operated her hotel functions. Her
first 150 rooms were opened for booking on November 2nd, 1972,
and would expand to her full 400-room capacity over the next two years. In 1974, her hotel
functions were taken over by Hyatt Hotels, who would operate the facilities until 1980.
Her restaurants were operated by the Los Angeles-based Specialty Restaurants,
a company that operated a number of themed restaurants in Southern California.
While the Queen Mary initially attracted a large number of guests, eager to see the historic liner,
interest quickly waned and by the late 1970s, the attraction was losing millions every year.
Splitting operations among three operators was proving unsustainable
and it was decided that a single operator with more experience would be needed.
Luckily, Jack Wrather, a local millionaire who owned several properties, including the
Disneyland Hotel, soon entered the picture. He loved the historic ocean liner that he
and his wife, Bonita, sailed on many times. The two had fond memories of the ship and
they were eager to save her. The Wrather Company signed a 66-year lease and took
over operations of the full property. They soon brought in Howard Hughes Spruce Goose
housed in an impressive geodesic dome and made other improvements to the property.
These efforts paid off and the Queen Mary appeared to be on the path to financial
stability. But then, in 1984 Jack Wrather died. The Wrather Company continued to operate
the Queen Mary until 1988 when the company was purchased by the Walt Disney Company,
eager to finally own Wrather’s Disneyland Hotel.
While the Queen Mary was never marketed as a Disney attraction,
the powerful entertainment company assumed operations and would soon
unveil an ambitious plan for the historic ocean liner and the surrounding area.
As Disney took over the Queen Mary, attendance was slumping once again. While some attempt
was made to capitalize on the ship’s glamorous past, the company put most of its efforts into
its plans for an ambitious 443-acre attraction called Port Disney. The marine-themed amusement
park would feature numerous retail and entertainment venues, a marina,
a cruise port, and several new hotels. The Queen Mary would be a centerpiece of the new park.
Around this time, stories of ghost sightings and paranormal activity
began circulating among the people who had worked on the ship during her nearly
two decades in Long Beach and Disney, never one to miss a business opportunity
soon began operating ghost tours. These tours proved highly popular.
The Port Disney project soon faced fierce local opposition and plans for the new park
were eventually canceled in December 1991. Disney recognized that without a
significant redevelopment of the largely industrial area around the Queen Mary,
the attraction had almost no hope of financial success. In 1992 the company
ended its lease and the historic liner was closed to guests at the end of that year.
But she wouldn’t sit empty for long. In 1993, a group called the RMS Foundation, took out a 5-year
lease on the property. The group was formed to save the Queen Mary and re-open her to the public,
which they did over the next year, but they would soon succumb to the financial strains
of running the property. This began a long period of revolving operators over the next two decades
as various groups attempted to run the hotel and attraction to various levels of success. In 2007
her lease was sold to a group called Save the Queen and a number of badly needed upgrades and
renovations were conducted to preserve the ship and improve her accommodations and restaurants.
By now, the Queen Mary’s reputation as a haunted destination was garnering
national attention. She was featured in Time Magazine’s “Top 10 Haunted Places” and she
began appearing on several television specials on ghosts and the paranormal.
In 2016, a real estate company called Urban Commons bought her lease and
assumed operations. This marked a change both in how the historic
liner was maintained but also in how she was marketed to the public.
The company had an ambitious plan to transform the surrounding area into an extensive entertainment
and retail complex and they began raising the funds necessary to finance the project.
But then in 2017, a scathing report was issued on the condition of the ship. It was found that
she was deteriorating at an alarming rate. Her hull was in terrible shape and her engine room
spaces were at significant risk of flooding. Neglect throughout the rest of the ship was also
cited. The engineer who conducted the assessment said that she was in the worst condition he had
ever seen in his 25 years of experience and without a significant intervention,
the ship would soon become unsalvageable. The report concluded that it would take an
estimated $300 million to properly repair and restore the Queen Mary.
While some disputed the extent of the disrepair and called the report hyperbolic, it was clear
just from looking at her that she was in a sorry state. 27 urgent projects were identified,
including removing her rotting lifeboats, which had become a significant safety concern.
The City of Long Beach gave Urban Commons 23 million to fund the repairs and in 2019, they
warned the company that it was failing to uphold its obligation to maintain and repair the ship and
they threatened to put their 66-year lease in default. In response, the company released an
updated repair plan with $5 to 7 million allocated toward addressing the most critical issues.
Throughout all of this, the Queen Mary was now being heavily marketed as a haunted
destination. Numerous daily ghost tours were offered and a yearly haunted house
attraction called Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor was introduced in the early 2010s. This
seasonal event turned the parking lots and the ship itself into haunted mazes,
walk-around attractions with scare performers, and other immersive experiences.
The supposedly haunted stateroom B340 was opened for booking and
it’s supposed grizzly past was heavily promoted.
To further publicize the ship, a number of ghost-hunting TV shows and YouTube channels
were given free rein to film on board. The productions ranged in their professionalism
and their treatment of the ship and her history. In 2018 and 2019, the Queen Mary quickly became
a YouTube trend, with almost every channel with any kind of paranormal focus filming videos on
the ship. And to put it mildly, these videos don’t exactly make her seem like a nice place to stay.
And that get’s to my overall issue with this strategy and the title of this video.
Many historic locations offer ghost tours or include ghost stories in their regular tours.
People love this aspect of history and find it compelling. I myself am a big lover of ghost
stories and all things spooky. But turning the Queen Mary into a floating haunted house
directly conflicts with the business model the ship depends on. At the end of the day,
she relies on people booking hotel rooms and dining at her restaurants.
Her hotel rooms are priced at a level where guests expect a certain level of
comfort and amenities. In the years proceeding the pandemic,
the Queen Mary was heavily portrayed as a run-down old ship with a bunch of
YouTubers running around making videos. It was not portrayed as a luxury destination.
This is in direct contrast with the operation and marketing of other preserved ocean liners
that have also been converted into hotels. The Rotterdam and the Queen Elizabeth 2
are both marketed as a high-end opportunities to experience the old-world glamour of ocean travel.
This…
Doesn’t exactly scream high-end travel destination. Unless you’re an ocean liner
or a paranormal enthusiast, why would anyone book a room on the Queen Mary for their vacation?
Playing up the paranormal to attract guests is not inherently a terrible business model. The
Winchester Mystery House is a great example of a historic property that has leveraged the mythology
around the mansion to attract public interest. But there are a few key differences. The Winchester
Mystery House uses the funds generated to maintain the property. And importantly, the property isn’t
a luxury hotel. They aren’t asking you to spend the night there and charging luxury prices for it.
I genuinely believe that it is possible to operate the Queen Mary successfully,
but I think it requires a significant investment in the ship and the surrounding area. For
years now, quick profits have been prioritized over long-term investments and preservation.
And this is just my theory, but to me, it seems that it was easy to let the ship fall into a
state of disrepair because it fit the haunted theming that was so heavily promoted. If the
ship was a clean and well-maintained luxury destination, it would be a lot harder to make
it seem spooky. And making it seem spooky is a lot cheaper and easier to pull off.
The Queen Mary closed its doors to the public in March 2020 and you all know why. As of the
making of this video, she has yet to be reopened. In the past couple of years,
the deplorable condition of the ship once again gained international attention. Urban Commons
has since filed for bankruptcy and control of the property was returned to the City of
Long Beach and has since been turned over to the city’s Harbor Department. Fortunately, the city
seems committed to saving the ship and funds have been allocated toward the most critical projects.
The city plans to re-open the ship to the public as soon as
possible but an exact date has yet to be released. A re-opening is critical so the
property can resume generating at least some revenue to help cover her spiraling losses.
The story of the Queen Mary’s retirement is a depressing tale of cut corners and mismanagement.
From her initial renovations to her conversion into a haunted house attraction, time and time
again, many of her operators showed little interest in preserving and sharing her history
with the world. They instead sought to use her as a tourist trap in order to make a quick buck.
Whether that continues is yet to be seen.
At the end of the day, ships are just objects. They have meaning because we
give them meaning and that meaning will change over time as we lose interest and move on.
Historic preservation is hard and maintaining an aging super liner is all the more difficult.
There’s a reason why so many historic places are operated as non-profits.
The people who inherit these spaces need to love them. They need to be
willing to invest money back into the property, not their wallets.
But if there’s one lesson from the Queen Mary’s long career,
it’s that she’s a survivor and there are people out there who love her and are
dedicated to keeping her alive. Almost all of our treasured ocean liners are gone but she remains.
I have faith that she will be saved and I can’t wait to one day pay her a visit.
Thank you so much for watching. This one was a bit different so hope you all liked it. I’m
certainly not alone in loving the Queen Mary and wanting to see her survive so I would love to know
what you think down in the comments below. Don’t forget to like and subscribe while you’re at it.
Thank you again to Masterworks for sponsoring this video.
I’d also like to give a huge shout-out to my incredible supporters on Patreon. YouTube is
now my full-time job now, so your support and these sponsorships not only keep this
channel alive they keep me from having to turn myself into a cheap haunted house attraction.
Alright, crew, that’s all I’ve got. Until the next one, be nice to people.