It's April 1936 and just off  the isle of Arran Scotland a  

huge ocean liner is being put through its paces

these are the ship's sea trials and on board  are representatives from both the shipbuilder  

john brown and company and the future owners the  Cunard line on the bridge is the vessel's captain  

sir Edgar Britton he had started as a young  man at sea aboard a thousand tonne sailing ship  

now he commands an 80 000 ton behemoth as the  liners engines are worked up to full power her  

name gleams in the sunlight Queen Mary this was  a triumphal moment for all involved but just a  

few short years earlier the great ship's hull had  sat empty and rusting on the slipway unfinished  

thanks to the great depression this is the story  of how the master shipbuilding company john brown  

turned that hulk into one of the greatest ocean  liners of all time the mighty rms Queen Mary

the last time we visited the Queen Mary’s story  we looked at the events that led up to the stock  

market crash that paused the ship's construction  for two years and four months but after some  

clever political manoeuvring the ship's completion  was secured and you can learn about how that  

happened in part one of this series but finally in  April of 1934 john brown workers swarmed back on  

board the unfinished ship and began work again by  scraping away 130 tons of rust and bird droppings  

john brown was a legendary shipbuilding company  and they had built some of the world's largest and  

most famous ships from ocean liners like Lusitania  and aquitania to the warships HMS Hood and Renown  

they were situated in Scotland at Clyde bank  which is a little over nine kilometres or five  

miles from Glasgow on the Clyde river here's an  overhead view of the shipyard in 1934. you can  

see that Queen Mary is being constructed here  in the spring of 1934 you could have stood over  

here across from the fitting out wharf and watched  the mighty hull of the Queen Mary taking shape for  

over two years now the ship had loomed over the  town like a giant now it was up to john brown's  

workers to finish the vessel and sent her on her  way to understand the magnitude of the task ahead  

we first need to get some understanding of what  state the Queen Mary was in by that April of 1934  

at the time they had put down tools way back in  1931 Queen Mary’s hull had only just taken on its  

fundamental form as with all ships the workers had  started with the keel in 1930. this was the ship's  

backbone and it comprised a steel girder running  the majority of the ship's 1019 foot length  

and it was riveted atop three layers of keel plate  which was about three and a half inches thick  

flanking either side of the keel was seven  longitudinal girders and then a web of floors  

were riveted to these and plating installed on  top of the structure and underneath this formed  

the ship's double bottom which was cellular and  largely watertight from here the huge transverse  

frames could be attached these steel beasts  gave Queen Mary’s hull its shape and they were  

spaced apart 36 inches of midships narrowing  to only 24 inches at the extreme bow and stern  

long support structures called stringers  were riveted to the frames and all this  

steel would form a basis for a ship that was both  immensely strong and very flexible in heavy seas  

then came the hull plates huge flat pieces of  steel riveted together to form the ship's skin  

both inside and out they originated at the  kill plate and individual hull plates were  

lined in vast rows called strikes the one either  side of the keel was known as the garbage strike  

and then each strake from there received its own  letter designation in alphabetical order as they  

work their way up the hull the plates were  riveted together with dozens of rivets each  

often in two or three rows and all of these  rivet holes had to be individually punched  

out of the steel by specialist machine with  pinpoint accuracy then the riveters would  

get to work pounding red hot iron rivets into the  holes and therefore fastening the steel together  

this work continued down the length of the ship  and as the plating continued wood logs were put  

in place to shore up the ship and make sure that  it couldn't move on the slipway scaffolding then  

slowly began to rise stories into the air so that  workers could continue to rivet the hull together

meanwhile at the extreme ends of the ship two  monumental pieces of engineering achievement  

were fitted these were the stem castings and  they formed the very tip of the ship's bow and  

stern they were actually the biggest yet made  and the fords that produced them Darlington  

had to make some considerable investment  in their works to even complete the order  

this was a master stroke of engineering and  pure craftsmanship the castings that arrived  

by rail in sections at john brown were immense  the bow stem casting itself being 130 feet long  

and rising to about the height of  a 10 story building once assembled  

in between the frames holes were cut into the  shell plating for the thousands of portholes  

which would provide light into the ship's hull for  state rooms and public spaces even at this stage  

of construction millions of rivets had been used  and eventually a total of some 12 million rivets  

weighing a combined estimated total of 4 000  tonnes would be needed to hold the vas shipped  

together the rivets alone weighed almost  as much as the total displacement of two  

fletcher class destroyers this work laying the  keel assembling the frames and plating the hull  

went on and was about 80 complete when  the shipyard was forced to shut down  

thanks to the great depression in December of  1931. when john brown and company's workers  

finally returned those two years four months  later they picked up from where they left off  

and the ship's hull was complete and finally  ready for launch by September of 1934  

even though the hull was empty and carried none of  the immense boilers and machinery that would power  

it through the water she already weighed as much  as 36 000 tons getting this enormous mass safely  

into the water for the first time would be no easy  feat and it took a significant amount of planning  

and preparation in itself the Queen Mary was being  built on the slipway here but at 1019 feet long  

there was a real danger that she would run aground  on the opposite side of the Clyde river after  

launching to remedy this two things had to happen  first five acres of the Clyde and cart banks had  

to be dredged to widen and deepen them enough  so that the Queen Mary wouldn't become stuck  

and secondly thousands of tons of dead weight  would need to be fixed to the ship's hull  

so that it was tethered to the slipway and would  stop dead in its tracks as soon as it was afloat  

2 350 tons of drag chains would therefore be  used to keep the ship from running aground  

careful calculations were poured over by the john  brown team with an empty hull weighing some 36 000  

tons they estimated that she would travel 1194  feet and this had to even be tested with a model  

then after launch the ship would be guided by tugs  here to the fitting out basin so that all of her  

heavy machinery could be installed as well as her  lavish interiors on September 26th 1934 the big  

day finally came and a huge crowd of some 200 000  people flocked to see the event even though it was  

raining to convey the ship's sheer scale john  brown employed an old tactic painting the hull  

of brilliant white so that she would stand out  more against the drab city background in black  

and white photographs king George v and his wife  Queen Mary of tech ascended the launching platform  

until then the ship's name had been a secret and  it had only been referred to as hull number 534  

then Queen Mary of Tek cut the ribbon  announcing the ship was named after her instead  

the name having been picked as a break from  tradition and a step in a fresh new direction  

there was a loud cheer as a bottle of Australian  sparkling wine smashed on the ship's bow  

and then a dull rumble as the ship's  huge hull began to slide down the slipway  

which had been coated in tallow to make the  task easier this was a critical moment the  

hull was about to undergo huge stresses more  than it ever would in its entire career at sea  

the builders held their breath as Queen Mary hit  the critical point with half of her hull afloat  

in the river and the other half still up on the  slipway this caused her hull to bend up by almost  

eight inches and then eventually sag down by two a  weaker ship could have probably broken in half but  

Queen Mary’s builders had stiffened the hull with  girders and they had also delayed cutting openings  

like windows and doors into the superstructure  on top of the hull to provide additional support  

in about a hundred seconds the vast white hull of  the Queen Mary was afloat for the first time and  

cheers filled the air her bulk sent up a two-foot  wave which flooded out the spectator stands on the  

opposite side of the river and in the end the  launching model had proved incredibly accurate  

her builders had predicted that she would  travel 1194 feet before coming to a rest  

and in reality she only exceeded  this distance by two feet

with Queen Mary moored at the fitting  out wharf workers could finally swarm  

aboard to begin outfitting the ship's  machinery and what machinery it was  

everything about the Queen Mary was of  immense scale and incredible accuracy  

her rudder was the largest yet  built and weighed 150 tons by itself  

the four manganese bronze propellers each weighed  around 35 tons and stretched 20 feet across  

the slightest error in their casting would have  cost the shipbuilders more than 330 000 us dollars  

in today's money five 60-ton gear wheels for  the turbine engines had their teeth ground in  

to a thousandth of an inch of accuracy over the  course of two months each the anchors were the  

largest built for a liner and weighed 16 tons  each and to lessen the effect of wind resistance  

a cut-out was made so they could sit recessed into  the hull huge cranes lifted the immense boilers up  

and down into the ship's bowels 24 Yarrow boilers  went in as well as the four parsons turbine sets  

steam from the boilers would be superheated to  700 degrees Fahrenheit and course through the  

lines at 400 pounds per square inch this steam  would send the turbine's rotors which themselves  

weighed 40 tons spinning at 3 000 revolutions  per minute and the engines could output 50 000  

horsepower each down into the ship's bowels went  the four weir condensers massive units with 41 000  

square feet of cooling surface designed to turn  exhaust steam back into water and recirculate  

it then there were four turbo generators by  British Thompson Houston which would power Queen  

Mary’s lights and there were even installed  two emergency kerosene generators that on  

their own could provide power for all the ship's  services for 36 hours in the case of an emergency  

all of these huge pieces of machinery each  of them extremely expensive and specialized  

was lifted with care into the Queen Mary and  fixed into place then work could commence on  

the superstructure and the interiors public rooms  had their walls or bulkheads riveted into place  

corridors and vast interior rooms suddenly  appeared as walls were installed a network  

of ventilation trunking provided fresh air to  the ships inside and these would be connected to  

enormous intakes and fans on the boat deck which  could suck in immense amounts of air to adequately  

ventilate the Mary's 80 000 ton interior space  this work at the fitting out wharf went on for  

20 months and slowly but surely the hulk was  turned into a ship then three funnels each  

of them wide enough to drive three locomotives  through abreast were lifted and riveted into place  

all three of the funnels were actually  of different heights and they got shorter  

sequentially but the forward-most funnel was the  height of a seven-story building they were fitted  

with steam-powered typhon whistles whose deep  rumble could be heard more than 10 miles away  

they were tuned down to the absurdly low pitch  of base a so as not to disturb passengers on  

deck and to convey Queen Mary’s huge size  each of the three whistles weighed a ton  

by themselves while all this work was going on  outside the ship work was intensifying inside as  

well hundreds and hundreds of passenger staterooms  bathrooms and public spaces had to be constructed  

to the highest possible standard and no expense  was spared the ship's interiors would be decorated  

with dozens of species of timber including  ebony jacaranda zebra mahogany violet wood  

sycamore elm birch about 56 species in total then  there was the art vast oils carved gesso panels  

etched glass and bronze reliefs murals by painters  and cartoonists the first class veranda grill for  

example featured a mural by Doris Zinkeisen that  was one thousand feet square down on d-deck was  

installed the two-story palatial tiled swimming  pool completed with balconies and a simulated  

mother-of-pearl ceiling and in the cabin class  restaurant a monumental map depicted the north  

Atlantic with a miniature crystal replica of the  ship indicating its exact position on the route

the interior decor was for want of a better word  a bit weird Cunard erred on the side of tradition  

as always but they did not want to put Queen  Mary to sea with the kinds of stately Edwardian  

interiors you'd expect from the aquitania the  result was a mix match of deco and modernism  

and traditional Britishness said one critic at the  time the pictures and sculpture are varied in kind  

and quality and not all of them fit happily into  their setting the general effect is one of mild  

but expensive vulgarity at the time this gave sir  Percy bates Cunard’s chairman cause for concern  

but in the end the strange combination proved  endearing and passengers found Queen Mary to be  

comfortable and homely the exterior architecture  of the ship was also a curious balance of  

old and new her three funnels echoed the  design of her running mate Berengaria but  

they were proportionally squatter she didn't have  Aquitania or Mauretania's massive goofy cowl vents  

but in their place she had  massive rectangular units instead  

her bridge front also echoed Mauretania  and Lusitania with its elegant sweeping  

curve and instead of an Edwardian clipper stern  she sported a modern cruiser type stone instead  

with the ship nearing completion 20  lifeboats each the size of a motor yacht  

powered by diesel engines and with capacity  for 145 people were installed on modern  

electric gravity debits which could be lowered  quickly and safely two additional boats with  

reduced capacity could carry their own wireless  sets and two more lifeboats were kept readied for  

emergencies such as a man overboard a single  lifeboat from the Queen Mary could carry all  

of the passengers of the Cunard line's first  steamship the Britannia constructing the Queen  

Mary was a monumental achievement one that was  almost never finished but finally in April 1936  

the ship was guided down the Clyde by tugs for her  sea trials before departing on her maiden voyage  

her engines roaring at full power captain sir  Edgar Britton’s eyes must have smarted against  

the chill Scottish spring air as Queen Mary  glided through the waves at speed she was a  

shipbuilding triumph a win for Britain as a whole  and undoubtedly the pride of Scotland she would go  

on to have a career that can only be described  as legendary the next time we visit the Queen  

Mary’s story we'll take a look at that brief but  exciting time before the second world war when the  

Queen Mary was run up against her international  rivals and proved to be the best of the best

ladies and gentlemen it's your friend  mike brady from ocean liner designs  

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