RMS QUEEN MARY, SAILING ALONG THE RECENT HISTORY

La Torre del Rellotge, Barceloneta, Barcelona

Today, The Grandma has visited the Port of Barcelona. She likes visiting this place and seeing how many people sail by their fishermen boats, touristic ferries that visit the coast, line cruises that travel from Barcelona to Genoa and Balearic Islands and international cruises that sail along the Mediterranean.

The Port of Barcelona is one of the most important ports of the south of Europe and the activity is frenetic and passionate.

The Grandma likes to seat near La Torre del Rellotge (the Tower of the Clock), the old lighthouse of Barcelona, located in La Barceloneta, the fishermen neighbourhood.

As a new feature of the Barceloneta area, the Torre del Rellotge was very important: it was one of the first lighthouses in the Mediterranean. Designed in 1772 by the engineer Jorge Próspero de Verboom, who was in charge of renovating the entire port, it became an important symbol of the neighbourhood in the 18th century.

Visible from many places in the port, the Torre del Rellotge is located on the famous Moll de Pescadors (fisherman's wharf), which also housed the passport office, the marine command headquarters and the health inspection post during the 18th century. While improvements were being made to Barcelona’s port, a decision was taken in 1904 to convert the defunct lighthouse into a clock tower, which it remains today.

Architecturally, it is a pyramidal stone tower standing on a plinth. Later, in 1904, when it was converted into a clock tower, stucco was added along with the clock housing.

The former lighthouse, also has its own little story: it has the honour of being one of the geodesic points where the scientist Pierre François André Méchain took the measurements he used as the basis of the metric system.

Looking at the horizon and thinking in how many experiences The Grandma have lived, she has remember one of them, one very special when she sailed by the Queen Mary, the British ocean liner that became very famous during the last century and was launched on a day like today in 1934.

The RMS Queen Mary is a retired British ocean liner that sailed primarily on the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967 for the Cunard Line -known as Cunard-White Star Line when the vessel entered service. She was the flagship of the Cunard and White Star Lines, built by John Brown & Company in Clydebank, Scotland.

Queen Mary, along with RMS Queen Elizabeth, were built as part of Cunard's planned two-ship weekly express service between Southampton, Cherbourg and New York. The two ships were a British response to the express superliners built by German, Italian and French companies in the late 1920s and early 1930s.  

Queen Mary was the flagship of the Cunard Line from May 1936 until October 1946 when she was replaced in that role by Queen Elizabeth.

The Grandma greets Queen Mary

Queen Mary sailed on her maiden voyage on 27 May 1936 and won the Blue Riband that August; she lost the title to SS Normandie in 1937 and recaptured it in 1938, holding it until 1952 when she was beaten by the new SS United States. With the outbreak of the Second World War, she was converted into a troopship and ferried Allied soldiers during the war.

Following the war, Queen Mary was refitted for passenger service and along with Queen Elizabeth commenced the two-ship transatlantic passenger service for which the two ships were initially built. The two ships dominated the transatlantic passenger transportation market until the dawn of the jet age in the late 1950s. By the mid-1960s, Queen Mary was ageing and, though still among the most popular transatlantic liners, was operating at a loss.

After several years of decreased profits for Cunard Line, Queen Mary was officially retired from service in 1967. She left Southampton for the last time on 31 October 1967 and sailed to the port of Long Beach, California, United States, where she remains permanently moored. Much of the machinery, including one of the two engine rooms, three of the four propellers, and all of the boilers, were removed.

More information: Queen Mary Shadows

The ship serves as a tourist attraction featuring restaurants, a museum and a hotel. The ship is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has accepted the Queen Mary as part of the Historic Hotels of America.

With Germany launching Bremen and Europa into service, Britain did not want to be left behind in the shipbuilding race. White Star Line began construction on their 80,000-ton Oceanic in 1928, while Cunard planned a 75,000-ton unnamed ship of their own.

Construction on the ship, then known only as Hull Number 534, began in December 1930 on the River Clyde by the John Brown & Company shipyard at Clydebank in Scotland. Work was halted in December 1931 due to the Great Depression and Cunard applied to the British Government for a loan to complete 534. The loan was granted, with enough money to complete the unfinished ship, and also to build a running mate, with the intention to provide the weekly service to New York with just two ships.

One condition of the loan was that Cunard would merge with the White Star Line, which was Cunard's chief British rival at the time and which had already been forced by the depression to cancel construction of its Oceanic.

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Both lines agreed and the merger was completed on 10 May 1934. Work on Queen Mary resumed immediately and she was launched on 26 September 1934. Completion ultimately took ​3 1⁄2 years and cost 3.5 million pounds sterling. Much of the ship's interior was designed and constructed by the Bromsgrove Guild. Prior to the ship's launch, the River Clyde had to be specifically deepened to cope with her size, this being undertaken by the engineer D. Alan Stevenson. 

The Grandma welcomes Queen Mary

The ship was named after Mary of Teck, consort of King George V. Until her launch, the name was kept a closely guarded secret.

Legend has it that Cunard intended to name the ship Victoria, in keeping with company tradition of giving its ships names ending in ia, but when company representatives asked the king's permission to name the ocean liner after Britain's greatest queen, he said his wife, Mary of Teck, would be delighted. And so, the legend goes, the delegation had of course no other choice but to report that No. 534 would be called Queen Mary.

This story was denied by company officials, and traditionally the names of sovereigns have only been used for capital ships of the Royal Navy. Some support for the story was provided by Washington Post editor Felix Morley, who sailed as a guest of the Cunard Line on Queen Mary's 1936 maiden voyage.

In his 1979 autobiography, For the Record, Morley wrote that he was placed at table with Sir Percy Bates, chairman of the Cunard Line. Bates told him the story of the naming of the ship on condition you won't print it during my lifetime. The name Queen Mary could also have been decided upon as a compromise between Cunard and the White Star Line, as both lines had traditions of using names either ending in ic with White Star and ia with Cunard.

The name had already been given to the Clyde turbine steamer TS Queen Mary, so Cunard made an arrangement with its owners and this older ship was renamed Queen Mary II.

Queen Mary was fitted with 24 Yarrow boilers in four boiler rooms and four Parsons turbines in two engine rooms. The boilers delivered 400 pounds per square inch steam at 371 °C which provided a maximum of 158,000 kW to four propellers, each turning at 200 RPM. Queen Mary achieved 32.84 knots on her acceptance trials in early 1936.

More information: Queen Mary Cruises

In 1934 the new liner was launched by Queen Mary as RMS Queen Mary. On her way down the slipway, Queen Mary was slowed by eighteen drag chains, which checked the liner's progress into the River Clyde, a portion of which had been widened to accommodate the launch.

When she sailed on her maiden voyage from Southampton on 27 May 1936, she was commanded by Sir Edgar T. Britten, who had been the master designate for Cunard White Star whilst the ship was under construction at the John Brown shipyard.

Queen Mary measured 80,774 gross register tons (GRT). Her rival Normandie, which originally grossed 79,280 tonnes, had been modified the preceding winter to increase her size to 83,243 GRT, an enclosed tourist lounge was built on the aft boat deck on the area where the game court was, and therefore reclaimed the title of the world's largest ocean liner from the Queen Mary, who only held it for a few weeks.

The Grandma at Queen Mary's arrival, Long Beach

Queen Mary sailed at high speeds for most of her maiden voyage to New York, until heavy fog forced a reduction of speed on the final day of the crossing, arriving in New York Harbor on 1 June 1936.

Queen Mary's design was criticised for being too traditional, especially when Normandie's hull was revolutionary with a clipper-shaped, streamlined bow. Except for her cruiser stern, she seemed to be an enlarged version of her Cunard predecessors from the pre–First World War era. Her interior design, while mostly Art Deco, seemed restrained and conservative when compared to the ultramodern French liner. Queen Mary proved to be the more popular vessel than her larger rival, in terms of passengers carried.

In August 1936, Queen Mary captured the Blue Riband from Normandie, with average speeds of 55.82 km/h westbound and 56.73 km eastbound. Normandie was refitted with a new set of propellers in 1937 and reclaimed the honour, but in 1938 Queen Mary took back the Blue Riband in both directions with average speeds of 57.39 km/h westbound and  58.69 km/h eastbound, records which stood until lost to United States in 1952.

Among facilities available on board Queen Mary, the liner featured two indoor swimming pools, beauty salons, libraries and children's nurseries for all three classes, a music studio and lecture hall, telephone connectivity to anywhere in the world, outdoor paddle tennis courts and dog kennels. The largest room onboard was the cabin class (first class) main dining room (grand salon), spanning three stories in height and anchored by wide columns. The cabin-class swimming pool facility spanned over two decks in height. This was the first ocean liner to be equipped with her own Jewish prayer room  -part of a policy to show that British shipping lines avoided the antisemitism evident at that time in Nazi Germany. 

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The cabin-class main dining room featured a large map of the transatlantic crossing, with twin tracks symbolising the winter/spring route, further south to avoid icebergs, and the summer/autumn route. During each crossing, a motorised model of Queen Mary would indicate the vessel's progress en route.

As an alternative to the main dining room, Queen Mary featured a separate cabin-class Verandah Grill on the Sun Deck at the upper aft of the ship. The Verandah Grill was an exclusive à la carte restaurant with a capacity of approximately eighty passengers, and was converted to the Starlight Club at night. Also on board was the Observation Bar, an Art Deco-styled lounge with wide ocean views.

Woods from different regions of the British Empire were used in her public rooms and staterooms. Accommodation ranged from fully equipped, luxurious cabin (first) class staterooms to modest and cramped third-class cabins. Artists commissioned by Cunard in 1933 for works of art in the interior include Edward Wadsworth and A. Duncan Carse.

Queen Mary in Long Beach, California

In late August 1939, Queen Mary was on a return run from New York to Southampton.

The international situation led to her being escorted by the battlecruiser HMS Hood. She arrived safely, and set out again for New York on 1 September. By the time she arrived, the Second World War had started and she was ordered to remain in port alongside Normandie until further notice.

In March 1940, Queen Mary and Normandie were joined in New York by Queen Mary's new sister ship Queen Elizabeth, fresh from her secret dash from Clydebank. The three largest liners in the world sat idle for some time until the Allied commanders decided that all three ships could be used as troopships. Normandie was destroyed by fire during her troopship conversion.

Queen Mary left New York for Sydney, Australia, where she, along with several other liners, was converted into a troopship to carry Australian and New Zealand soldiers to the United Kingdom.

In the Second World War conversion, the ship's hull, superstructure, and funnels were painted navy grey. As a result of her new colour, and in combination with her great speed, she became known as the Grey Ghost. To protect against magnetic mines, a degaussing coil was fitted around the outside of the hull. Inside, stateroom furniture and decoration were removed and replaced with triple-tiered (fixed) wooden bunks, which were later replaced by standee (fold-up) bunks.

During the war Queen Mary carried British Prime Minister Winston Churchill across the Atlantic for meetings with fellow Allied forces officials on several occasions. He was listed on the passenger manifest as Colonel Warden.

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Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth dominated the transatlantic passenger trade as Cunard White Star's two-ship weekly express service through the latter half of the 1940s and well into the 1950s.

Queen Mary was retired from service in 1967. On 27 September, she completed her 1,000th and last crossing of the North Atlantic, having carried 2,112,000 passengers over 6,102,998 km.

Queen Mary is permanently moored as a tourist attraction, hotel, museum and event facility in Long Beach. From 1983 to 1993, Howard Hughes' plane H-4 Hercules was located in a large dome nearby. The dome was later repurposed as a soundstage for film and television. The structure is now used by Carnival Cruise Lines as a ship terminal, as a venue for the Long Beach Derby Gals roller derby team and as an event venue.

Since drilling for oil had started in Long Beach Harbor, some of the revenue had been set aside in the Tidelands Oil Fund. Some of this money was allocated in 1958 for the future purchase of a maritime museum for Long Beach.

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On 8 May 1971 Queen Mary opened her doors to tourists. Initially, only portions of the ship were open to the public as Specialty Restaurants had yet to open its dining venues and PSA had not completed work converting the ship's original First Class staterooms into the hotel. As a result, the ship was open only on weekends.

On 11 December 1971 Jacques Cousteau's Museum of the Sea opened, with a quarter of the planned exhibits completed. Within the decade, Cousteau's museum closed due to low ticket sales and the deaths of many of the fish that were housed in the museum.

On 2 November 1972 the PSA Hotel Queen Mary opened its initial 150 guest rooms. Two years later, with all 400 rooms finished, PSA brought in Hyatt Hotels to manage the hotel, which operated from 1974 to 1980 as the Queen Mary Hyatt Hotel.

Following Queen Mary's permanent docking in California, claims were made that the ship was haunted. In 2008, Time magazine included The Queen Mary among its Top 10 Haunted Places.

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We must free ourselves of the hope that the sea will ever rest.

We must learn to sail in high winds.

Aristotle Onassis