| IMO | 5287938 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 80,774 GT |
| Length | 310.74 m |
| Beam | 36.14 m |
| Passenger capacity (max) | 2140 |
| Crew | 1100 |
| Service speed | 28.5 knots |
| Builder | John Brown & Company |
| Yard | John Brown & Company |
| Hull number | 534 |
| Launched | 1934 |
| Maiden voyage | 1936 |
| Status | Preserved |
| Preserved at | Long Beach, California, USA |
Overview
RMS Queen Mary is one of the most famous ships afloat — a 1930s British express liner that won the Blue Riband, carried more soldiers in a single voyage than any ship before or since, dominated the North Atlantic with Queen Elizabeth for two postwar decades, and then, instead of the scrapyard, sailed on a last voyage around Cape Horn's alternative route via South America to Long Beach, California, where she has been a hotel and museum ship since 1971. She is the only surviving major pre-war transatlantic express liner preserved in this way, and she is why the word "liner" still means something physical rather than nostalgic.
She was built for the Cunard-White Star Line's two-ship weekly Southampton–Cherbourg–New York express service, as Britain's answer to the German, Italian and French superliners of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Speed, size and Art Deco luxury were her brief in equal measure, and she delivered all three — then proved, in war, to be worth more as a 15,000-man troop transport that could outrun a U-boat than she had ever been as a passenger ship.
Her page in this directory is correspondingly long. Almost every section of the template — design, naming, career, incidents, fate, visiting — is a major historical episode for this hull.
Key specifications
Her article supplies the detail followed here: 80,774 GRT (81,237 GRT after her 1947 refit) — gross register tonnage, the liner-era measure, not modern GT — a length overall of 310.7 m, a beam of 36.0 m, a passenger capacity of about 2,140 in three classes (776 first/cabin, about 785 cabin/tourist, 579 tourist/third), a crew of about 1,100, and a service speed of 28.5 kn (32.84 kn was her trials figure). The dataset row has been reconciled to these figures, including her IMO number, 5287938 — an earlier dataset value, 5528793, transposed the digits.
Propulsion was four Parsons single-reduction geared steam turbines on four shafts, fed by 24 Yarrow boilers, rated in her article at about 200,000 shp. Four shafts, no pods, no diesels: she is a pure product of high-pressure steam at its interwar peak.
Design and construction
Queen Mary was ordered on 3 April 1929 and laid down at John Brown & Company, Clydebank, on 1 December 1930, as yard 534. Construction then stopped — the Depression halted work on the hull from 1931 until 1934, the unfinished ship sitting on the Clyde as a national symbol of the slump, until a government loan, tied to the Cunard and White Star merger that created Cunard-White Star, restarted her. That stoppage is why a ship ordered in 1929 was not launched until 1934, and why she carries such political weight in British shipbuilding history: completing her was policy, not just commerce.
In design she was conservative where her great rival Normandie was revolutionary — conventional counter stern rather than a cruiser stern in her original form, three funnels, a well-deck — and magnificent inside rather than out. She had 12 decks, two indoor swimming pools in her passenger configuration in contemporary descriptions, and public rooms panelled in woods from across the Empire, decorated with specially commissioned murals, sculpture and paintings. The Art Deco interior, more than the hull form, was her design statement, and much of it survives at Long Beach.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
She was launched and christened on 26 September 1934 by her namesake, Queen Mary, consort of George V — the first British queen consort to launch a merchant ship, in standard accounts. The naming story, retold in many histories, is that Cunard intended a traditional -ia name (Victoria is the usual candidate) and sought the King's permission to name her after "England's greatest queen," whereupon the King replied that his wife would be delighted — leaving the line with Queen Mary whether or not the anecdote is literally complete. It is repeated here as the well-known naming tradition attached to the ship, not as a verbatim record.
Fitting out and trials took until 1936. Her maiden voyage sailed from Southampton via Cherbourg to New York on 27 May 1936. That August, on her sixth voyage in one detailed chronology, she took the Blue Riband from Normandie with a Bishop Rock–Ambrose crossing of 4 days and 27 minutes at 30.14 kn; she lost it to Normandie in 1937, recaptured it in 1938 at 30.99 kn, and held it until United States took it in 1952. No later Cunard passenger ship held the Riband; she is the end of the line in more ways than one.
Career by operator
| Period | Name | Operator / notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1936–1939 | Queen Mary | Cunard-White Star Line; Southampton–Cherbourg–New York express service |
| 1940–1946 | Queen Mary (troopship) | Government service; Cunard-White Star hull operated as Allied troop transport, "the Grey Ghost" |
| 1947–1949 | Queen Mary | Cunard-White Star Line; postwar passenger service resumed 31 July 1947 |
| 1949–1967 | Queen Mary | Cunard Line (after White Star merger unwound) |
| 1967–present | Queen Mary | City of Long Beach; static hotel / museum ship (see §10) |
Her war is the centre of the career. Laid up at New York on the outbreak of war in September 1939, she was taken up as a troopship in March 1940, fitted out at Sydney, and from May 1940 carried Allied troops across the world's oceans, painted grey, fitted with a degaussing coil against magnetic mines, zigzagging at speeds U-boats could not match. She carried over 800,000 military personnel in total in standard accounts, and in 1943 set the all-time record for people embarked on one ship: 16,683 (15,740 troops and 943 crew) on a single crossing. Winston Churchill travelled on her repeatedly and is widely quoted as believing the two Queens shortened the war.
Postwar, after a ten-month reconversion, she and Queen Elizabeth finally ran the two-ship weekly express service they had been built for, and dominated the Atlantic through the 1950s. Stabilisers were fitted in 1958 in one chronology. The jet age ended the economics: by the mid-1960s she was running at a loss, and in May 1967 Cunard offered her for sale rather than scrap. Long Beach bought her for $3.45 million.
Onboard character
In passenger service her character was hierarchy made beautiful: three classes kept substantially separate in accommodation, dining and deck space, with first class enjoying the famous rooms — the first-class restaurant rising through multiple decks, the observation lounge, the grand ballroom, the long promenade (750 feet in one contemporary description). Some fifty-five woods, Art Deco lighting, murals including the large map wall in the first-class dining room with a model marking the ship's position — these are the design facts that define her, not any list of amenities.
In war the same volume became density: standee bunks tiered in former public rooms, thousands of men fed in sittings, a city embarked. That the identical interior could be both the most luxurious and the most crowded afloat within four years is the central paradox of her character, and much of her preserved interpretation at Long Beach is built around it.
Major refits and incidents
The gravest event of her life was not damage to herself. On 2 October 1942, off the Irish coast, Queen Mary — zigzagging as a troopship and under orders not to stop — collided with her escort, the anti-aircraft cruiser HMS Curacoa, which was on a straight course across her bow. The liner cut the cruiser in two; Curacoa sank with the loss of 337 men (338 in some accounts). Other ships rescued about a hundred survivors. Queen Mary, with a damaged bow, proceeded to port and was repaired. It remains one of the worst friendly-force disasters of the naval war, and no account of the ship is complete without it.
Her major refits were the 1940 trooping conversion, the 1946–47 reconversion to passenger service, and the Long Beach conversion after 1967, in which machinery spaces were removed and the ship was reworked as a static hotel, museum and events venue — a conversion more radical, in engineering terms, than either wartime change, because it was never intended to be reversed. Periodic preservation and repair programmes at Long Beach, including major city-funded work in recent years, are in scope and date before specific claims are made.
Sister ships and class
She has no true sister. Queen Elizabeth (1940) was her intended running mate — larger, with two funnels and lessons from Queen Mary's service built in — and the two are universally paired as the Cunard Queens, but they are different designs, not class sisters. Earlier Cunard express liners and the later Queen Elizabeth 2 belong to her lineage of purpose, not her class. Her dataset row accordingly records no class, and none is claimed here. Her real contemporaries and rivals were foreign: Normandie above all, then Rex, Bremen and Europa — the superliner field of the 1930s against which she was measured, and largely outlasted.
Fate and where she is now
Queen Mary completed her 1,000th and last Cunard voyage at Southampton on 27 September 1967 in detailed chronologies, sailed on her final voyage on 31 October 1967, and arrived at Long Beach on 9 December 1967. She opened to the public as a hotel and museum attraction in 1971. Ownership remained with the City of Long Beach; operating leases and operators have changed over the decades, including a closure in the early 1990s and reopening in 1993 in standard accounts, and more recent city-led restoration and reopening work.
She was added to the US National Register of Historic Places on 15 April 1993 (reference 92001714, in her article). She cannot sail — her propulsion was removed in the static conversion — and she does not need to: her fate is preservation afloat in place, the most complete survival of any great Atlantic liner.
Visit her today
Queen Mary is permanently moored at Long Beach, California, where she operates in general terms as a hotel, museum ship and events venue. Visitors can in general terms stay aboard in staterooms, take guided and self-guided tours of the decks, engine-room area and exhibitions, and see the Art Deco public rooms described in §6 — the first-class restaurant, the observation lounge and the promenade deck are the core of any visit.
No prices, opening hours or tour times are given here because they change and quickly rot: check the ship's official site before travelling. She is in Long Beach harbour, across the water from downtown Long Beach, and is visible from the surrounding waterfront — allow a full day if you intend to tour her properly; she is a 1,000-foot, 12-deck ship, and she does not shrink indoors.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ocean_liners, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Queen_Mary, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Queen-Mary-ship