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Floating Hotel. When conversation palled, there was the ship herself to explore—a floating Grand Hotel. For the sun baskers and the eight-times-around-the-deck strollers, there were three acres of deck space. A walk around the Queen's promenade deck added up close to a quarter of a mile. To carry the passengers effortlessly from one to another of the twelve decks, which rise within the Queen's 50,000-ton metal hull and spill above it like the hanging gardens of Babylon, were 21 noiseless elevators. The murals of the public rooms, boarded up during the war, were unveiled again. Both public and staterooms were paneled in woods from every continent—from beech to rich mahogany, rare and exotic betula and petula, zebrano and avodire.
Marine Marvel. Even to jaded voyagers, the Queen Mary was still a marvel of naval architecture. From her straight, businesslike stem to her bulging cruiser stern the Queen represents a blending of many ancient and modern arts. Her builders had to wrestle with the problem of constructing a hull of titan strength to withstand almost unimaginable strains as the seas pass under her 1,020 feet, lifting her first by the bow, then amidships, then astern. The propulsion engineers used the power of 50 locomotives to drive the four screws, each 20 feet across and weighing 35 tons, which are, nevertheless, so delicately mounted that they can be turned by a man's hand.
For the helmsman, instead of the angry, seven-foot monster wheel of the first Cunarders, which flung men to the deck or threw them across the wheelhouse, there is finger-tip steering with a complex series of superhuman power boosters to swing the 140-ton rudder through churning seas. If the watch officer chooses, a gyro pilot will relieve the helmsman entirely and keep the ship on course. No leadsman need stand in the bow to take soundings, for the navigator has an acoustic-electric fathometer to tell him, at the press of a button, how much water is beneath the hull. Radar eyes pierce night and fog.
The Sisters. Her wartime experiences had left few visible marks on the Mary. The marks, however, were deep in history and deep in the memories of the armies of American servicemen who traveled on her.
When World War II broke out, the Queen Mary was outward bound from Southampton carrying a record number of 2,332 passengers. The giant ship proceeded at full speed on a route far north of her usual run, arrived in New York harbor the day after Britain declared war (Sept. 3, 1939). She was reported to have brought a cargo of gold worth $44,000,000. For six months she was berthed near her rival, the French liner Normandie. Dock rent cost Cunard $520 a day.
Presently the Mary's new sistership, the Queen Elizabeth, quietly slipped into the berth beside her. Later the Mary's cabins were stripped, rugs and furniture (now irreplaceable) were packed and stored. Her bulkheads were taken down to make room for troops.
In 1941, the two Queens joined the Mauretania and old Aquitania in ferrying troops between Australia, New Zealand and Suez. Up to Pearl Harbor, the Queens had carried over 80,000 Empire troops, but their career in war had just begun.