The Queen Mary: Greatest Ocean Liner

Bigger and more powerful than the Titanic,

faster than any other ship in her class, taller than the Eiffel Tower.

What a beautiful ship she is.

The Queen Mary is the last survivor of the golden age of ocean liners.

This is her story,

intimately told by some of the many millions of people whose lives

she touched and changed for ever.

That ship is carved in my memory and in my soul.

Built with the blood and sweat of the master craftsmen

of the Clydebank shipyards, she helped drag a nation from the depths

of the Great Depression and set sail as a symbol of new hope

and a better future.

The great day has arrived for the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary.

Movie stars, politicians and royalty

crossed the Atlantic luxuriously cocooned

in a floating palace.

During the performance I was sliding back and forth.

# Chances are cos I wear a silly grin. #

I didn't have to move.

The boat moved for me.

Designed in peacetime to link the old world with the new,

she was transformed to challenge the fury of the Nazis,

who brought whole armies to Europe.

When we got there, we looked up at this huge monstrosity, you know?

I said, "Oh, my God!"

We knew that ships were being sunk

and now we were going into harm's way.

She was the British Navy's most iconic ship,

so Hitler offered a 250,000 reward for any U-boat captain

that could sink her. But her size and speed made her unsinkable.

She became Churchill's War Rooms at sea.

This is the Churchillian equivalent to Air Force One.

Damn sight better.

Through tragedy...

Incredible, the amount of damage it did do.

..to triumph.

Oh, everybody was so damn happy to be going home.

80 years after her maiden voyage,

she continues to win the hearts of millions of visitors,

all who want to learn the amazing story of this Queen of the Seas.

It's early morning in the historic port city of Southampton.

80 years ago, this famous harbour was the scene of one of the most

eagerly anticipated events of the 20th century.

News cameras, journalists and almost a million people turned out to

witness the biggest ship ever to be built set sail on her maiden voyage.

Across town, a group of former bellboys, waiters, stewardesses,

engineers and other crew members have come together

to celebrate the anniversary.

We're ex-crewmembers - some of us are ex-crewmembers,

some of us are partners of ex-crewmembers.

Because we're all dying off gradually,

it's ringing the lantern, isn't it?

It's all old seamen reminiscing.

My first trip - and I can remember this offhand -

I went to Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo,

Buenos Aires, Sydney, Freemantle, Colombo, Naples,

Port Said, Port Tewfik and back to Southampton.

It took us three months.

As children - we were just children -

-we were roaming the world, weren't we?

-Most certainly were.

The Queen Mary - would have been about 1957,

when I was young with dark hair.

Happy memories.

It was a fantastic life.

I think I was at sea, and many of these guys,

when the Merchant Navy was in their peak.

This was the time when Britain built the finest ships,

the likes of which you're never going to see again.

5,000 miles away in the heart of sun-drenched California,

the ship that created all these memories

is permanently moored in the port city of Long Beach.

She's a floating hotel and museum -

an attraction that brings in over 1.5 million visitors each year.

Honorary captain Everett Hoard has been with the ship

for most of her life in Long Beach.

We are now walking into the grand salon,

which is the largest room in the Queen Mary.

Originally the first-class dining room when the Queen Mary

roamed the North Atlantic,

it is now our finest room and we are celebrating our champagne

Sunday brunch, which we do every Sunday here on the Queen Mary.

As you'll see, there are over 100 gustatory delights

laid out for people to enjoy.

Where can you eat in a room so splendid as this?

The room is panelled in peroba wood from Brazil.

There is a beautiful map of the North Atlantic Ocean up there.

It was done by a fellow named MacDonald Gill

all the way back in the 1930s.

If you step into the middle of the room here...

The most famous people in the world ate in this room.

Indeed, the people that shaped the world we live in today.

Sir Winston Churchill, Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.

Hollywood people - Clark Gable, Marlene Dietrich,

Elizabeth Taylor, Cary Grant - they were all here.

And so even today, if you just stop and allow yourself to wonder,

you can almost hear them speak.

Did you see that cabaret last night? Wasn't that fantastic?

Very funny.

You've been here 25 times with us, have you?

Oh, marvellous.

There are so many ways to enjoy the Queen Mary today.

Being the very last ship of its kind on the earth,

she is truly a pearl of great price and I would that say she is actually

the pearl of Scotland because Scotland gave her her life.

Built for an English company, though,

the ship stands as a reminder

of that old song Britannia Rules The Waves.

So, how did this ship become such an icon of Britishness?

And end up in California?

In 1926, the famous British shipping line Cunard made the decision

to design a ship that was longer,

bigger and faster than any vessel ever built before.

She would be the height of luxury - a veritable city afloat.

When it was finally time for the build,

there was only one place in the world

with the skills and craftsmen to construct

such a monumental feat of engineering.

Scotland's illustrious River Clyde

was the number one shipbuilding river in the world,

with upwards of 40 shipyards on its banks.

Ian Johnston has been researching and writing

about the industrial history of Scotland for over 40 years.

The Queen Mary represented such a significant contract.

Everybody knew about this ship because this was an enormous ship.

This was going to be Britain's flagship on the high seas.

In 1930, at the height of the Great Depression,

massive pieces of metal began to arrive

at the famous John Brown shipyard.

The promise of work for thousands of men was a welcome relief

to the misery of the times.

By the end of the year the keel was laid on Clydebank.

The as yet nameless ship was known simply as Job Number 534.

But the joy and lifeline she provided was short-lived.

The depression was biting harder than ever

and Cunard had run out of cash.

The contract had been signed in December 1930

and almost exactly one year later,

the chairman of Cunard had to phone Sir Thomas Bell,

the managing director at Clydebank, to say,

"I'm very sorry to have to say

"you're going to have to stop work on this ship.

"We can't afford it."

This was a calamity because the yard at that time was employing

between 2,000 and 3,000 people, mostly on this ship,

so it meant that they had to let them go and rather abruptly.

'A shattering catastrophe for the men of Clydebank,

'where in the December of 1931

'began the blackest period of misery and corroding idleness.'

The silent rusting hulk of the 534 towered above the houses

of the unemployed.

A sad symbol of inactivity and recession.

While she rusted,

news came that the French were working on another great ship,

the Normandie, with financial help from their government.

Britain was at risk of losing its reputation

as the world's leading maritime nation.

It was over two years before the British Government

put down the money to get things moving again.

A great day for Clydeside.

Work is resumed on the Cunard Number 534.

Dockland in Glasgow is our fete and pipers are there to express

the exuberant feelings with which the labourers enter the shipyard

to get to work on The Boat,

as Clydesiders call this yet-unnamed ship.

When work resumed,

this was seen as a symbol of a resurgence of Great Britain

and its manufacturing capacity.

Things were going to get better.

After another six months of long, hard graft,

the ship would be ready to launch.

'Soon British news will be showing you the amazing pictures

'of the launch of 534, pictures that will undoubtedly

'be rated among the most wonders of the 20th century.'

Nothing this size had ever been launched

into the River Clyde before.

The giant engines were not yet on board,

so the designers were relying on mathematics to gauge

how far the ship would travel into the narrow river.

With both the King and Queen in attendance for the naming ceremony,

alongside 250,000 spectators,

these were anxious moments for everyone involved.

I am happy to name this ship the Queen Mary.

I wish success to her and to all who sail in her.

Now formally named as the Queen Mary,

the half-built ship was about to face her perilous first test.

Would this mass of 35,000 tonnes of metal pull together

as she was launched into the narrow river?

When you release a ship which has got no power on board

and you just let it go into the river,

you've got to know where it's going to stop, because if you don't

then you're potentially looking at a disaster.

So they had to do all the calculations to make sure

that the drag chains, the chains that were physically attached

to the hull, which would get pulled with the ship,

were heavy enough to stop her.

In actual fact, they were just two feet out.

The ship stopped almost exactly where they had predicted she would.

So, huge relief.

HORN HONKS

The launch was a triumph,

but the Queen Mary still had two more years

of finishing work ahead of her

while the French super ship Normandie

was already ruling the waves.

She'd won the coveted Blue Riband prize for being the fastest ship

across the Atlantic on her first attempt.

So when the Queen Mary was finally ready to leave the Clyde,

the eyes of the world were once again on Scotland.

Through the young eyes of four-year-old Eileen Gourley,

the spectacle left an impression that's lasted a lifetime.

Dad put me up on his shoulders and just everybody was cheering,

and this huge, beautiful thing came gliding by.

She was the biggest ship, of course, that had gone down the Clyde

and nobody had thought about the wash that she might create.

And we're standing there on this flat field

and suddenly a huge wave is coming towards us.

That's what I do remember mostly -

that everybody was running for their lives

because they didn't want to get wet.

Seeing this wonderful ship go by,

it was just amazing to my small eyes, you know.

She was so beautiful.

I could tell that people were really proud of it, as well.

They were really so pleased to see her, yes.

Very exciting.

It was an achievement of epic proportions

and Cunard were keen to publicise their record-breaking new ship.

One of the most-loved documents is Cunard's book of comparisons.

The book of comparisons was designed to show off

the superliner's impressive credentials.

Placed upright, she was taller than the Eiffel Tower.

Ten million rivets weighing 4,000 tonnes

had been used in her construction.

Each of the four epic propellers measured 20 feet high.

They were so delicately balanced they could be turned

with the touch of a hand.

Her main engines could generate over 200,000 horsepower -

equal to that of 50 locomotive steam engines.

The forward funnel was 70 feet high

and wide enough to let three of those monster trains pass through.

This is the kind of publicity material that's memorable

and that creates excitement amongst people of all ages,

from small children to their grandparents.

Seven turbo generators could deliver nearly 10,000 kilowatts per hour -

enough energy to service a city the size of Brighton.

This was what it took to power 30,000 lamps,

21 electric lifts and a whopping 60,000 cubic feet of refrigeration.

They were just full of statistical superlatives.

The amount of inventory that went into the manufacturer was colossal.

Branches of some of the world's most famous stores could be found

in the Queen Mary shopping centre.

With three acres of recreational deck space, two cinemas,

two swimming pools, two gymnasiums,

a squash court and a ballroom that was largest room ever constructed

inside a ship, entertaining yourself would never be a problem.

Much as a later generation perhaps

got excited about spacecraft,

in the 1930s ocean liners really captured the public imagination.

They were the most newsworthy things.

The fact that there was a rivalry between the major liner companies,

the fact the French had built the superlative Normandie

and that that vessel had thrown down the gauntlet to the British,

and here, a year later, was another liner,

slightly bigger - but would it be faster?

'At the London terminus,

'passengers took trains for Southampton

'to embark upon the most memorable voyage

'in the history of Britain's Merchant Navy.

'The great day has arrived for the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary,

'bound for New York in the Blue Riband of the Atlantic.

'Good luck, the Queen Mary!'

On the day of departure, the eyes of the world were on Southampton

and no expense had been spared in making this a momentous sendoff.

Getting a passage on the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary

was like winning a magical golden ticket.

Amongst those lucky few was 14-year-old Heather Beagley.

People had to put their names down well in advance

if they wanted to go on the maiden voyage.

It was rather like going to the moon now.

Out of the inhabitants of Bristol,

we were the only family apart from one other that went,

and Bristol was agog with us going.

When we arrived there and I looked up at the ship,

I could not believe it.

Nowadays we're used to seeing these huge liners.

but that to us, then, it was just enormous.

HORN HONKS

The excitement, of course, was tremendous.

'Good luck, the Queen Mary!'

# Hearts will flow with admiration

# When our new liner leaves the quay... #

2,079 passengers had mounted the gangway New York-bound

via a short stop in Cherbourg, France.

# British labour gave its skill

# And it's giving me a thrill... #

A first-class return ticket cost just over £100 -

£5,000 in today's terms.

Third-class passengers could travel for a modest £33.

But on the decks, you were free to mingle and be amazed

at the luxurious surroundings no matter what you paid.

It would have seemed like another world,

a kind of fantasy world that had emerged in reality.

And it was British.

# The Queen Mary takes me. #

Evenings were very much a gala affair,

with champagne flowing and ballgowns glowing.

What we all loved was Henry Hall's dance band.

The last night we danced to 2:15, which, you know,

I'm surprised because it wasn't so laissez faire then.

That concludes the programme of dance music played to you

by the BBC Dance Orchestra directed by Henry Hall.

Goodbye, everyone. Goodbye, and here's to the next time.

As the Queen Mary neared America,

news cameras flew out to greet her and see if she was going to win

the Blue Riband for being the fastest ship across the Atlantic.

The whole of New York was there to witness the arrival.

I cannot tell you how amazing the arrival in New York was.

I don't know any other event that's equalled that.

Aeroplanes flew around above...

..fire hoses sprayed, arcing out on the river...

..and a lot of well-known people came out to welcome us.

It was absolutely incredible.

Despite the joyous welcome, the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary

took four days, five hours and 24 minutes.

'She didn't break the Normandie record,

'but the officers say they didn't think it wise

'to open up her engines full.

'Any time they want, so the Englishmen say,

'they can take that record away.'

A few months later, she did win the Blue Riband,

and with the addition of a new type of propeller,

she finally settled her rivalry with the Normandie,

steaming to New York in well under four days.

It was the maritime equivalent of the four-minute mile

and a dazzling new speed record which she held

for the next 14 years.

But soon events in Europe would have a drastic effect

on Britain's new superliner.

'And in Vienna, the arrival of Hitler.'

In 1938, Hitler swept unopposed into Austria.

The fear that spread through Europe would see the luxury liner

become a salvation for Jewish families such as the Tennenbaums.

This is me in Vienna.

These home movies show the happy life that Robert Tennenbaum

and his family enjoyed before the arrival of Hitler.

That's my two grandfathers

holding my hands.

That's our little car, the Steyr.

Which, by the way, was the first thing stolen by the Nazis.

It looked like a fun life.

But Robert's father knew there was trouble ahead

and it was time to leave Vienna.

My dad bought a first-class ticket on the Queen Mary

because he knew that if he didn't spend all his German money,

it would be stolen from him.

As we passed the border we were allowed to take the equivalent

of four American dollars on our trip to the United States.

That's all they allowed.

The rest of it they would steal,

so why not buy the best cabin

with a private bathroom on the Queen Mary?

Give it to the Brits!

Give the money to the Brits and not to the damn Nazis.

This is on the ship.

There's Mom and the first glimpses, a look of sadness...

..which, you know, I can understand.

If we had stayed, there is a very good chance we would have ended up

in the nearest concentration camp.

So my dad made the right decision to leave as early as possible.

Here we are in good old USA.

Throughout Europe, Jewish families were fleeing Nazi persecution.

In Eschwege, Germany, there was another family who would rely

even more on the help of Queen Mary to make their escape.

Ludwig Katzenstein was six years old.

I was young,

but I knew what was happening.

Terrible, terrible, what that Hitler did.

Ludwig's father had bought last-minute tickets

on the Queen Mary, but they needed to get to Cherbourg

in France to meet her.

When we came to the border,

the train stopped and who gets on?

The Gestapo.

"Let's see your passport."

According to the Gestapo, there was a problem with the family's papers

and they couldn't cross the border before it was addressed.

Finally, in the evening, they let us go.

But then we would have been late to the Queen Mary.

So my father went to the head of the train

and asked him, he begged him to telegraph the captain

of the Queen Mary and tell him what happened.

Could he wait for us?

In Cherbourg, with over 2,000 passengers already on board,

the Queen Mary was ready to depart.

This was some request and

that captain waited for us six hours.

Unbelievable. Miracles happen.

What a ship!

Oh...

You got lost there.

There wasn't a spot on the ship that we didn't investigate.

From the front to the back, from the top to the bottom.

It was Commodore Robert Irving who made the decision to wait

for Ludwig and his family.

The captain first of all,

he sometimes took me where the steering wheel was.

He let me steer the ship.

It made me feel so good.

I was steering the Queen Mary!

The largest ship in the world.

I was very, very proud because all of a sudden I was important.

After four days of fun on the ship,

Ludwig's new life in America beckoned.

In the morning...

Oh...

We saw the Statue of Liberty.

Oh, that was such a feeling.

It's very hard to describe.

We felt free...

..for the first time, after so many years.

The early crossings of 1939 were crammed full of people

like the Katzensteins fleeing the Nazis in Europe.

Then on the 3rd of September, Britain declared war on Germany.

From that moment the Queen Mary was no longer just a passenger ship,

she was a potential target for enemy submarines.

The ship that had come to epitomise the style and elegance of the '30s

was soon stripped down and transformed to take on a new role.

'You've seen the life aboard Britain's mightiest liner

'in times of peace. Today, all that has changed.

'We are at war and it's evil things we're fighting.

'The stake is freedom.

'The difference between a world of whimpering,

'soulless, goose-stepping robots,

'cringing in the shadow of a twisted cross and a twisted mind.'

The newly armed and camouflaged ship's speed and ability to cross

U-boat-infested oceans unseen earned her the nickname The Grey Ghost

and she began a vital service transporting

British and Australian troops all over the world

to the front lines in North Africa and the Middle East.

But the Queen Mary would soon be

speeding across the Atlantic once again...

..when in December 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor

and America joined the war.

Bill Spurrier was 16 at the time.

I graduated from high school and the next day I got a notice

that I had been inducted into the service.

They just said go here, do that, and that's what I did.

You know - yes, sir, no, sir.

Ray Devau was another of those men.

I was still in high school.

I was supposed to graduate, but they said that Uncle Sam wants you.

So I went to Camp Carson in Colorado for my basic training.

Although they never met,

Ray and Bill's journey to war would cross paths on the Queen Mary.

When we got there and we looked up at this huge monstrosity,

you know, I said, "Oh, my God!"

They loaded us in, like, the side of the ship.

Of course, it had been converted into a transport,

so a lot of the beautiful woodwork and everything were either

covered up or moved, but we could tell it was a beautiful ship.

This was the beginning of one of the greatest movement of troops

in history.

The Queen Mary had been refitted to carry whole divisions at a time.

But the Atlantic Ocean was a hazardous place.

Record sinkings by U-Boat wolfpacks meant thousands of merchant ships

met their end.

Among the victims, some of the world's most renowned liners.

In those deadly days, vigilance was the price of life.

The captain explained we're going to be zigzagging across,

changing course about every 15 minutes.

That really awakened us to the fact that now we were

going into harm's way.

Realising her troop-carrying potential,

Hitler had offered a huge bounty and the Iron Cross -

Germany's highest honour -

to any U-boat captain that could sink the Queen Mary.

But she was faster than all of them and would zigzag across the Atlantic

to throw her pursuers off course.

It was a huge relief to the thousands of troops she carried.

With up to 15,000 men on board, space was at a premium,

as evidenced by the sleeping and catering arrangements.

We had about that much room, really.

It was like a sardine in a can, almost.

They fed us twice a day, because there are so many troops on there.

Those poor chefs, all they did was...

By the time they finished breakfast, it was dinner time to start.

It was just like a continuous convoy.

There was also the problem of how to occupy yourself

on the five-day crossing.

Gambling was forbidden aboard the ship.

Well... That...

didn't work out too well.

You can't control 12,000 guys

and their desire to entertain themselves.

So there was card games and there was dice

and there was poker going on all over the ship.

20-year-old Brooklyn boy Larry Schlesinger

was a member of the military police in charge of security on the ship.

I was a complete neophyte.

I'd never been on anything bigger than a ferry before.

And being on a huge ship like this was an...

out-of-world experience, almost.

And it wasn't just poker-playing men

on board that Larry had to contend with.

'Here they are, WACS, in mounting thousands,

'America's women soldiers, trained and disciplined,

'fulfilling the purpose for which their corps was created.

'Some go overseas, anywhere the Army may want them,

'to take over vital jobs behind the lines.'

There was a group of Women's Army Corps -

we called them WACS - on board.

We kept the guard on the passageway to keep any roaming...

Romeos out of the women's quarters.

But also to keep the women in their own area.

One of the problems we had

was keeping the soldiers below decks at night

and not up on the deck where they would light cigarettes,

which would be a dead giveaway to anybody who was looking for us.

You know, we were all young kids.

I was 20 years old.

At that age, everything is an adventure.

You really don't think about what the dangers are.

Even the danger of lurking U-boats

isn't something that struck fear into us or anything.

It was kind of a lark, you know? "Oh, boy,

"that'd be interesting!"

That sort of thing.

Month after month, the Queen Mary safely negotiated

the enemy-infested waters,

and never once did she come under fire.

But on the morning of the 2nd of October, 1942,

her wartime service was touched by tragedy.

It was a disaster so extreme,

it was covered up until well after the end of the war.

Travelling at over 30mph

and powered by engines that take 20 miles to stop,

the Queen Mary had crossed the Atlantic

and was being escorted towards Scotland.

The closest of the escorting ships was the ageing cruiser Curacoa,

who was struggling to keep pace.

On board the Curacoa were 439 men.

Full, with around 15,000 troops, the Queen Mary was, as usual,

following a zigzag course to confuse the enemy.

In command was officer of the watch Noel James Robinson.

I walked out to the wing of the bridge here.

and I immediately saw the cruiser...

was rather too close, much too close. In fact, dangerously close.

ALARM BELL RINGS

Immediately, Robinson gave the order to put the helm hard port,

but it was too late.

We struck her virtually amidships.

And cut the ship... completely in half.

That was the crushing force of 81,000 tonnes

charging through the ocean at an unstoppable rate.

The actual impact was not even noticed by anyone

on the bridge at all.

In fact, it was hardly felt by anyone on the ship.

We just went through her like butter.

The Queen Mary was under strict orders

not to stop under any circumstances.

If she did, she would be a sitting target for any lurking U-boat.

There was nothing we could do.

We just had to steam on...

..on the same zigzag and the same speed,

because we were still in the danger area.

338 men lost their lives that day.

101 were picked up by other ships.

On the Isle of Wight,

Queen Mary enthusiast Jonathan Quayle

has tracked down a unique set of documents and photographs

which shows just how close things came

to an even more unimaginable disaster.

These are from the enquiry held just post-war as to who was responsible.

"Official photograph, not to be released for publication."

So these were effectively secret photos at the time.

It was really hushed up.

These pictures show that if the Queen Mary

hadn't been built so well,

the loss of life would have been eight times that of the Titanic,

and a devastating blow to the war effort.

Instantly, they shored her up by pouring concrete into this area,

which stopped the leak.

She sailed with that damage for a while.

A view I've never seen before outside of this publication,

and you can see how extreme

the damage was.

This stem has been bent right round.

That, thankfully, bent around

and largely sealed the hole.

But incredible, the amount of damage it did do.

The post-war enquiry into the disaster

concluded that 60% of the blame be apportioned

to the Curacoa and 40 to the Queen Mary.

Quickly patched up, the Queen Mary was back in service,

fulfilling her vital role

bringing yet more thousands of troops across the pond.

But it wasn't just troops she was carrying.

On several occasions,

it was some of the most important people in the world.

Welcome to the Churchill suite, which is cabin M119.

This is one of the finest chambers in the Queen Mary for travel

and for hotel guests today.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill

made three trips across the North Atlantic during World War II

to meet with President Roosevelt and to plan out

the final invasion of Normandy and the eventual victory in Europe.

Allen Packwood, the director of the Churchill Archives in Cambridge,

has discovered some rarely seen documents and photographs

relating to these critical wartime journeys.

Today, he's meeting Sir Winston's great-grandson, Randolph.

Of course, your great-grandfather, Winston Churchill,

travelled on the Queen Mary several times during the Second World War,

over to Washington in 1943,

and what you have here

are the record of the proceedings of chiefs of staff meetings

on board the Queen Mary.

I must say, I can't believe that you've got Churchill, Alan Brooke,

Charles Portal and Lord Louis Mountbatten.

You've got the entire high command on board one ship.

That was quite brave of them.

Absolutely. Prime Minister, Minister of Defence

but also the heads of the Army, Navy and Air Force

and the Head of Combined Operations.

Yes. My goodness,

if she had been sunk...

On the Queen Mary, surrounded by his generals and chiefs of staff,

Churchill could strategise and plan out some of the major events of the

Second World War, including the invasion of Normandy.

D-Day was made possible in no small measure

by the troop-carrying service of the Queen Mary.

This was the turning point to victory.

You think of her as an incredible cruise liner.

And it's quite a revelation to realise

what an important military role the Queen Mary played

in the Second World War.

For two more important Atlantic crossings, Churchill

chose the Queen Mary for her ability to outrun

the German U-boats.

Randolph, I don't know whether you've seen these before,

but I just had to show these wonderful images

from the journey home after the second Quebec conference.

Gosh. They look so relaxed, don't they?

They look as though they're enjoying themselves.

Of course, this was after D-Day,

so he could be more relaxed.

But a lovely, sunny day on deck.

Wonderful pictures of Winston and Clementine together.

And I think he's clear, he knew the worst was behind us by that point.

-And doing the famous V for Victory salute over here.

-Yes.

You can see how much enjoyment he got

out of being on the Queen Mary.

I think it also shows what a great reception he'd had

in the United States and Canada, as well,

that he was able to come back in such a jovial form,

knowing that all the groundwork for the end of the war

had been put in place.

I suppose it's the Churchillian equivalent of Air Force One.

A damn sight better.

HE CHUCKLES

You got a decent meal onboard!

By the end of 1945,

the Queen Mary had transported almost a million men

to the field of war,

and steamed nearly half a million miles all over the globe.

But her war duties were far from over

and she took on the role of repatriating

the thousands of war-weary troops.

'As tugs got her away from the quay,

'and the strip of water widens between ship and shore,

'may we hope that the Americans,

'happy as they were to be going home,

'have retained pleasant memories of Britain.'

Onboard one of the Queen Mary's many return trips to America

was pilot Bob Hastie and navigator Dick Tyhurst.

I remember the trip coming home on the Queen Mary.

We made it in three and a half days.

And it was so smooth, er...

We had some turbulence, because I remember lots of guys getting sick.

-But not our ex-Air Force types...

-I don't remember any turbulence.

I do!

I remember everybody looking down and no whitecaps.

Anyway, I'm not going to argue with you.

Well, it won't do you any good.

THEY LAUGH

-It never has!

-No, it never did, no.

Having flown over 13 missions together

in the famous 95th Bomb Group,

they were glad to be travelling back in style,

despite the overcrowding.

They told us there were something like 15,000 people aboard.

Something like 4,000 guys,

sleeping in the corridors in their sleeping bags.

But with no more lurking submarines to outrun, no zigzagging gun drills,

these homeward-bound journeys became a much more enjoyable experience

for the troops on board.

Oh, everybody was so damn happy to be going back home.

-Yeah, it...

-I never heard a guy bitch...

on the way home.

Every guy I ever talked to thought it was great.

And the ship's crew did what they could to improve the ride.

The waiters were all dressed up and neat and...

it was just exceptional.

I said, I'd go round-trip, just to eat!

For those who had been through hell

and lived to see their homeland again,

the hero's welcome in New York was overwhelming.

Wow! Back in the United States again!

WILD CHEERING

LAUGHTER

'One soldier couldn't wait for the big ship to dock.

'He bet his comrades he'd be the first man ashore,

'and he had to get wet to win.'

Among the waiting crowds were Dick's wife and Bob's girlfriend.

I think she was so happy to have me home.

Betty and I got married as soon as I got home.

It was great.

The next job for the Queen Mary was to reunite 22,000 British war brides

with their American husbands.

The ship was once again repurposed -

this time as the world's largest floating nursery.

Among the excited brides was 20-year-old Jean Dahler.

It was all a big, wondrous thing.

I was excited about going.

Also on board was 18-year-old Annie Wichert.

All the cabin ends, the bunk beds,

and writing on the ceilings and the walls from the troops.

Three years before her voyage to a new life in America,

Annie had been working in a factory.

We were making Spitfire fighter planes, yeah.

And I came out, and my future husband was doing cartwheels.

I said, "Oh, my God."

I didn't like him at first.

He was a big show-off,

-you know.

-SHE CHUCKLES

I used to go dancing, into London.

In that's where I met my American husband.

He taught me how to jitterbug.

SHE LAUGHS

I wasn't really into that, because I was a ballroom dancer.

And I used to say...

.."Couldn't you take longer steps?"

Because Americans just shuffle around when they dance.

The first night that we met,

and he kissed me on the cheek.

And I thought, "That's wonderful."

He didn't go too far and he was just very nice about it.

Well, we got to see each other.

He'd come in from his camp

and we'd have something to eat or go to the Red Cross.

I got to like him more.

SHE CHUCKLES

One time, before...

before we were married,

my dad caught us in bed together...

SHE CHUCKLES

..and, er, made him go home.

And, let's see, in a couple months, we got engaged.

After the war in Europe ended,

Annie and Jean's husbands were sent straight back to America.

So by the time the two brides set sail on the Queen Mary,

they hadn't seen their husbands for over a year.

The boat started to roll, and we all started giggling and screaming.

SHE CHUCKLES

And we got a little further out and it rolled a lot more.

A lot of them were sick

and I kept saying to myself, "You're not going to be sick,

"you're going to enjoy this.

'New York City and the brides have stayed up most of the night

'to get their first glimpse of their new home.

'And a welcoming nation received them with happiness and warmth.'

Everybody was there to meet their brides.

I was most surprised to see Marshall in this grey tweed suit.

SHE CHUCKLES

It just... It didn't look like him at all.

After the war, the Queen Mary was restored to her former splendour.

Her eight-month refurbishment brought her back to life

and a whole new generation of passengers and crew

fell in love with her charm.

Dave Wooders was a bellboy on the Queen Mary in the early '50s.

I will always remember getting out of this taxi

with my suitcase and walking along

the side of the Queen Mary

and there she was, 81,000 tonnes of metal.

It was...just unbelievable

and that will always stay with me

because it was the very, very first time

that I'd been close to anything like that size.

Also on board through the '50s

was June Tate, who was a hairdresser

in one of the ship's three beauty salons.

So there I was, walking up this gangway of this magnificent liner.

She was a beautiful, beautiful ship.

Having lived through the rationing of post-war Britain,

Dave couldn't believe the catering arrangements on board.

'Cunard chefs are masters of the art

'of appealing to the eye as well as to the appetite.'

I've never seen so much food.

There was every kind of meat you wanted, all the veg.

And I can remember what I had.

It was chicken.

In those days the only time we ever had chicken was at Christmas.

-COMMENTATOR:

-'Mmmm! Mmmm!'

But the other side of the coin is that night,

because it was quite rough, I was seasick.

And let's just put it this way -

I never ate chicken for about three years after that.

'To many first-time ocean travellers,

'the elegance of their seagoing home is a surprise indeed,

'so perfectly appointed in every tiny detail.'

The passengers lived in great luxury.

Apart from the poor souls in the tourist, where it was rather basic.

But the female members of the crew did not.

We lived in small cabins, two sharing.

Now, we were not supposed to mix socially

with the male members of the crew,

but, of course, rules are made to be broken.

And so, we would have little parties in our cabins,

and the idea was that you didn't get caught going or leaving.

In those days, it was prior to the transatlantic flights to New York,

so, of course, everyone travelled by sea

and we had all the movie stars and the millionaires and the VIPs.

And...I looked after quite a few.

Rosalind Russell was a famous movie star at the time.

She had great panache and she swept into the beauty parlour

and made quite an entrance.

She was very, very nice.

Judy Garland came walking down with Liza - Liza Minnelli.

Now, I had had a picture of Errol Flynn in my bedroom as a teenager

and it was a picture that would follow you

wherever you went in the room,

so when I used to get undressed I used to turn it to the wall.

And there was this man sitting there.

I was totally, totally starstruck.

There was so much to see and to do.

Especially when you get to New York.

I stood there staring at the Statue Of Liberty

as we sailed past, thinking I was living the dream.

New York is my most favourite city in the whole world.

It's got a buzz about it.

Times Square,

with all its lights.

New York was grand, but, according to Cunard,

getting there was half the fun.

Throughout the 1960s, actress Millicent Martin

travelled on the Queen Mary as she hopped between jobs

in the West End and on Broadway.

It was magic.

I mean, just a fabulous, fabulous way to travel.

I mean, the whole liner was like a...

one great big huge beautiful hotel.

I mean, it was just gorgeous.

Being a girl, I liked all the prettiness of it.

You could just relax

and the whole team would take care of you

and she would take care of you.

It's kind of an era when people took time to travel

and took time to enjoy something that was beautiful.

She was what I'd call true luxury.

It was the best of everything was put into her,

and that was the great thing.

I mean, I think she was the most glamorous of all of them.

Despite the glamour and luxury she afforded,

there was trouble ahead for the ageing Queen Mary.

A new threat was lurking in the skies.

JET ENGINES ROAR

By 1965, 95% of all transatlantic travellers

were crossing in the fast jets of Pan Am

and the major European airlines.

You could now fly from New York to London in under seven hours,

not four days.

The 1,000 tonnes of oil that the Queen Mary guzzled each day made her

uneconomical, and for the first time ever, she was operating at a loss.

Speculation over the future of the ship began,

with schemes for the Queen Mary

ranging from being used as a floating Brooklyn high school

to becoming a refuge for London's homeless.

Scrap dealers jumped at the lucrative opportunity

of taking her to pieces.

Then, out of nowhere,

the city of Long Beach, California

placed a bid that aimed to preserve her as a maritime museum

and floating hotel.

It was a huge relief to long-serving captain John Treasure Jones.

I am very delighted that she is not going to the scrapyard,

and that she will for many years stand as, I hope,

a symbol to British shipbuilding

and British engineering and British seafaring in California.

There was to be one final hurrah -

an epic 40-day cruise around Cape Horn to Long Beach.

On 31st October 1967,

the Queen Mary left Southampton for the very last time,

watched by millions.

'From the people of the land of her birth,

'and from the Royal Navy,

'came the final honour for the greatest merchant ship ever built.

'The Queen Mary had sailed from Britain, never again to return.'

These are the personal home movies of Captain Treasure Jones,

who captured the final voyage in all its nostalgic gaiety.

Providing the evening entertainment was legendary crooner Johnny Mathis.

I knew that this was going to be an iconic time in my life,

to say that I took the last voyage of the Queen Mary.

However, it was very calm, the first two days that we were there.

And then on the day that we were to perform,

they informed us that the water was going to get a little rough.

Well, it got terrible!

I was OK, but unfortunately, the musicians got violently ill.

They just couldn't even get out of their beds,

so we had to change our music.

I do remember the microphone was not solid to the floor.

Good idea, because during the performance, my performance,

I was sliding back and forth and back...

And once I got accustomed to it, it was kind of nice.

I didn't mind it at all.

# Chances are

# Cos I wear a silly grin

# The moment you... #

And I didn't have to move - the boat moved for me.

As chance would have it,

Johnny had to get off the ship in the Canary Islands.

I had this wonderful experience, and I got off the boat,

the ship, just in time.

The Queen Mary was not designed for the warmer climates

of the South Pacific.

With no air conditioning through the lower decks,

the crew and passengers suffered an uncomfortable final stretch

around Cape Horn and up to California.

But the welcome she got in Long Beach more than made up for it.

Having sailed almost four million miles in her 31 years at sea,

the tired old Queen was retired in the California sun.

Her giant propellers were disconnected from the engines,

and, henceforward, the Queen Mary was classified as a building.

She was reopened to the public in 1970,

and has since been visited by over 50 million people.

Today, June Tate uses her memories

of working on the ship as inspiration

for the romantic novels she now writes.

I loved the life on board,

because it was like living in a different world.

Well, it was a different world, an entirely different world.

It wasn't real life at all.

In the evening after work,

you'd walk around those decks a few times to get some fresh air,

and you'd look out over the waves, and the sky - if you were lucky -

would be clear, full of stars, the moon shining.

That ship is carved in my memory and in my soul.

For those whose lives have become forever entwined

with the story of the Queen Mary,

she is a living portal back to their memories.

From her maiden voyage, she carried over 2.5 million passengers,

safely transported nearly a million troops

through enemy infested seas...

..and brought 22,000 war brides to a new life in America.

I believe this ship has a soul, very much,

and she is one of the luckiest ships that the world has ever known.

And may she always be a reminder that she is the Pearl Of Scotland,

where she was created, in the country that gave her her life.

-INTERVIEWER:

-Why do people feel so emotional about this ship?

That's a little hard to say, this...

You know you get fond of a lady?

Well, you can get fond of the ship the same way.

And you like some ladies better than others -

well, you like some ships better than the others.

And I think this ship was the first of her class, of course.

She was the first Queen.

She has such beautiful decor inside,

and I think that and the general atmosphere of the ship

has attached her to people.