RMS Queen Mary | hotel, museum, ship, historic landmark

USA / California / Long Beach / Queens Highway, 1126
 hotel, museum, ship, historic landmark
1126 Queens Highway
Long Beach, CA 90802
(562) 435-3511
www.queenmary.com/

The RMS Queen Mary was a Cunard Line (then Cunard White Star Line) ocean liner that sailed the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967. Built by John Brown and Company, Clydebank, Scotland, she was designed to be the first of Cunard's planned two-ship weekly express service from Southampton to New York, in answer to the mainland European super-liners of the late twenties and early thirties.

Queen Mary and her slightly larger and younger running mate RMS Queen Elizabeth commenced this two-ship service after their release from World War II troop transport duties and continued it until for two decades until Queen Mary's retirement in 1967 as a tourist attraction.

Hundreds of films and television shows have filmed aboard, including "The Poseidon Adventure," which shot many pre-capsizing scenes in 1972.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Queen_Mary
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   33°45'10"N   118°11'23"W

Comments

  • She is not sitting on the bottom. She is still floating, and rises and falls with the tide.
  • One engine removed? Man, everything's been removed! Keel cracking....lol! The only thing that's gonna make it crack is the enormous debt that seems to pile up with attempting to maintain her as a tourist attraction. Long live the Queen!
  • more than just one engine was removed...the entire forward engine room and all of the boilers were removed leaving behind enormous caverns in the entire midships down to her double bottom. I was given a special tour when I was a kid...a haunting experience I've never forgotten. Additionally, her funnels were removed and replaced with aluminum replicas. Queen Mary was, in the words of the legendary maritime author John Maxtone Graham "gutted and aluminized". Nonetheless, I am grateful that she did not meet the fate of more or less all the great liners...a wreck on the ocean floor or run aground and scrapped on some foreign beach. The SS France (Norway) should pretty much be gone by now (scrapped at Alang, India). The Queen Elizabeth 2 is about to follow the Queen Mary's lead, where she has been sold by Cunard and will be retired in Dubai as a floating resort this month (October 2008)
  • Two of Mary's engines are gone while two remain.
  • As an interesting side note, one of the anchors and two of the bow letters "Q" and "E" from Queen Mary's ill fated sister Queen Elizabeth (1940) can be visited in Torrance at 3440 West Carson Street. (a couple of blocks from the Del Almo Fashion Center) The building used to be owned by C.Y. Tung, founder of the Orient Overseas Line. A year after Cunard retired Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth followed suit. Following several years in limbo, 'Mary's' larger sister 'Elizabeth' was purchased by C.Y. Tung who renamed her "Seawise University" with the intention of re-creating her as a sea-going university based out of Los Angeles...presumably cruising past Queen Mary as she embarked on and returned from World Cruises. While the refitting and repainting of "Seawise University" was being completed, a misterious fire broke out and quickly consumed what had been the world's largest passenger liner. Mr. Tung retrieved one of the Anchors and two of the letters, placing them in front of his building as a sort of memorial to his beloved ship where they remain to this day for no apparent reason.
This article was last modified 1 year ago