Queen Mary and Santa Catalina Island

October 7 - 12, 2012

In 1937, the Cunard Line sent the RMS Queen Mary on her maiden voyage, with New York as its destination.  The Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth provided year-round scheduled service between New York and South Hampton until Britain declared war in 1939.   She was immediately converted to a troop ship, and carried as many as 16,000 troops.  As the best way to cross the Atlantic, she carried 1957 people in three different classes, but the troops were not nearly so comfortable; they were hot bunking.

After WW2, the Queen Mary was refitted as a trans-Atlantic courier, resuming service in 1947.  In 1958, she got stabilizers.  Prior to that, the North Atlantic weather provided a really rugged passage.  By 1966, jet planes rendered ships like the two Queens irrelevant; the Queen Mary had made 1001 trans-Atlantic passages.  The city of Long Beach purchased the Queen Mary, eventually turning it into a floating hotel, stripped of its 27 boilers and all their support.

We visited the Queen Mary, Long Beach and Santa Catalina Island on a trip run by Road Scholar.  We had three nights on the Queen Mary and two nights in Avalon on Santa Catalina Island.

Queen Mary

Seen from the Long Beach waterfront, the Queen Mary looks like a smallish 1020-foot-long cruise ship.
From the parking lot at the Port of Long Beach, the Queen Mary looks much more like a 365-room hotel, or maybe just a tourist attraction.
Apart from the hand rails, this could be any hotel corridor.  Hand rails were a reaction to sailing through North Atlantic storms with no stabilizers. Notice that all the walls are wood veneer.  That applies to the corridors, to the state rooms, and to all the public rooms.  Some 50 or more different woods were used to finish the interiors.
Unlike any other ship we have been on, the Queen Mary gave us a cabin with a king size bed.  Actually, only the first class cabins were converted into hotel rooms.  The things against the ceiling are the 1937 version of air conditioning, vents and heating actually.  The Queen Mary didn't have real air conditioning in the rooms until refitted by Long Beach.
But the windows are not hotel windows.  All the cabins in all classes had portholes, because they are more resistant to the North Sea storms.  This is not the North Sea, just the Long Beach waterfront.
Every trip to and from our cabin took us past this door, and it took us past the Eisenhower suite as well.  Actually, as the classiest way to cross the Atlantic, the Queen Mary was used by anybody who was anybody in Hollywood, society or the government.  Or out of government;  the Duke of Windsor and his wife were frequent travelers.
The first class dining room is only used now for special events and very pricey Sunday brunches.  With its 30-foot ceilings, this is the largest enclosed space on any ship.  The major rooms are all Art Deco masterpieces, besides being show pieces for dozens of types of wood veneer.
The Grand Salon is also available for weddings and other festive events.  Still Art Deco.
The Observation Bar, just  beneath the bridge, carries out the Art Deco theme with a mural "The Royal Jubilee Week, 1935" over the bar.  The gray headed gentleman was our tour guide, a retired Princess line captain who lives on sailboat in the Long Beach Marina.  This was originally the first class lounge.
From the Sports Deck, the three funnels loom overhead.  The radio room is just to the left.
Looking across the stern of the Queen Mary, we see the Carnival Inspiration, launched in 1996.  This ship is smaller than the Queen Mary, but it carries about 600 more passengers.  The Queen Mary is too wide to go through the Panama Canal.  Carnival has a busy terminal in Long Beach, using the original home of the Spruce Goose.
On the bow, we see an addition for the tourists.  This is an anti-aircraft gun like those the Queen carried during WW2.  She was fast enough to out-run the submarines, though.  Behind the gun, you can see the windows of the Observation Bar, and above the bar you see the bridge.
The bridge of the Queen Mary is nothing like that on the contemporary cruise ships.  Lots of brass, with wheels for steering, telegraphs for communicating with the engine room.  Also, just above the binnacle, there are multiple speaking tubes.
At the other end of the ship's telegraphs, we have one of two engine rooms.  Notice the inclinometer to indicate how much the ship is rolling.  Lots of valves and gages.
The red housing covers one of four 40,000 horsepower steam turbines.  Those turbines made it possible for the Queen Mary to hold the trans-Atlantic speed record for decades.  Just aft of the turbines are gear boxes.
From each of the gear boxes there emerges a drive shaft, about 18 inches in diameter.
At the end of each drive shaft there is a single propeller.  One of the four has been preserved, and it is visible, looking down into the water.  This weighs 35 tons, and it is 20 feet across.