By Eric Niderost
The late summer of 1939 saw Great Britain teetering on the brink of war with Hitler’s Germany. The years of appeasement and vacillation, of meekly acquiescing to Hitler’s insatiable territorial demands, were over at last. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s government pledged to come to Poland’s aid if it was attacked. It was clear that if the Polish crisis could not be settled amicably Europe would be at war within a matter of days. Southampton became a magnet for thousands of people seeking to escape the Continent before hostilities began. Many were Americans, who cut their holidays short for fear of being trapped on the wrong side of the Atlantic. One such “refugee” was entertainer Bob Hope and his wife, Dolores, who booked passage on the RMS Queen Mary. The Hopes were not alone, and in fact Queen Mary had a record 2,332 passengers aboard when she left Southampton on August 30, 1939.
The Queen Mary had survived the Great Depression, an economic hurricane that had once threatened her very existence. The great liner was designed to resist the fury of nature, but could the Queen Mary also weather the storms of war? Only time would tell.
Why the RMS Queen Mary Was an Instant Legend
RMS Queen Mary was Britain’s entry in the fierce transatlantic passenger trade. Commercial aviation was in its infancy in the 1920s and 1930s, leaving passenger liners the only viable way to get to Europe. Before World War I, most shipping companies made their money in steerage, transporting thousands of poor immigrants to new and hopefully better lives in America. But when Congress curtailed immigration in the early 1920s, steamship companies like Cunard faced serious financial difficulties.
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Hi Eric… Thank you so much for your well researched information on the Queen Mary.
I have a shoe box of memorabilia and souvenirs collected by my uncle, Leslie Jack Connolly, throughout his life. I came across a postcard of the H.T Queen Mary and two menus from the officer mess, dated January 1941, and just had to find out why he had collected these items.
I knew he had been in the Australian Army and I also knew he had served in the Middle East and now I know how he got there. He left Sydney, Australian on the Queen Mary at the end of December 1940, or the beginning of January 1941 and arrived in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka on the 31 January, 1941. His brother Eric Sydney Connelly was also with him.
So thank you again for your information on the Queen Mary.
Regards
Vicki
I just came across a letter from my father, John Oliver Fletcher, to a family friend, detailing his war time experiences as a pilot in the RAF. As a side note at the end of the letter, he left this comment: “The stamp on your envelope is interesting. It shows the very first building that I ever saw in Canada after leaving the Queen Mary with a hole in it at Boston before heading for New Brunswick.” I have vague memories of my father describing the tragedy and the result… but did not have any real idea what a big deal it was, as he tended to brush things off, I think, as a way to make them easier for us to understand. Much of the emotional toll of war was not communicated, but he did refuse to ever go on any type of vacation cruise, saying that they were a waste of money. I now understand that there was much more behind that stance than he was able to communicate. Thank you for your detailed article enabling me to better understand who my father was long before I arrived.
Hi Vicki – We would love to hear more about your uncle’s connection with the RMS Queen Mary and maybe able to help provide more detail of his time onboard the ship. Please reach out if interested. Mary.rohrer@qmi.care – Foundation for the RMS Queen Mary ( http://www.Qmi.care) Thank you
My dad was a sailor on the Queen Mary I around 1944-1945. He remembers ferrying American troops across the Atlantic. Interesting to hear about the history of the ship.
Hi Pauline – We would love to hear more about your Dads’s connection with the RMS Queen Mary and maybe able to help provide more detail of his time onboard the ship. Please reach out if interested. Mary.rohrer@qmi.care – Foundation for the RMS Queen Mary ( http://www.Qmi.care) Thank you
1944, I was 4 on holiday at the Isle of White. I grew up with the memory that a man on horseback rode along the beach telling everyone to get out of the water as the Queen Mary was either coming or going out of Southampton. Could this be a true memory.
My dad, Joseph Kohout, was with the Battery B, 743rd Battalion, Coastal Artillery (AA), when his unit was one of several on the QM during its ’40 Days & 40 Nights’ voyage, 2/18/42-3/28-42. He ended up in New Guinea with Aussie units as an AA gunner. Said he remembered the Rio de Janeiro port call. Said the troops on the QM were issued surplus WWI kapok life jackets which were mostly no good when they had a pool filled with water to test them. Kapok tree floss inside had deteriorated! Lost its ‘buoyancy’; didn’t help morale much! Also said he was trained to shoot down German/Italian planes and thought he was being sent to Britain, not the South Pacific, and had to learn Japanese plane silhouettes and markings once he got there.