Thursday - January 20, 2005

Long Beach: A Visit to the Queen Mary

We decided not to take any of the shore excursions offered by the ship, but rather to put together our own excursion to visit the Queen Mary in Long Beach. So we disembarked one Cunard ship, only to take a short taxi ride back in time so we could step on board another.

The Queen Mary was launched in 1936 and taken out of service in 1967 when she was replaced by the Queen Elizabeth 2. Seeing as we will be returning from Southampton to New York on the new Queen Mary 2, we decided that it might be fun to see what her namesake had looked like in her heyday. A short taxi ride to Long Beach Pier brought us to the Queen Mary Hotel. Yes, she is now a floating hotel, after many years of neglect. The doorman told us that the ship is often fully booked on weekends, and that her main public rooms and dining rooms are used frequently for weddings and other functions. So, although her sailing days are over, the Queen Mary still has some life left in her.

We started off on the self-guided walking tour, which took us through most areas of the ship, when who should we run into but Dirk Bogarde and Diana Dors (John and Pam). We had told them of our plans at dinner the night before and they must have thought it a good idea. John was all decked out in a beige linen suit, a beige and brown polka dot tie, and the panama hat he had recently purchased in Panama. He looked as though he belonged on the ship!

After having some lunch with them on the deck, we continued our tour which took us through displays of what some of the cabins and dining rooms looked like in the late 30s. They were all quite lovely and very Art Deco. We also saw what some parts of the ship looked like after she had been refitted during World War II to carry troops, sometimes as many as 16,000 of them! After checking out the bridge and its antiquated communications systems, we plunged deeper into the bowels of the ship and stumbled across the first class dining room. This room was enormous, and could seat over 800 first-class guests at one sitting with an area for an orchestra and a dance floor as well. It still had its original Art Deco fittings, which included Lalique panels, three-story grand pillars, and a huge 15 x 24 foot decorative leather map that showed the progress of the ship across the Atlantic. Wine coolers were sterling silver. The Queen's Salon, the first class main lounge, is another magnificent room that we we were able to enter by chance. It was equally lovely, with huge fireplaces and mirrors at each end of the room and very Deco light fittings. The walls were decorated with scenes done in inlaid wood. A room that brought back memories for us was the Observation Lounge. On an unusually cold evening, one January about 15 years ago, Mike and I had enjoyed a drink here with some English friends, Major General Jimmy Brown and the distinguished gentleman Richard Field, in an attempt to warm up. It looked just the same as it did then, when we commented that one expected to look over and see Clark Gable sitting with a beautiful lady or Fred Astaire dancing through the doorway.

Before leaving, we made our way to the Engine Room to see the 4 huge stem turbine engines and the 27 boilers. We also visited a special room where you can see one of the enormous propellers under the water. A video that talked about the history of the ship and showed all the famous people who had walked her decks finished off our visit. (If you're wondering why the video came at the end of the visit instead of at the beginning, it's because the tour was self-guided and we started in the middle, went to the end, and then finished up at the beginning!) But no matter how you approach her, the Queen Mary was quite a ship!