This is a photo of the second Cunard Queen - the RMS Queen Elizabeth. Here she is pictured alongside in New York City.
The maiden voyage of the new Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth was not as fancy as that of the Queen Mary 4 years earlier... not by a long shot. She entered service in 1940 when the UK was already at war. Her sea trials ended up being a secret dash across the Atlantic to New York City where her arrival in war time gray paint was a surprise. For a time she was birthed at the Cunard pier with her sister the Queen Mary - both in gray and now in government service. At the next pier over the French Line's SS. Normandie was birthed still looking very grand in her commercial colors. She had stayed in New York after hostilities broke out and France fell to Nazi Germany . After the United States entered the war, the U.S. Government seized her, renamed her the USS Lafayette and set about converting her into a troopship. But, she never sailed again. During her refitting, an accident set off a fire which gutted her and she rolled over on her side at the pier. She was finally righted, towed away from her berth and over to New Jersey where she was scrapped.
The Queen Elizabeth, like the Queen Mary made a major contribution to the allied war effort she was converted into a troopship in Singapore (before that city fell to the Japanese.) from August 1942 through the end of the war she carried about 10.000 troops on each crossing.
While she was only 4 years younger than the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth did not set out on her maiden voyage with paying passengers until 1946 - ten years after the Queen Mary. In the early 1950s she was fully booked months in advance, but as with all transatlantic ocean liners, the advent of transatlantic jet travel took its toll on bookings. One could cross the Atlantic in hours instead of days. By 1963, she had turned to cruising after a major refit. but even then, she still lost money She was pulled out of service in 1968. A plan to turn her into a hotel in Fort Lauderdale never really took off and in 1970 she was sold to Taiwanese businessman C. Y Tung, sailed to Hong Kong and began transformation into Seawise University (play on Tung's first initials).
On January 9, 1972, fires broke out on the ship... arson was suspected. And like the Normandie 30 years earlier, the once proud Queen Elizabeth rolled over on her side in Hong Kong Harbor. There are a number of reports about her final demise. On report is that she was scrapped in 1973. Another says she was scrapped in 1974, and yet another maintains that she rolled over and sank in late 1975. Why there is such a discrepancy in print and on the internet, I don't know. but, I am inclined to believe maritime historians, Fran O Braynard and William H. Miller, Jr.who report that Japanese scrappers cut up her remains sometime in 1974. Regardless of which version is true, a sad end to the largest ocean liner of that time.
The former Queen Elizabeth on fire in Hong Kong Harbor
By the time the Queen Elizabeth was retired a new Cunard liner was nearing completion. Although she was smaller, she would become perhaps the most famous of the Cunard Queens. She would be named the Queen Elizabeth 2 but would commonly be known simply as the QE2 and would carry passengers across the pond, around the world and on shorter cruises for just about 40 years.
