About the Cunard Queens - RMS Queen Mary

There have been 6 Cunard Queens - 3 were began service in the 20th century and 3 in the 21st century.

The first 3 queens, all entering service in the 20th Century were the RMS Queen Mary (1936 -1967), the RMS Queen Elizabeth (1940 - 1968), the RMS Queen Elizabeth (1969 - 2008).

The current queens are the RMS Queen Mary 2 (2004), the MS Queen Victoria (2007) and the ship we will be sailing on in October, the MS Queen Elizabeth (2010)..

By the way, RMS stands for Royal Mail Ship... Ships with this designation carry Royal Mail from port to port. The QM2 carries a token batch of mail to maintain this historic designation. She is the largest Royal Mail Ship. The smalles vessel with the designation RMS is a little steamboat carrying mail in the Muskoka Lakes region of Ontario, Canada.

The RMS Queen Mary entered service in 1936. The story goes that she was supposed to be christened Queen Victoria, but when the Cunard Line told the king that their new ship was to be named after England's favorite queen, the King assumed that they were referring to his wife, Queen Mary. Oops! The Queen Mary is best known as a luxury liner providing fast and luxurious transatlantic service between the UK and New York, and she did that well until her retirement in 1967. My mom, crossed on the Queen Mary in 1938, when she apparently broke her own speed record But she also served as a troopship in WWII carrying up to 16,000 troops and crew from NYC to the UK. In April 1942 she took the 1st Armored Division, and my dad, on officer and physician in the 47th Medical Battalion overseas to the UK where he continued training in Northern Ireland for the landings in North Africa and Operation Torch. Dad shared a stateroom designed for 2 people with 11 other officers. Enlisted personnel were not quartered so luxuriously. The Queen Mary crossed the Atlantic by herself... she was too fast for the convoys... and thankfully too fast for the German U-boats.

At the end of the war the Queen Mary brought home many of the troops returning from the European theatre. She reentered commercial passenger service in 1947 and continued her transatlantic service until 1967. By then the demand for transatlantic liners had dwindled do to the arrival of jet aircraft that could cross the pond in hours rather than days.

The Queen Mary's last voyage was to Long Beach, California where she became a floating hotel. Because her propulsion systems were removed, she is now technically a building and not a ship, but again she sure looks like the grand ocean liner that crossed the pond so many times for 30 years. Susan and I toured her in long Beach a number of years ago. One of my Bucket List items is to spend the night on this great ship.

The RMS Queen Mary at sea.

Following is a photo of the Queen Mary Hotel in Long Beach, CA.

Next up.... the RMS Queen Elizabeth