Ashbury College - Ashburian Yearbook (Ottawa, Ontario Canada)

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[28] THE ASHBURIAN R.M.S. Queen Mary in King George V Graving Dock. Southampton. Courtesy Cunard-Whtte Star Line

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THE ASHBURIAN [27] R.M.S. QUEEN MARY By W. A. GRANT RM.S. Queen Mary, pride of the British Mercantile Marine, completed her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York on June 1st. This giant liner, the flagship of the Cunard-White Star line is undoubtedly the finest ship afloat even though she is not the largest. This great ship represents no wild departure from Britain ' s accepted shipbuilding standards in an effort to assert her supremacy on the high seas at a time of renewed competition ; the Queen Mary is not a freak, her design and construction is the answer to a demand, and her size is the result of a gradual increase in the size of vessels generally to meet an ever increasing tourist trade. Then too the Queen Mary has not been built, as have so many ships lately, with speed the main consideration, but rather with the idea that she might be, although a fast ship and a luxurious ship, above all a safe ship. Ten years were spent in drawing up blue prints for her design. Then came long and arduous experiments with perfect scale models in water-tanks to see how the ship would behave in water. Seventeen of these models were scrapped before the final design was decided upon. Full scale drawings were then made of the ship and the keel laid late in 1930. The company to whose care the building of the Queen Mary was entrusted was the veteran John Brown Company on the Clyde in Scotland. This company has long been famous for the long and distinguished list of great ships that have been constructed in its yards, a list including such names as the Empress of Britain and the magnificent but ill-fated Lusitania. Then came the crisis of 1931, when the national credit of Britain hung trembling in the balance, and work ceased on the ship. Thus she stood for two years, gaunt and rust stained, until national help was obtained in 1934 and Parliament voted a huge subsidy in order that the 534 might be completed. As the day of the launching approached, as preparations were made to receive the Royal visitors and the many distinguished guests, other men were engaged in the task of seeing that the ship would enter the water at the correct speed and be brought to a stop before her stern rammed the opposite bank. Actually, so accurate were the calculations that the ship stopped within a few feet of the estimated position. The ship, as is universally known, was launched by Queen Mary in the presence of the late King and the then Prince of Wales, the first time that a British ship has been launched by the consort of a reigning monarch. The date of the launching was Wednesday, the 26th of September. When she took the water the Queen Mary weighed 40,000 tons, over 30,000 less than the weight at which she now tips the scale having been completely fitted inside and out.

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THE ASHBURIAN [29] R.M.S. Queen Mary (Cont ' d) In the fitting-out basin the ship remained until 1936, when she sailed down the Clyde to the open sea. At one time during- her journey down stream she was aground fore and aft and there was the danger that as the tide went down her back would be broken, but she made the trip safely and docked in Southampton. The Queen Mary, however, is not merely a mechanical triumph ; she is an artistic triumph as well. The greatest designers and decorators have all played their part in making this ship the Queen of the Seas. Beautiful as is the ex- terior of the boat her interior is well able to keep pace with it in magnificence. The public rooms are on a scale never before attempted. The main lounge, ninety feet long, seventy feet wide and twenty-two feet high, is finished in a gold tinted, veneered wood. At one end of this room there is a fully equipped stage, while in the whole room the ships of Columbus ' s fleet, plus the first Cunarder, the Britannia, might be placed with ease. The first class restaurant is the largest room ever built into a ship, being one hundred and eighteen feet wide and one hundred and sixty feet long by thirty feet in height. The veranda grill is yet another room in which modern invention plays an important part. In this room the lights change colour completely as the music varies in tone and theme. The Queen Mary has also been fitted with two swimming pools, one for the first class passengers, the other for the Tourists, and a cocktail bar of immense pro- portions has been fitted in the front of the superstructure and commands a view of the limitless ocean beyond. This is only a glimpse of the sumptuous interior of this giant liner, yet it gives a good impression of her magnificence and the thought that lies behind every detail of her construction. She is a luxury liner, but above that she is, as the King himself remarked when he inspected her in March of this year, a ship built for utility . May she fulfil her mission and be a means of cementing even further friendships between the Old World and the New.