QUEENS OF THE SEAS

Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] [Music] This is a story of the sea upon which Britain through the ages has depended for her security and for the lifeblood of her existence, commerce. We acknowledge the honors due to all our mercantile marine in all the seven seas. But of the ships that sail the waters of the globe, proudest are those which pry the sea lanes of the North Atlantic, bridging the ocean west that divide the western hemisphere. And foremost among these floating bridges are the mighty Queen Elizabeth and her sister ship, the Queen Mary. monumental symbols of Britain's shipb building skill and enterprise of her seafaring leadership. Here in the Queen Elizabeth, as in the Queen Mary too, nothing has been spared that would make the British transatlantic service swift and efficient. There isn't one of us who doesn't know these seagoing queens by name, though there are plenty of us who take them for granted. But in the ships themselves, nothing, not even the page boys manicures, is taken for granted. and minutest detail must be as perfect as the plan is majestic. And as ocean travelers pass their carefree days, what do they know of the history that these great decks have seen and made? Among the few heartening developments of the postwar world have been the delayed entry of the Queen Mary, reassertion of Britain's age-old preeminence on the ocean highways. Highways now at peace and throbbing with the pulse of commerce new stirring and urgent, [Music] but laurels one are not to rest upon. And in the shipyards of Britain now thousands of craftsmen are straining muscle nerve and senue to repair and build a new to fill the gaping hole in our merkantile tonnage torn by the losses of war. At Clydebank that gave the world its two greatest ships. Licoronia is ready to take the water. The largest postwar liner building in the world. She too is destined for the North Atlantic run in compliment to the overwhelming immensity of her big sister. The tallowed slipway beckons to the Clyde. The thousands clear their throats. The craftsmen crowd every day. This is a royal launching as this hits a ship that can speed our recovery and add again to our best team. [Applause] This heartening site bespeaks the urgent labors of the postwar world and the unddeinished faith and energy of a long dry people. But how sharp the contrast between the 40s and the early 30s. Here the forest of derics that are the John Brown landmark at Tidebank stood round the keel plates of number 534. That unnamed Goliath to be that was planned with boundless courage and ambition to eclipse all competition. 534 the bold figures became a household word particularly at Clydebank where it was a promise of continued employment and security for a long time to come. 534. Britain's answer to the super liners of Germany, Italy, and France. The Bremen, the Ricks, and the Normandy. The answer was growing before our eyes. Until after only one year, uncertain traffics, hesitant finance, the dread depression laid arresting hands on tide banks. And 3,000 of Britain's most highly skilled workers joined the growing and gloomy army of the unemployed. All work abandoned, a blow to the nation's pride. a shattering catastrophe to the men of Tidebank where the December of 1931 began the blackest period of misery and corroding idleness [Music] and the partly clad skeleton of 534 was left in tragic silence. From time to time, talk of a government loan to finish 534 revived hopes that scarcely smoldered until on April the 4th, 1934, the tide of desolation turned. [Music] So Clydebank began to live again as a thousand men marched back to work in their beloved shipyards. The tammer of hammers, the hiss of steam, the shrill of the sirens, all the jangle and ordinary turmoil of the shipwrites leapt into life again. And from 534, lifeblood began circulating to coal mines to steel mills. 534 was a building again. Lost time to be made good. 3 years of delay and suspense to catch up with. This time 534 would be completed. resumption of work. Tide bank was ready to celebrate another great day. A royal occasion with her majesty Queen Mary to bestow a name as yet unknown upon the waiting ship. 534 for only a few minutes longer. A royal launching and a rainy one as thousands of damp but undaunted spectators could testify and 534 the first liner in history to bear the name of a living member of the royal family was poised and ready. I am happy to name this ship the Queen Mary. I wish to all save in. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] There was the most moving of all sights for the thousands whose strength and skill had fashioned the Queen Mary and for the tens of thousands who knew that there was the seagoing symbol of a reviving greatness. is still before the Queen Mary lay almost 2 years of prep and her fitting out meant work for some 4,000 men before she would be ready for her maiden voyage [Music] nearly 2 years until late in May 1936 when Southampton prepared to speed the giantesses on her first Atlantic crossing. [Music] And had you been the first and only passenger to board her on that day of days, you would have found such spacious luxury and richness that were rare on land, unparalleled at sea. [Music] But you were not the only passenger. Their birth looked many months before 279 travelers mounted the gangways New York bound on a maiden voyage. watched by the whole world. 2,79 passengers making their own history on a great journey, but none with any inkling of the greater history their ship would make in grimmer days to come. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Tea and deck tennis. That'll do. Let them represent the leisure and pleasure of the easier first years of a great ship's life. [Music] While Britain's mercantile might strode the Atlantic, ugly rumblings in Europe was scarcely heard. We in Britain had other matters to think of, exciting, colorful. To the throne had come a new king, emerging from constitutional crisis with dignity, supported by a well-loved queen, and warmed by the affection of his peoples all over the world. [Music] Heat. Heat. Again at Clydebank, shipwrites were weaving the tracery of their derks round the growing hull of the most perfect craft they could build, the Queen Elizabeth, we won't call her number 552. The Queen Elizabeth would not be ready for launching for nearly 2 years and would not see the Atlantic until, they said then, April 1940. All being well. All being well. [Music] Hallelujah. [Music] In September 1938, Clyde Bank was again a swarm with visitors. The Majesty the Queen had come to bestow her own name upon the towering beauty whose graceful hull lay ready on the slipway. And again, the thousands packed the yard, climbed the jibs, and craneed to see the biggest ship in the world take the water. A floating city of nearly 84,000 tilt to consolidate and secure British supremacy on the most important of all ocean routes, the Queen Elizabeth. Name her Queen Elizabeth. What may I do for you? [Applause] [Music] on through the darkening months to 1939. With the hot breath of war already on our necks, at the end of August, the Queen Mary left Southampton with the record number of 2,332 passengers. And as she made for the new world, she looked back over her shoulder uneasily. [Music] 4 days out from Southampton, the ship's radio never silent, she heard the news the world now knew must come. No further postponement possible. The hour had struck. The parties, the negotiations, the appeasements and promises all to the wind. Britain was at war. Unready, but determined and irrevocably at war. [Music] And we thought of those who had gone before us, whose example we would follow. [Music] [Music] [Music] They once called it a phony war, but those who knew could see the peril in which the Queen Elizabeth lay in her fitting out basin in the Clyde. After the briefest of trials, in the drab dog that hid her beauty, the Elizabeth slid quietly away from the tail of the bank and made for the safety of New York, while carefully planted rumor and partly concealed preparations to receive her at Southampton were drawing the waiting towards the channel away from her ocean course. [Music] So on March the 7th, they partly finished Elizabeth, her as secret and hazardous maiden voyage behind her, found the shelter of neutral waters, but not sculing idleness, as we shall see. [Music] Now the two great sisters were united, awaiting decision upon the major roles they were to play in every theater of war. For a fortnight, neighbors of the ill-fated Normandy, they remained together while New Yorkers and everyone else speculated on their future. On March the 20th, 1940, the Queen Mary slipped down the Hudson and away from New York. Her work on government service had begun. Before her lay thousands of miles, a Trans Oceanian dash round the Cape and across the world to Australia. She was going to prove even sooner than was expected the value of the fast big transport. Sydney was ready for her arrival on April the 17th, 28 days out from New York. But she had only 14 days in which to equip herself for trooping service. A miracle of Australian energy and she was ready on time. The Queen Mary's first warlike cargo. 5,000 diggers crowding up her gangways, hastening to lend their strength to the home country's battle in Europe. A cheerful, eager, tough crowd. Her first 5,000. [Music] But during that first trooping voyage from Sydney to the glide, disaster had overtaken our arms. France had fallen. The epic of Dunkirk was burning its mark on our history. And while the ocean bridging queens were thousands of miles away plowing towards us with their great warrior cargos, the little ships were playing their own impently glorious roles. Dunkirk. In those dread days of 1940, we peered into the skies and across the narrow waters that separated us from an exalting enemy. It should be our turn next. Were we alone? isolated perhaps, grimly awaiting the next move. The initiative not in our hands, [Music] isolated, but not alone. And knowing that the empire could survive without us, but that we might go down forever without the empire, Churchill ordered a great concentration of forces to defend the Suis Canal, our lifeline to the east. To get all available forces there in the greatest numbers and the shortest time was the task to which the Queen Mary and later the Queen Elizabeth were assigned. The Mary began a series of globe spanning runs in which she fed thousands upon thousands of troops to the critical Middle East. In the spring of 1941, there began the close partnership of the two queens. The Mary, making her sixth voyage of war with 6,000 Australians and New Zealanders aboard. The Elizabeth, which had been fitted out of Singapore on her way from New York to Sydney, carried 5,600. Throughout the summer of 41, the queens trooped without intermission. Their massive hulls and their enormous decks cocky thronged became familiar sites at Sydney and Fremantle, Trincom and Seuis. By the end of the year, they had carried over 80,000 troops, most of them to reinforce our strength in the Middle East. But the entry of Japan into the war changed the picture. And at the end of 1941, the Queens began their long service as transports for United States forces. The initial success of the Japanese threatened Singapore and the whole of the Far East. And in this period of crisis, the Queens were in American waters undergoing overhauls. Their trooping capacities were increased. And from American ports they left in February and March 1942 with a total of 16,000 fighting men across the Pacific to Sydney. [Music] Again the scene changed. By June 1942, RML's threat to Egypt and the Suez Canal was gathering momentum. Urgent reinforcements to the straining desert armies claimed all the effort the queens could make. Their first contribution, two fully equipped divisions born faster than any other ships could have carried them round the entire African continent up to series. [Music] Here was the crowning justification of their planner's courage. The largest fastest liners in the world fing allied forces from the Clyde by way of Freetown and Simonstound to Sewage. [Music] Here [Music] then to Suis came the seabornade that put the eighth army on its way to triumph and turned the tide of war. [Music] The African faith was quickening. The Americans were making to the northwest. Their convoy bringing a second hammer that was to help drive up Italy. An enemy routed out of Africa. Here though was a convoy. It speed that of the slowest member. In short distinction from the fast transportation of the queens, which traveled at all times without escort, depending for their safety on unapproachable speeds. [Music] [Music] And while the Anglo-American assault on the south underbelly of the Axis was being mounted in North Africa, while the immortal eighth army cleaned up The last sediment of Raml's defeated legions, the ocean queens were making their unchallenged and swift Atlantic crossing, building up for mammoth events to come. [Music] And none knew better than these in what debt the Allied army stood to the countless spannings of the globe that crowded the logs of two pride liners. And behind the men who planned and the men who fought the silent unfailing service of the queens. Again a change of scene. Japan had spread her tentacles southwards towards the Australian dominion. She would be held defeated and Australians and New Zealanders who had come from the other side of the world to defend our lifeline were now heading for the southern cross to repel the threat to their own lands. Again, the Queen Mary swallowed the thousands. Lighter-hearted, though no lighter footed than when they first trod her deck. [Music] [Music] Homegoing diggers and cobbers, their African battle honors thick upon them. They lost Australasian trooping of the untiring Queen Mary. [Music] Look now at this. The combined record of transatlantic voyages of the two queens. The immense fing operation that brought to Britain the vast American armies, their arms and equipment, 64 Atlantic voyages. And Latin each trip brought 15,000 men. He will never forget it. And no enemy came near in all their long voyages. But they were well prepared for his challenge if it came. [Music] Number [Music] [Music] Gun drill. Yes. But not a shot was fired in anger. Not a periscope seen. And the two ships that carried one and a quarter million men across the infested oceans of the world lost not one man through enemy action. Half a million Americans know the security that the Queen's unescorted speed could bring to their Atlantic crossing. The unconcern of these oceangoing gis can be measured by their reading, their poker, and their music, left-handed at that. [Music] Month after month, the uninterrupted, unending lines of uniformed men from across the Atlantic poured into British ports. Behind the mammoth armies gathering for the greatest assault of all, the unremitting service of the Queens. Then on that fateful doom day in 1944, millions of men set out on the final leg of that long journey began in 1939. A tense short trip across the channel. Here was the critical moment, the launching of long tent energies, the culmination of the labors of men and the service of the ships. West, the tide of liberation sweeping up the Norman beaches, flooding irresistible across prostrated Europe. The rest too vivid to be forgotten, we know, except perhaps that until the very end of this last convulsion in Europe, the transatlantic fings went on to keep the Allied armies supplied and reinforced. [Music] Less than a year after D-Day, Europe was suddenly and joyously released from almost 6 years of war. And on the appointed day we celebrate it. [Music] But for the Elizabeth and the Mary, as for other ships of the transport service, the job was not yet done. During the war, each of the two great liners had transported nearly a million men and steamed nearly half a million miles. Now these men must be repatriated. Most of the miles retraversed the North Atlantic again, but the passengers westbound homeward. Now no huddling below deck in blacked out quarters, no lurking submarine to cheat, no zigzagging, but direct homegoings for 15,000 at a time. Swiftly had passed the darken days to Europe. Now the impatient days homeward was speeded by the passengers themselves. [Music] [Applause] All right. [Music] And the emotions of leave taking those years ago were to be remembered and outmatched by the almost unbearable joy of those who have returned from hell and live to see their own land again. [Music] Those years of secrecy and haste, of crowded turmoil, those years have passed. The queens are stripped of their smirching gray and gleam aresh in all their gallant livery. Their finery restored, they sail now as their designers meant them to. Floating cities to bridge the seas of peace between the old and new worlds. Majestic decks no longer grind under military hobnails. The gentler cargos of peace. No, I didn't really mean you, sir. Go and fetch it. The gentler cargos of peace are feather burdens compared with those she's known. Good dog. [Music] Let us watch the Queen Elizabeth go outwardbound from Southampton. That awe inspiring moment when 83,000 tons creep away from you imperceptibly. [Music] Do they realize these travelers the full significance of the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary? The lounges and prominards, the beauty and spaciousness are all there again. Ah, yes. And the restaurants [Music] [Music] symbols of Britain's maritime greatness, the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary have played in war and are still playing in peace their vital roles in the drama of our times. In admiration, we doth our caps to those who made and man them. [Music] in proud affection to the great Clydeville Queens of the Sea. Godspeed and continual good sailing. [Music]