The Nostalgia Whore Takes to the Sea

(The Queen with Russian submarine Scorpion in the foreground. The ship's painted waterline is so far off the water's surface because engines and boilers--many tons of heavy machinery--have been removed.)

Another long-ass weekend layover in Los Angeles. Well, there are far worse ways of making a living than to be told to sit in a hotel room for a couple days on the clock. But I've had four of these long weekends on my schedule in the past couple months, and this time I decided to rent a car and look around a bit. Luckily for me, I have some good friends who live in the city and who were eager to play tour guide. Suddenly the weekend looks rather appealing.

I regaled both my regular readers a couple months ago with Susan's and my dalliance on The Bounding Main in the form of January's Mexican cruise. With that experience fresh in mind, I thought this weekend might be a good time to go see the Queen Mary which is docked in neighboring Long Beach (where, incidentally, my beloved DC-8 came into being some 40 years ago).




It was well worth the trip. The storied vessel is still afloat, but after--literally--1001 crossings, her days of plying the Atlantic are behind her. She floats permanently moored in Long Beach harbor now performing hotel duty, sitting high in the water with much of her vital machinery removed. These are days to sit in her easy chair and reminisce about the moonlight dances and exotic lovers and varied adventures of her younger days.

Built in 1930-31, she is 1020 feet long and displaced (in her operational days) 81,237 tons. After the Titanic disaster not 20 years before, it's intriguing to compare the stats of the two vessels. I especially can't help but note that the Queen, while only about 15% longer than Titanic, is nearly twice the weight (883 feet, 46,329 tons). This must be due in part to her hull being constructed of 25% thicker plating with over three times the number of rivets as in Titanic (ten million versus three million). (As an aside, I looked thru my materials about our January cruise ship--the Oosterdam--and found that she is 950 feet long, displaces 82,000 tons, and her hull is between 1/2 and 3/4 inch thick--considerably thinner than the QM's. There are no visible rivets, everything being welded instead. I wonder if this explains the difference?) Both had water-tight doors, but the Queen Mary's were considerably improved after the Titanic's proved, well, inadequate.

(A closeup view of one of the overlapping 1.25" thick steel hull planks and some of the ten million rivets.)

As a bona fide nostalgia whore, I found it a fascinating and moving experience to wander the decks. A lot of the ship is not open to the public, and I have to think that much of it was never converted and is unused; but many of the areas one would naturally gravitate towards are, like most of the top decks, the promenade deck, the bridge and all retail spaces. And what you see in these places is like running into your stunning high school sweetheart at your 60th class reunion when you haven't seen her since graduation. Everything is strangely familiar but faded and uncomfortably different, with a faint smell of decay. She ain't what she used to be, but you can see enough to imagine the grandeur that once emanated from her in her heyday.

(Looking aft from the bow toward the bridge, past one of the huge anchor chains. Note the observation wings out either side of the bridge, used for docking maneuvers. Odd to think of one little human being controlling such mass.)

(Looking aft from the port bridge wing. Note the gentle 3-D arc of the line of lifeboats, which follow the the contour line of the hull.)

(The outdoor promenade deck. This one was level all the way around.)

(A posh, two-level restaurant overlooking the aft promenade deck.)

Having spent a few weeks now on modern Holland America ships, the connection between these two ocean liners, old and new, is plain. Mooks like me were not the primary patrons of the QM during her high season (whereas I'm exactly the pasty sun-blocker who populates the contemporary cruise ship), and it's the sense of high style in the older ship that helps contribute the aura of class and breeding (that remains as but a faint aroma) on the modern ships. But the problems to be solved to make the enterprise work are exactly the same now as then, and the entertainments and amenities follow the same basic pattern. Any present-day cruiser would recognize this place, exactly as we can all see that an old woman is still a woman. It's the pull of the Queen Mary that we still get a sense of the old girl's beauty and sex appeal all these decades later.

(An Art-Deco lounge forward, a few decks below the bridge.)

(The shopping arcade was requisite back then, too. This is a fantastic indoor space midships.)

There are several restaurants open to the public on board, plus a variety of retail outlets, most nautically-themed or related to the Queen Mary or the Cunard Line. It sounds from the Wikipedia article that the viability of the ship in this tourist capacity has been marginal, and the attraction has closed a couple times and declared bankruptcy in the 30 years since it steamed its last.

In what seems to me a sad and depressing commentary on the American public generally, or at least on the clientele whom the hotel is trying to attract, some energy is devoted to promoting the ship as a "haunted" venue, with tours and pamphlets centered on supposed "paranormal" activities which have been attested to over the years--sightings and strange noises and things moving on their own, etc. The first-class swimming pool (one of the most spectacular areas of the ship in photographs) is now drained and closed for safety and structural reasons, but the space can be seen on the "ghost tours" and apparently they fill the well with steam and assist people's imaginations--since, of course, the "ghosts" cannot be counted upon to perform on cue. Like gagging through the church sermon in order to hear the organ, I was tempted to take the silly tour just to see the areas of the ship which are otherwise off limits. Maybe next time.

(The bridge from the port observation wing.)

(The bridge. There are telegraphs for all four screws plus a steering telegraph. The wheels are fabulous, brass hydraulic mechanisms.)

(Note the huge compass between the twin wheels, plus the communication funnels just overhead. Presumably, orders could be shouted to several places through these tubes, but I don't know if they supplement or duplicate the telegraphs.)

(One of four engine telegraphs, one for each screw.)

But "haunted" is not a bad metaphor for the palpable sense of the rich history that the ship has lived during its almost 40-year run. Looking at the bridge, for example, it's quite something to remind yourself that it's not a mock-up of what an ocean liner's control center would look like; this one actually functioned, spending decades crossing oceans and steaming in and out of the world's great ports. And, like the cockpit of an airplane, this is where and how they controlled things. (The parallels between what the ship's crew and what the flight crew do in the prosecution of their job duties kind of stops me in my tracks to ponder; and it's worth noting that an airplane like my DC-8 played a starring role in the death of the ocean liner as transportation.) The ship spent time both as a luxury liner and as a troop transport, so there must have been a staggering array of occurrences on board, from births and deaths to robberies and wild lovemaking and murders and fallings-in-love and breakups and weddings and so many other things. The mind whirls as you walk around, noting the wear and tear on handles and stairways and railings. She was actively hunted by German Uboats; she hit and sank another ship during a crossing. So many, many things she has seen.

We were not able to see any of the rooms (many of the ship's cabins have not been converted for hotel use; what has become of those rooms and corridors and facilities?), but the public areas we did see look pretty good. Still, there is a sense that entropy is inevitably going to win this battle, especially the entropy of a steel vessel floating in salt water--I think of the constant work the Holland America crews were doing to maintain the ships we've been on, including a brand new one that still needed daily scraping and painting and so on; we saw no such work being done on the Queen Mary. With so much of the ship not in use (and presumably not being vigorously maintained), I have a distinct feeling that the operating entity is trying to get everything out of the facility before it passes the tipping point where all that remains is to scrap her. That day is coming, but for now it's business as usual in the public areas, anyway.

(One of the main ballrooms being readied for an event.)

(One of the hotel's hallways. Unlike modern cruise ships, this one has a gentle arc from stem to stern, so that long hallways are always curving up and away from you. Odd but charming.)

The heart just fills up at this setting, at this brief dipping of the toe into a stream which stretches back unbroken into history. Maybe you have to be a nostalgia whore to see it.

But I guess I'm that guy.