Sad Stories of the Death of Queens
By D. W. BROGAN (1 NE of the earliest memories of my child- 114,../ hood, which I was old enough to under- stand, was the sight of the Lusitania anchored off Fairlie in the Firth of Clyde. It was, I think, 1907, and the new ship, the largest and fastest in the world, had finished her trials on the `measured mile' and was about to take off to Liverpool which was to be her home port. The Cunard Line (or possibly John Brown's the builders) were charging a shilling for visitors to see over the new leviathan which was to bring back to the Clyde, as it did, its old pre-eminence in shipbuilding. And now we learn that the Cunard Line doesn't think it can afford to re- place the Queen Mary and, for me a more startling piece of information, that the best bid came not from the Clyde, not from John Brown's, but from a consortium on the Tyne. Surd lacrinue rerun:, etc.
This decision does, indeed, mark the end of an era. And it forces reflections on the recent past and possible future of the great North Atlantic liners. It is possible, a point not made as far as I noticed, that among the things wrong with the Queens, long before they began to bleed to death under the dagger strokes of the air lines, was their mere size. The Queen Mary was three times the size of the Lusitania, twice the size of the Lusitania's next big Clyde- built successor, the Aquitania; but it was not nearly three times as useful. I can remember a senior officer of the Queen Mary, when it was still very new, explaining to me the geometrical progression of fuel costs between the Aquitania and the Queen Mary which was replacing it. The Normandie was three times the size of the Ile de France, and had it survived (instead of being wrecked by the incompetence of the American Navy, as a very competent eye- witness told me) it, too, would have become a white elephant. The new France, which is going into service in a few months' time, is quite a lot smaller than the Normandie, but may turn out to be too big all the same.
It was not only the size of the Queens that made them an increasingly bad investment, Long before the plane became a serious competitor, the North Atlantic lines suffered from decline in emigrant traffic. They turned over to tourist traffic, bdt, still more, they concentrated on first-class passengers to whom the rest of the ship—and the rest of the passengers—were sac- rificed. It was, for instance, one of the great differences between the Queen Mary and the Aquitania that no class, except the first class, had adequate deck space. The Aquitania, de- signed to take over a thousand emigrants, gave them the run of the lower decks of the ship. Pressing its poorest customers into very con- fined sleeping quarters, it gave them big public rooms, so that a tourist-class passenger in the Aquitania had far more liberty than a tourist- class (formerly third-class) passenger on the Queens. Of course, the tourist-class accommo- dation was improved a good deal over the old third-class or steerage. I once travelled third- class with no tourist nonsense, and it was 'travelling hard,' as the Russians say. But it was from the first-class passengers, from the special suites, from the lavish expenditure in the bars, that the Cunard Line (and the French Line) expected to make their money. And it is the transfer of this type of passenger to the plane which has ended the aucien regime on the North Atlantic.
It is probably hardly necessary to report that on the occasions when I travelled first class somebody else was paying my fare. Once, it is true, I did pay my own fare first class, but this was due to a tragedy of errors. And I can't say that, even when my fare was paid for me, I thought that the difference between first and cabin was worth the money—except for the, abundant deck space. This is not, I admit, in the spirit of the mariners of England, but I liked walking round the glass-walled decks of the Queens, looking down in safety at the ocean far below, while the cabin and tourist passengers were restricted to the bow and the stern. But the elaborate social life, the pretence both that we were sea voyagers of the type of Columbus and were living in a first-class hotel as well, I used to find wearisome. The passion for games, for primitive forms of gambling, was trying. The most foolish example of this was provided not by the Cunard but by the French Line on the last occasion that I sailed on the Liberte, where the old and silly game of horse-racing was played, not with wooden horses, but with film strips of actual races run at Hialeah. Of course, these bug me.' 'Mr. Chairman, gentlemen . . . you games, like the gamble on the ship's run, had their comic side. Two Irish friends of mine once made a killing on the ship's run (by methods not illegal and not dishonest, but highly ingenious. I do not propose to give the secret away).
There were interesting differences in the way the Cunard Line and the French Line catered to their cash customers, or more exactly their expense-account customers. Mr. Golding has recently pointed out how rigorously class divisions were and are enforced by the Cunard Line. These divisions were theoretically equally enforced by the French Line; but the 4systente D' was at work and there never was the slightest difficulty on any French ship that I travelled on, in moving from class to class. There wasn't much on the Cunard either. The thing to do was to 'case the joint' as soon as you got aboard. For the convenience of the crew, especially of the stewards and maintenance men—electricians and the like—there had to be easy access from deck to deck and class to class. The thing to do was to discover what the system was, either by exploration or by asking one of the crew, who would often obligingly tell you. Of course, if you had been on the ship before, you knew the drill already. The next thing to do was to pre- sent yourself, as soon as possible, at the bars of each class, order a drink or two, get into con- versation with the barman and thus establish your right to the facilities of that particular bar. Then you got the passenger lists of all classes and discovered what friends you had in each of them. The voyage had then begun.
The drawback to . the Queens and to the United States, the fastest ship on the ocean (suffering only from very poor service), was that they were too quick. In five and a half days you didn't have time to get to know people adequately well or, what was often more im- portant, to break off shipboard friendship with the people you met on the first day. I was there- fore resentful when the Flandre cut down its sailing time to just six days. My object in sail- ing on that admirable vessel was to get leisure and as much of the French Line's excellent food and free wine as 1 could. It was not only in the provision of better food and really good and wine that the French Line differed, and no doubt differs,' from the Cunard and the United States Lines. The same debrouillard spirit marked the dining-rooms as well as the corridors. I can remember asking a member of the Normandie crew why, every morning, he tapped a fuse box near my cabin and he replied with charming candour that he hadn't the slightest idea. And going back to the dining-room on the Liberte to look for a raincoat I had left there the night before, 1 was greeted by the chief steward with a bland smile and the declaration that 'this is an honest house,' a slightly ambiguous term in French. I also got the coat.
If there is no future for the Queens, is there a future for the France or the Nieuw Amster- dam? I think there is if they cater better for cabin and tourist passengers and give up trying to imitate the Ritz, even for the lirst-class passengers. (This might be reflected in lower fares.) And I think many travellers would agree with me that it is not necessarily the biggest ships that are the most popular. The steadiest and most agreeable ship I ever sailed on was the Aquitania, launched just before the First World War. (Next to that among Cunard ships, I should 'put the old Mauritania.) Most travellers or the French Line I have known preferred the Ile de trance to the Libertd and the old De Grasse was one of the most popular ships, ever to sail the North Atlantic, The North American liners will have to cater for people not travelling on expense accounts and not in a very great hurry. Eighty-thousand-tonners are as obsolete as the Bucentaur. Such is progress. And yet . . . and yet. . . . 1 can. remember walking on Cathkin Braes on a bleak winter day in 1932 and, looking west, saw at the end of the Kil patrick Hills, on the other side of the Clyde, what I took at first to be a forgotten geological formation. It was the red and rusty hull of the Queen Mary lying unfinished on the stocks in John Brown's yard at Clydebank. And in think- ing over the end of the Queens, I remember a famous Clydeside story of how the workers ran to the gates of John Brown's on the first morn- ing when work was resumed on the Queen Mary. This is 'the end of an auld sang,' as was said on another occasion in Scotland.
Men are we and must grieve when even the shade Of that which once was great, is passed away.
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