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THE QUEENS AT WAR How the Great Atlantic Liners Turned from Peacetime Pursuits to Serve as Mighty Engines of the Oceanic Coalition that Won World War II by Peter Stanford
T
he excitement could be felt in the streets when the Queen Elizabeth steamed into New Yo rk on her maiden voyage.
Unanno unced, the great, grey liner was instan tly recognized by offshore boats and harbor watchers. After clearing Q uaran tine off Staten Island, she p roceeded slowly up the harbor to her H udson River p ier, sounding her deep steam whistle almost continuously in response to salutes from every vessel she passed, until she quietly slipped into her berth next to her elder (and rather more traditional) sister, Queen Mary. !t was 8 March 1940-in a wo rld threatened by a war whose outcome no one could fo resee. Nazi Germany had conquered Poland, D enmark and Norway, bur had got no farther so far in what people had begun to call "the Phony War. " Six months into the war, the French Army stood at rest in its seemingly invincible Maginot Line. Italy, the Soviet U nion and rhe United States stood on the sidelines as neutrals. Bur the Soviet Union and Iraly were allied to Nazi Germany, with whom they expected to share the spoils of German victory. Indeed, the Soviet U nion h ad already taken over nearly half of Poland as the German Wehrmacht wiped our the Polish Army, effectively erasi ng that defiant nation from the map of Europe. T he United States was still at peace, but fo r thoughtful people it was an uneasy peace. This then was the scene w hen the Queen Elizabeth, painted in wartime grey, comp leted her first voyage to the seaport city of New York. H er arri val was not quite in the style wh ich had been intended when she was laid down in John Brown 's yard on Scorland's River Clyde in 1936, shortly after rhe new Queen Mary's successful introduction on the North Atlantic ru n. When the Queen Mary made her debut the prospect of world war was, in the proverbial phrase, a cloud no bigger than a man 's hand-a hand, or one might well say, a fist that seemed visible to few people except England's our-of-office M ember of Parliament W insto n Churchill and those who gathered aro und his rotund, indignant figure in London. In the US, President Franklin D . Roosevelt, in his famous (or to some, infamo us) "Fireside Chars" over the newfangled radios that by now stood in most living rooms, had begun to warn Americans about the war-maki ng propensities of Nazi Germany in Europe and Japan 's assaul t on China. I was al ive in New Yo rk in that era; I sat with the grown- ups to listen to the radio-there was, of course, no TV-and had nightm ares about the Italian Fascist troops marching th ro ugh Ethiopia. Ethiopia was an independent African nation which Italy's wo uld-be Caesar, Mussolini, had invaded , knowing he could get away with it-while his son-in-law Co unt C iano wrote admiringly from his plan e of bombs exploding like red fl owers in the ranks of Em peror H aile Selassie's spear-carrying army. Now, in early 1940, the war was a reality-th e cloud no bigger than a man's hand now hu ng over our heads, a full- charged thu nderhead th at had ye t to discharge its full fu ry. O r so it seemed to thinking people, and certainly to W inston C hurchill. On 3 Septem ber of the previous year, the day England declared war on Germany over the German invas ion of Poland, Churchill had been recalled to office as First Lord of the Adm iralty-the same
SEA HISTORY 95, WINTER 2000-01
post he'd held at the outbreak of W orld War I, and the signal had go ne our to the Royal Navy: "Winston is back. " !t was his decision to get the newly completed giant, thin-skinned Elizabeth out of reach of German bombers as soon as she co uld be moved. So the great ship, at 85 ,000 to ns the larges t ever to swim the ocean s, had steamed to New Yo rk straight from her fitting-our basin in the C lyde, with none of the lengthy sea trails C unard customarily insisted on before accepting a new ship from her builders. The New York Times greeted the Elizabeth's arrival with feelin g: Many sagas of the sea have begun and ended in our harbor, but can the old-timers rem ember anything to compare with the unheralded arri val of the biggest and fas test liner in the wo rld, after the most daring of maiden voyages? T his of co urse was when rhe maiden voyages were important, for ordinary passengers, as well as the celebrities headlined in the press. To cross between continents over the waters that cover rhe greater part of Earth's surface, that was a noticeable act, often a rite of passage rediscovering roots in the O ld W orld or opening a new life in America. The Times editorialist, perhaps feeling the Muse of Histo ry at his shoulder, continued: It d id not matter that rhe Queen Elizabeth wore a drab coat of grey on her first visit to New York or that no bands went down the bay to meet her. T he interest of New Yorkers was echoed by the admi ration of Americans for those who built her, sailed her and sent her on her way. T here fo llowed , in reass uring style, a prediction of the new lin er's success when peace returned to the world. Few perhaps realized that this wo uld come about only after five years of all-out warfa re pursued in Europe, Africa and Asia. Just over two months after the Elizabeth's arrival Hider's longawaited offensive against Fran ce broke our, with dive bombers pacing rhe advance of tanks which split rhe French front wide open, driving thro ugh Belgium to outflank the M aginot Line. Later the German Wehrmachr broke th ro ugh the M aginot Line as well, to prove that they could do it. T he feeling grew that N azi Germany co uld do anything, that Hitler ism was indeed "the wave of th e future," as American Nazis believed . By now, however, Churchill had beco me Prime Minister, and, under his leadership, under-armed and unprepared England decided to fight on-a fight C hurchill proposed to wage even if the Bri ri sh Isles fell to the seemingly invincible Germans. Ar President Roosevelt's lead, the U nited States stretched the bounds of neutrali ty by esco rti ng wartime co nvoys in an American Neutrality Zo ne extending as far as Iceland, and by lending 50 old destroyers to England for protection of their own vital Arlantic convoys, now under submarine and air attack fro m Norway's North Cape to rhe French bases facing England across the English Channel and down the French Arlantic coast to the Spanish border. And now, with invasion threatening and massive air strikes under way, there was wo rk for the great Atlantic liners based in
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