AT SEA: Q. E. Deed

• Share

Captain John Townley's comments were laconic and anything but epic. "Well, I mean to say, I better not discuss that. . . . You mustn't ask too many questions. . . . Then a number of things happened, I can't say when. . . . Don't ask where. ..."

Chief Engineer William Sutcliffe mostly shrugged and shook his head. The only definite things he would say were that he had used all twelve of her boilers and that some day she would outspeed the Queen Mary. But about the crossing he was modestly mum.

Manhattan offices of the Cunard White Star Line issued an announcement of her arrival as dry and unsalted as a British High Command communique. About the crossing's adventures, nothing.

All garrulous old Winston Churchill would say (last week, at least) was: "Splendid, very good work, indeed."

Even Pilot Julius Seeth, who brought her up from Quarantine, failed to pick up any yarns. His only comment was that "she did everything a lady ought to do."

At a daily cost to New York City of $1,300, nine police sergeants, six mounties, 22 plainclothesmen and 117 patrolmen were deployed along the Hudson River waterfront to keep a tight ring around the lady so that no one could even get a good look at her.

And so the U. S., as usual, had to get the lowdown by devious methods. Across Twelfth Avenue from Pier 90, in a waterfront joint called the Anchor, Queen Elizabeth's crew gradually spilled the beans. Whoever would talk got free drinks. Some of the men were reticent and asked not to be quoted. Senior Printer Pearce Jones not only consented to be quoted; he insisted. "I am protected," he said, "by the Typographical Society of Great Britain and Ireland." Greaser Tom Barber and Fireman Jim O'Brien and Engineer Peter Johnson were in fine form. Oiler Jack Sykes babbled in Cockney. Gradually the story took consecutive shape:

At John Brown's Shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland, on Sept. 27, 1938, at 3:36 in the afternoon, Queen Elizabeth gravely said: "We cannot foretell the future, but in preparing for it we share a trust in a Divine Providence and in ourselves"; then snipped a ribbon which released a bottle of champagne to christen the world's largest liner (85,000 tons, 1,030 feet overall) with her own name. Into the water slipped the Queen Elizabeth, and into troublous times.

As peace waned, Q. E. grew—got her two funnels, pumps, donkey engines. She came along fast. Cunard set her first voyage to the U. S. for April or May 1940. Then war broke. Q. E. sat useless, an unfinished liability, meat for either sabotage or bombing. Last month fire broke out in her library.

Fortnight ago the report was given out that Brown's had contracted so much war work that Q. E. was in the way. Since one of the year's two highest apogee tides was coming along, it had been decided to move her "to another port." With no fuss, with only a few score people lining the same Clyde River banks where 1,000,000 had cheered Queen Mary in 1936, Q. E. eased downstream. For an hour she kissed a mudbank at Rashielee Light, where the Mary, too, had grounded. Finally she anchored outside, at Greenock.

A shadow crew of 378 was signed on "for the run to Southampton," at four quid two and ten (about $17) a man.