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Queen Mary Visit

January, 2010

	I think she needs a good paint job! Still she has beautiful lines.
	The spiral staircase up to the original projection room forward of the first-class lounge.
	All the furniture in the hotel rooms had been removed and stored in the nearest public room.  Here is some hotel furniture in the third-class garden lounge forward on Main Deck.
	Here are some shots in the second-class lounge on Main Deck aft and some of the beautiful furniture that is still being used on board nearly 75 years after the maiden voyage.  Note the second-class dining room chairs in the background.
	A smoking room chair from the Queen Elizabeth and me sitting in it.  It's fortunate for us that Cunard was so haphazard about taking furniture off one ship and using it on another.  Because of this, much furniture from the Elizabeth, second Mauretania, Caronia, Franconia, and even a table from Aquitania survive on board Queen Mary.
	A couple of port-side suite rooms.  In the lower photo, note the fantastic paneling.
	One of her largest suites with the interconnecting wall opened, which I am told almost never happens.
	Here is part of the cabin occupied by Cunard Chairman Percy Bates on the maiden voyage.  I suspect he would be appalled at her state today.
	The entrances to all of her suites were particularly well thought out, each having a vestibule to deaden corridor noise.  Most still have the original consoles and mirrors, many of which were different.
	Some of the best marquetry on the ship, thankfully still in very good condition.
	This was one of the most interesting cabins because of the use of the very rare Zebrano veneer on the cabinets.  This cabin is a beauty!
	Thankfully, there are still many cabins on Main Deck, such as this example, that still sport many of their original fittings, such as fans, writing desk, mirror, etc.
	When exploring the cabins, the closets sometimes yielded gems such as this beautiful Art Deco footstool.
	The last operator started renovating the cabins forward on Main, A, and B Decks over ten years ago.  The project was halted because of lack of funds, and it unfortunately appears that all of the original paneling was ripped out of these cabins.  One wonders why.  The current management is putting them back into hotel service (without the paneling).
	Furniture being moved back into an inside cabin.   I saw a surprising number of original head boards that had NOT been ruined by tacking on naugahyde covers.
	The new carpet in the first-class dining room.
	Not seen for nearly 30 years is the teak decking on the starboard side of Promenade Deck.  It was in better shape than I thought it would be.  During the upgrades, they found many old bottles from the 1980's (when the restaurant was last renovated).
	One of the renovations was to re-carpet the first-class lounge.  Rather than just re-carpeting, they used this Zamboni-like machine to tear up the parquet floor that was under the carpet.  They did, however, leave the modern dance floor in the center of the room.
	Once, well over ten years ago, someone on the internet mentioned that there was an original second-class cabin on the Mary with an odd window arrangement.  Rather than having a porthole, it has a window that looked aft out onto the second-class promenade on A Deck.  I found this rather intriguing so I asked the front desk if they knew which cabin I was referring to.  They didn't, but they kindly took me to find it anyway.  Here are two shots in A-177 (the original number), looking aft at the window.  The arrow in the third photo points to the location of this window on a 1957 deck plan.
	Long Beach through one of the ports.
	Back in 1989, when the stern docking equipment was removed to make way for a pool(!), a maritime historian saved what he could before it went to the smelter.  Twenty years later, it was donated back to the ship.  Here is the donated capstan on the wharf.  Let's hope they don't turn it into a flower pot like the other one they have!
	She *really* needs a paint job! There is an almost perfectly straight line running aft from the prop box to the stern.  The area below does not look like it has been painted in many, many years.  One wonders if management just never finished painting her all the way because the public is not supposed to walk this far aft, and they figured no one would ever know.

 

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Ships of particular interest are Olympic, Lusitania, Mauretania, Caronia, Normandie, Queen Mary, and Andrea Doria.

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