The 'Queens' as WWII Troopships

Extract from Wikipedia

"On 2 October 1942, Queen Mary accidentally sank one of her escorts, slicing through the light cruiser HMS Curacoa off the Irish coast, with the loss of 338 lives. Due to the constant danger of being attacked by U-Boats, on board the Queen Mary Captain C. Gordon Illingworth was under strict orders not to stop for any reason, the Royal Navy destroyers accompanying the Queen were ordered to stay on course and not rescue any survivors."

The note below was part of an e-mail sent to me recently on another topic. It gives an insight into how the Maritime Rules get thrown out the window in wartime. It also comments on how the ships were only escorted when in home waters, (but doesn't mention that Queen Mary actually rammed a Royal Navy cruiser, cut it in two and sank it, without an appreciable loss of speed).

"Events of the period echo in life today. In a few weeks I will be going with my wife to Long Beach where the Cunard ship Queen Mary is preserved. It's a sort of homage to my father in law, Noel, who was First Officer of the Queen Mary in the war years, when she spent so much time ferrying troops from US to UK in preparation for the North Africa and D-day campaigns. With her sister ship Queen Elizabeth, the two "Queens" enabled D-day to happen in 1944 and not in 1945. The limited number of other troop ships were smaller, and usually had to travel in slower escorted convoys because of the submarine threat.

At that time, an uncomfortable fact of life for Noel and the allied military commanders was that the urgent need to move the troops to Britain for the invasions, and the limited time available, required the military to increase the ships capacity in the calmer North Atlantic summer from 10,000 troops and equipment to 15,000. A very high level decision was needed to authorise this expansion because the ship had no space for more or larger life boats while those extra 5,000 troops were aboard. Between them, the two Cunard ships moved 10,000 or 15,000 troops per week, every week, without major break downs. The two ships always sailed alone and un-escorted except in home waters near Britain, where the risk of U-boats and Luftwaffe patrol aircraft were too high. Across the rest of the ocean the ships relied on their speed, continual zig-zag manoeuvres and signal intercepts to keep them out of range of U-boats.

It was also true that neither the British or US navies had sufficient escort vessels that were able to accompany the ships at their operating speed if the weather broke. The two troop carrying liners had been built to maintain a year round trans-Atlantic schedule in peacetime, whatever the weather, but most naval vessels were not built sufficiently strong or seaworthy to maintain the service speed of those two liners in bad weather."

The only damage sustained by 'Queen Mary' was a crushed stem - the plating actually folded back on itself, so was essentially 'self-sealing', and thus enabled the ship to continue on at speed.

Just had another thought on this - maybe it is the biggest difference between 'Liners' and 'Cruise ships'. When ships are "STUFT"ed during wartime, the liners can always go faster than the (enemy's) warships, but the cruise ships can't!

Might be worth remembering that next time war breaks out and you want to travel somewhere safely.

Interesting reading,
Skilly