Death of the Queens

As the Queen Elizabeth steamed toward New York harbor last week with 711 passengers (capacity: 2,304), a message over the ship's radio instructed Captain Joseph E. Woolfenden to open a sealed envelope he had received before sailing from Southampton. Woolfenden was stunned by what he read. At that moment, the Cunard Steam-Ship Co. Ltd. was announcing in London that the world's two largest ocean liners would be retired--the Queen Elizabeth within 18 months, the older Queen Mary as early as next October.

While the Queens were known to be sailing in financial straits, Cunard was not expected to phase out Mary until late 1968, hoped to keep Elizabeth in operation for as long as ten more years. But the ships together have been losing more than $3,000,000 a year, and, as Sir Basil Smallpeice, chairman of the Cunard group, put it at the London press conference, "We cannot allow our affections or our sense of history to divert us from our aim of making Cunard again a thriving company."

Jampacked G.l.s. Designed as a tandem team for providing weekly passenger service across the North Atlantic, the Queens were the culmination of a dream born in 1840 when Samuel Cunard's Britannia became the first regularly scheduled transatlantic liner. At the time that the 80,000-ton Queen Mary made her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in May 1936, only the French Line's Normandie could rival her for size and speed.* Within six months, work was underway on her even bigger sister ship, the 83,000-ton Queen Elizabeth, whose maiden trip to New York in 1940, coming as it did after the outbreak of World War II, was shrouded in secrecy. The Queens served as troop ships throughout the war, eluding German submarines and planes to carry as many as 15,000 jam-packed G.l.s on a single voyage.

Then war's end freed the Queens to do the job they were meant for: ferrying pampered travelers in elegant surroundings. As time passed, the ships' 1930s-style trappings made them seem dowdy to travelers with new ideas about opulence. Hurt by jet-age airline competition, the Queens also lost potential passengers to sleeker French and Italian ocean liners. By 1961 the ships were losing money, and Cunard began putting them on winter cruises in an effort to make ends meet. Last year alone, the line spent $4,200,000 remodeling the Queen Elizabeth.

The Queens' nagging troubles threatened to torpedo the entire group of Cunard companies. In 1965 Cunard lost $7,560,000 on the Queens and its five other passenger ships, turned a slender $520,000 before-taxes profit only because of income from freighters and other investments. Last year's British seamen's strike, which cost Cunard more than $10 million in revenues, speeded the demise of the Queens.

Winter Scheme. Sir Basil is now hopeful of leading Cunard to "a new and profitable future in a new market situation." Since becoming Cunard's chairman in late 1965, the former BOAC chief has completely reorganized steamship operations, linked up with British European Airways on a new winter-holiday scheme. Vacationers fly via BEA to Gibraltar, then board a Cunard ship for a leisurely Mediterranean cruise. Cunard does not plan to abandon its summer North Atlantic express service. Due to make its maiden voyage in 1969 is a new $80 million, 58,000-ton, one-class liner, now known only as the Q4, which will be suitable for both cruises and transatlantic crossings.

As for the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, Sir Basil said he would consider selling them to another line so long as they did not compete with Cunard, also mentioned proposals for mooring the Queen Mary as an offshore "hotel" at Gibraltar or Los Angeles. Otherwise, the ships figure to be worth $1,800,000 each as scrap.

* The Mary's shortest Atlantic crossing was a record three days, 20 hr. 42 min., since surpassed by the S.S. United States' three days, 10 hr. 40 min.

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