RMS Queen Mary

The story

The Queen Mary is one of the great Atlantic liners of the 1930s, and one of the very few that survives. Cunard began planning her in 1926, when it needed to replace its aging express ships Mauretania, Aquitania and Berengaria. The goal was a pair of ships able to run a weekly service between Southampton and New York, larger and faster than anything afloat, with a cruising speed of at least 28.5 knots. The order went to John Brown & Co. of Clydebank, Scotland, the yard that had built Lusitania and Aquitania.

Work on her keel started on December 1, 1930, when she was known only as hull No. 534. A year later the frame and plating were complete, but the Depression had gutted Cunard's revenues, and on December 12, 1931, work stopped. For about 28 months the unfinished hull loomed over a Clydebank sinking into poverty. Building resumed in 1934, the ship was launched that September, and after nearly two years of fitting out she sailed on her maiden voyage on May 27, 1936. That August she captured the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossing. She lost it to the French liner Normandie in 1937, regained it in 1938, and held it until the SS United States took it in 1952.

When World War II began she became a troopship. Painted navy gray from hull to funnels, and very fast, she was nicknamed the "Grey Ghost." Her luxurious cabins were stripped and packed with tiers of wooden bunks. On one 1943 crossing she carried more than 16,600 people, still the record for the most people aboard a single vessel. Winston Churchill crossed the Atlantic on her three times during the war. The war also brought her worst day: on October 2, 1942, off the coast of Ireland, under orders not to stop for anything, she sliced through her escort, the cruiser HMS Curacoa, and 338 men died.

After the war she returned to passenger service with her running mate Queen Elizabeth, and the two ruled the Atlantic until jet airliners took over at the end of the 1950s. Within a few years she was old and unprofitable, and Cunard announced the retirement of both Queens. The City of Long Beach, California, outbid Japanese scrap merchants with an offer of $3.45 million, and on October 31, 1967, she left Southampton for the last time. After a long conversion she opened to the public in 1971 as a hotel, museum and event venue.

The National Register nomination describes a three-funneled steel liner held together by more than ten million rivets, with twelve decks, 27 public rooms, two pools, a Turkish bath, a chapel and a synagogue, a hospital and accommodation for three classes of passengers.

The legend

The ghost stories began only after the ship settled in Long Beach, and took off in the 1980s. Wikipedia notes the suggestion that employees may have started some of them to boost business or to scare guests. By March 1988 the Los Angeles Times was already describing a tour of the ship's ghosts, and in 2008 Time magazine placed the Queen Mary on its list of the top ten haunted places.

The best-known stories concern a handful of places aboard. In the engine room, near watertight Door 13, a young crewman is said to have been crushed by the closing door during a drill in 1966; visitors claim to glimpse a bearded figure in blue overalls fading out at the doorway. Around the old second-class pool, a little girl often called Jackie is said to play, and some claim to have recorded her voice and laughter. A girl is also reported in the Royal Theater. At the long-drained first-class pool, people describe wet footprints, splashing and cold spots. Stateroom B340 has a reputation of its own: a passenger is supposed to have died there, and the bedsheets are said to be pulled off again and again. Another legend tells of a father who killed his two daughters on board. Weaker, single-source tales add women in 1930s bathing suits, a solitary dancer in a white gown in the Queen's Salon, a crying baby in the third-class playroom, and an assortment of knocks, slamming doors, phones ringing with no one on the line and lights switching on at night.

The historical record is much less dramatic. There is no record of any murder aboard the Queen Mary, so neither the B340 murder version nor the father who killed his daughters has any documentary basis. Most people who died on board died of natural causes. The drowning behind the Jackie story is also disputed: the paranormal author Cher Garman has said no drowning ever happened on the ship. The Curacoa disaster was real, but it happened at sea, not in the rooms where ghosts are now reported.

Television investigators have come often, with mixed results. TAPS filmed Ghost Hunters there for a 2005 episode (season 2, episode 11). Team members reported being touched on the back and seeing a door open on its own backstage in the Royal Theater, but they also found that a supposedly broken pump and water heater were working, judged footage of the B340 bed to have been tampered with, found their audio polluted by ship noise, and warned the guides about faked evidence. The British series Most Haunted aired a two-part investigation in July 2005 (series 6, episodes 15 and 16), and Ghost Adventures opened its tenth season aboard in October 2014. On the skeptical side, Joe Nickell of the Center for Inquiry attributes the experiences to pareidolia, imagery prompted by mood and expectation, and the daydreaming common among workers doing repetitive tasks, and a 2022 Skeptical Inquirer article also challenged the lore.

What remains today

From the outside, the ship looks much as she did in service, according to the National Register nomination from the early 1990s, with some practical changes: a few original doors have been sealed, a large opening was cut into the forward port side in 1967 for catering and staff access, and another near the stern lets visitors into the aft engine room. A steel box welded to the hull encloses her one remaining propeller, which visitors view through an opening in the side. She rests in about 45 feet of water behind a rock dike.

The ship is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, belongs to Historic Hotels of America, and has been owned by the City of Long Beach since 1967. Keeping her afloat is a constant struggle. An engineering study commissioned by the city put urgent safety repairs at about $23 million and warned of the risk of flooding or even capsizing. In September 2021 the city council voted to explore transferring the ship and nearby land to the Harbor Department. Deteriorating lifeboats that were stressing the hull were removed, and 11 original boats were kept for restoration. After a closure, the ship reopened for limited tours in December 2022 and fully in April 2023.

Visiting

The Queen Mary is open to the public in Long Beach, Los Angeles County, as a hotel, museum and event venue, and this is one of the few famous haunted sites where ghost hunting is officially on the menu. The ship runs its own paranormal tours, including guided haunted encounters and a paranormal ship walk, plus seasonal Halloween events. Check the official website for current schedules, prices and hotel bookings. An overnight stay is the legal way to experience the ship after dark; keep out of crew-only and closed areas.

Sources

1. National Register nomination #92001714 (texte intégral) — U.S. National Park Service · Public record
2. National Register of Historic Places file (NRHP #92001714) — U.S. National Park Service · Public domain (U.S. government)
3. Wikimedia Commons category : IMO 5287938 — Wikimedia Commons
4. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Long Beach, CA 1958 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1958 · Public domain (USGS)
5. USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Downey, CA 1896 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1896 · Public domain (USGS)
6. "Episode Recap: RMS Queen Mary" — Syfy — Syfy
7. "Ghosts of the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California" — Legends of America (Kathy Weiser, 2018) (lore compilation) — Legends of America (Kathy Weiser, 2018) (lore compilation; weak source
8. "List of Ghost Adventures episodes" — Wikipedia — Wikipedia
9. "List of Ghost Hunters episodes" — Wikipedia — Wikipedia
10. "List of Most Haunted episodes" — Wikipedia — Wikipedia
11. Official website
12. "Tours" — The Queen Mary (official) — The Queen Mary (official
13. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.