RMS Queen Mary - After World War II

After World War II

From September 1946 to July 1947, Queen Mary was refitted for passenger service, adding air conditioning and upgrading her berth configuration to 711 first class, 707 cabin class and 577 tourist class passengers. Following refit, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth dominated the transatlantic passenger trade as Cunard White Star's two-ship weekly express service through the latter half of the 1940s and well into the 1950s. They proved highly profitable for Cunard, but in 1958 the first transatlantic flight by a jet began a completely new era of competition for the Cunard Queens. On some voyages, winters especially, Queen Mary sailed into harbour with more crew than passengers, though both she and Queen Elizabeth still averaged over 1000 passengers per crossing into the middle 1960s.

By 1965, the entire Cunard fleet was operating at a loss. Hoping to continue financing their still-under-construction Queen Elizabeth 2, Cunard mortgaged the majority of the fleet. Finally, under a combination of age, lack of public interest, inefficiency in a new market, and the damaging after effects of the national seamen's strike, Cunard announced that both Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth would be retired from service and were to be sold off. Many offers were submitted, and the bid of $3.45m/£1.2m from Long Beach, California beat the Japanese scrap merchants. Queen Mary was retired from service in 1967. On 27 September she had completed her 1,000th and last crossing of the North Atlantic, having carried 2,112,000 passengers over 3,792,227 miles (6,102,998 km). Under the command of Captain John Treasure Jones, who had been her captain since 1965, she sailed from Southampton for the last time on 31 October with 1,093 passengers and 806 crew. After an epic voyage around Cape Horn, she arrived in Long Beach on 9 December. Queen Elizabeth was withdrawn in 1968 and Queen Elizabeth 2 took over the transatlantic route in 1969.