"You needn't worry...He will keep out of your way:" The Ramming of HMS Curacoa

During the dark days of World War II, HMS Curacoa was accidentally rammed and sunk by HMT Queen Mary off the coast of Northern Ireland on October 2, 1942. It was a military blunder that cost hundreds of lives and continues to haunt the Queen Mary today.

The HMS Curacoa, under the command of Captain John W. Boutwood, was charged with protecting the liner as she made her way to Gourock, Scotland. He took up a position about five miles ahead of Queen Mary at around 10:00 am as she made her way to disembark the over 10,000 soldiers aboard. The Cunard White Star liner was commanded by Captain C. Gordon Illingworth, who had his ship steer a standard zigzag course - known as Zigzag No. 8. Captain Boutwood, however, was not sure at which point in the pattern Queen Mary was currently at, which was the first in a series of errors.

The two ships started drifting dangerously close to each other. The Queen Mary's Junior First Officer Stanley Wright ordered "Hard-a-starboard!" Captain Illingworth emerged from the chartroom to see what the matter was. Examining the situation, he told Wright not to worry and ordered a correction.

After taking the appropriate action, Captain Illingworth told his subordinate that he "needn't worry about her. These fellows know all about escorting. He will keep out of your way."

At around the same time aboard Curacoa, some of Captain Boutwood's officers were concerned that Queen Mary was not keeping a steady course - and she eventually began overtaking the cruiser. Senior First Officer Noel Robinson took the watch from Wright and saw how close the Curacoa was approaching from starboard. He at first tried to ease off to port, but finally ordered Queen Mary "Hard-a-port!"

But it was too late.

The two ships collided with each other at 2:12 pm. The massive Queen Mary split Curacoa in two, leaving the cruiser's halves engulfed in flames. She sank six minutes later with a loss of 338 men - from a total crew of 439. The Queen Mary was under strict orders not to stop for anything and continued on to Scotland, where she was outfitted with a concrete plug and sailed to Boston for more permanent repairs.

Each ship was subsequently found to be responsible for the disaster. A recent dive to the Curacoa's wreck found that her rudder was still set ahead and made no attempt to correct course. It is likely, however, that everything happened so quickly that the cruiser's crew had no time to respond.

Either way, it was indeed a tragic day for both the Queen Mary and the British Royal Navy.

References: David A. Thomas & Patrick Holmes, Queen Mary and the Cruiser: The Curacoa Disaster (London: Leo Cooper, 1997), 79-91.

Newsreels on Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, Mauretania and Aquitania in World War II

The Cunard Line has played a role in transporting soldiers across the sea since the Crimean War in 1853, and World War II was no exception. The once-glamorous passenger ships were quickly transformed - camouflaged and armed - for the new task of trooping.


This collection of newsreels will show how the most famous ships in the world were pressed into service and took part in the overall Allied war effort.

In Honor of Memorial Day....

...and the many men and woman who have fallen in service to the United States and its people. Lest we forget their sacrifices.

"It was bizarre...on the way to a war."

Armies all throughout history have had a rigid class system that divides officers from the enlisted personnel. World War II was certainly no exception as Lt. Howard Zinn - later to be the famous historian and activist - experienced aboard the Queen Mary. He noted:

On that ocean crossing, the class system of the military was especially evident. Our nine-man crew, who had become good friends - no saluting, no "yessir and nosir" - were separated on board ship. The five enlisted men in the crew ate in the huge mess room, the usual grubby army food. We, the officers, ate in what must have been the first-class dining room of the Queen Mary - linen tablecloths, white-jacketed waiters, magnificent chandeliers, steaks and roasts. It was bizarre, with us sailing through submarine-infested waters on the way to a war.

I imagine that Zinn would have been surprised to learn that he and his fellow officers actually dined in the pre-war Tourist (Second) Class restaurant. The "huge mess room" that he wrote of (which would also be the setting for a defining moment in his life) was originally meant for the Cabin (First) Class passengers.

Regardless, however, this passage gives an idea of the way that soldiers were divided up on a wartime crossing aboard the "Grey Ghost."


References: Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), 92.

The Death of the Normandie

It was 69 years ago today that the French liner Normandie caught fire and capsized at her berth in New York. The grand ship was laid up in New York following the outbreak of World War II, and after France fell in 1940 was seized by the US government for use as a troop transport. She was renamed the USS Lafayette, after the Marquis de Lafayette (who had helped the Americans in the Revolutionary War) and nearly ready for her debut in this wartime role when disaster struck on February 9, 1942.

This period newsreel does a rather good job of describing what exactly happened to this grand ship 69 years ago. Notice, too, how in the later part of the clip the announcer described her as once being "the second finest ship afloat."

The Secret Voyage of the Queen Elizabeth

As the Second World War began to escalate in the early part of 1940, the decision was made to move the new Queen Elizabeth out of Scotland; she would be too prime a target for the Luftwaffe otherwise. Without being thoroughly tested, she embarked on her secret maiden voyage, as described by Leonard A. Stevens:

On March 2, 1940, the Queen Elizabeth, untried at sea, set forth across the Atlantic. She was escorted for a ways by four British destroyers and some military aircraft; then the ship set off alone in the submarine-infested ocean. Captain J.C. Townley commanded a crew of about four hundred. The ship was unarmed except for two guns on each side of the flying bridge. Though the crew did not know it, they were actually acting on an order from Winston Churchill, who had said that the liner must keep away from the British Isles until ordered to return. Indeed, the Germans, who got word of the plans, were even waiting with their bombers over the English Channel at the time the Elizabeth was supposed to come through on her way to Southampton.

Out at sea Captain Townley opened his secret orders to learn that he was to take the Elizabeth to the Port of New York where her sister ship, the Mary, had been caught as the war began. He was to maintain radio silence, but he would be sent important wireless communications by the Royal Navy. He was to maintain a full blackout and take an evasive, zigzag course. Regardless of his course, Captain Townley had a tremendous advantage when it came to running the Atlantic in the ship that a German U-boat crew would most love to sink. His was one of the fastest liners on earth - or at that point without trials, she was supposed to be. As he added miles between the ship and Scotland, the Master of the Elizabeth was rapidly convinced that she was performing as her designers and builders had planned. It would have taken an extremely clever or mighty lucky U-boat captain to sink the new Queen.

The Queen Elizabeth’s secret voyage - both her trials and her unofficial maiden voyage wrapped in one - was uneventful, yet the crew would never forget that Atlantic crossing. The vessel, sleek and new as seen from the outside, was still raw on the inside. Pipes, wires, and other materials ordinarily hidden were exposed, and some not even fixed in place. Moreover, the gigantic ship was virtually empty, and crew members wandering around inside the liner found it a lonely, eerie experience. They made up about an eighth of the numbers the Elizabeth could carry when full. This new, untried hotel of the seas was a gray, lightless ghost ship skimming over the cold North Atlantic in the dangerous early days of World War II.

References: Leonard A. Stevens, The Elizabeth: Passage of a Queen (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), 153-155.

The Medic & Bob Hope

Bob Hope and his wife Dolores returned to America aboard the RMS Queen Mary just as World War II was breaking out in September 1939. When the news officially came, the ship was put on full alert as her crew took every precaution necessary to avoid contact with one of Hitler's dreaded U-Boats. It was a bleak time to be sure, but with Captain R.B. Irving's permission, Mr. Hope performed in the First Class Main Lounge that night to try and raise his fellow passengers' spirits.

As World War II progressed, Mr. Hope became heavily (and quite famously) involved with the USO by putting on many comedy shows and helping to raise the troops' morale. The Queen Mary would transport him several more times during the course of the conflict, and the following passage tells of how one American medic was able to meet Old Ski Nose by accident. It comes from an autobiography entitled Warrior Without Weapons: An Army medic's life aboard the Queen Mary during World War II by Robert R. Copeland:

The Bob Hope Show traveled to England twice aboard the Queen Mary while I was doing my tour of duty. As usual, I was too busy in the hospital and missed all the shows. But I did meet both Jerry Colonna and Bob Hope personally, and while the incidents don't prove much of anything, they are occasions I remember vividly because of the famous personalities involved.

After discussing how he met Jerry Colonna "head-to-head rather than face-to-face," Mr. Copeland continues on:

My encounter with Bob Hope was equally unmemorable to anyone but myself. We were mid-ocean heading east and had so few patients that trip we closed the ward just off the lab. I was therefore very much surprised one evening when I went into the lab to get a report and heard some unusual noises in the vacant ward. I opened the door and switched on the lights, and there in the center of the room stood Bob Hope!

"How in the hell do I get out of this place?" he demanded.

I said, "No problem, Mr. Hope, I was just wondering how in the hell you got in...you must have come in through the wall."

"No I didn't. I was outside and saw that door there and just walked in quick-like to get out of the wind and rain...and it closed on me...and there's no knob to re-open it," he explained.

And it was true. There had been a cabinet in front of that door, so there was no knob on it. We never used it as a door, and I had forgotten it was there. I escorted Mr. Hope out through the lab, and in an effort to be friendly, and perhaps also to have something to tell my grandchildren offered him a tour of the hospital.

"No thanks...hospitals give me the creeps!" he said, and with that, Mr. Bob Hope left my life forever.

References: Robert R. Copeland, Warrior Without Weapons: An Army medic's life aboard the Queen Mary during World War II, ed. Martine H. Justak (Indianapolis: Griffing-Horne Press, 1989), 56-57.

"What the hell is this war all about, sergeant?"

The great ocean liners of the 1930s were mobilized as the Second World War erupted and plunged Europe into another bloody conflict. Perhaps the grandest of them all, the Queen Mary was activated as a troopship in March 1940. She began her service transporting ANZACs, but would become famous for carrying American GIs from New York to the Scottish port of Gourock.

The Queen Mary would ultimately carry over 800,000 troops to all corners of the world and play a role in every major Allied campaign of the war - most of her passengers were Americans. She would also take the world record for the most number of people ever embarked on a single ship: 16,683 in July 1943. That record still stands (which is probably a good thing). But since the U.S. Army wasn't integrated during this period, I've often wondered how black soldiers were treated aboard the Queen Mary. The bit of information that I've been able to find on the subject comes from Howard Zinn's autobiography, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train:

The officers on board were all given supervisory jobs, and mine was to "keep order" in the huge mess hall where the troops ate twice a day, in four shifts. The four thousand black soldiers on board, who slept in the depths of the ship near the engine room, ate last.

(It seems absurd - but is so typical of whites in this country - that I hadn't noticed the absence of blacks in basic training at Jefferson Barracks until one day I took a long walk through the base and found myself in an all-black environment. What I remember most vividly is a squad of black soldiers taking a break on the grass near me, singing "Ain't Gonna Study War No More!" I was startled. I had never heard white troops sing that.)

On the fifth day at sea, there was a mix-up, and the last shift was sent into the mess hall before the previous one was finished eating - four thousand black men pouring into the hall, filling in wherever other men had finished and left. It was now, accidentally, a racially integrated dining hall.

"Lieutenant!" A white sergeant, sitting next to a black man, was calling to me. "Get him out of here until I finish." This angered me, and for the first time in my military career I pulled rank. I shook my head. "If you don't want to finish your food, you can leave. What the hell is this war all about, sergeant?" It was a long way to the next meal, and the sergeant stayed and ate. I learned something from that little incident, later reinforced in my years in the South: that most racists have something they care about more than racial segregation, and the problem is to locate what that is.

References: Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), 91-92.