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.

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.

"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.