Rogue Waves
Flying shotgun off Cape Farewell, Green-land, in December 1942, a Royal Air Force bomber pilot captured a one-in-a-billion photograph. The luxury liner turned troop ship, the Queen Mary, was on her side after being hit by a fluke “rogue wave.”
Master Mariner Captain John Shaw, Sydney, says: “No one on board thought she would right herself. Had she gone over one more degree — just five inches [13 cm] — the Queen Mary would have capsized with 11,339 passengers and crew perishing in the frigid waters. It would have been the worst tragedy of our lifetime — the greatest sea disaster of all time.”
Rogue waves are unpredictable and savagely destructive freaks of nature. They happen when fierce storm waves collide with currents running in the opposite direction. Waves 30 metres or higher are not uncommon. Superstitious seamen call them “holes in the ocean.” These “holes” are actually deep troughs that precede the steep sheets of water.
The Mary was eastbound to Europe on voyage WW #19E carrying 10,389 Canadian and U.S. servicemen and a crew of 950. One of the largest ships afloat, she was also the fastest and could have carried the Titanic in her hold with more than 40 metres to spare. At 1,019 feet long, she was as long as three football fields. Her flank speed was 32 knots. The rogue wave completely engulfed the fore part and bridge and rose two-thirds the way up the 56-metre funnel. Thrown on her side, she listed almost 45 degrees to starboard. The force of the wave treated her as just another ocean-going ping-pong ball. Wartime censorship made sure “the incident never happened.” Cunard-White Star Lines’ records make no mention of the wave. Likewise, logs show only that the liner spent six weeks in dry dock while repairs were carried out around the clock to restore her to service. Neither shipping company nor military records reveal if anyone was swept overboard or if any of the 11,339 on board were killed or injured. The fore part of the ship, however, was set down 15 centimetres from the main deck. Lifeboats, davits, and ventilators were swept away. The galleys and food lockers were left in shambles.
The Mary and her sister ship, the Queen Elizabeth, played key roles in winning the war. Between them, they ferried two and a half million fighting troops. Returning to New York, they were never deadheaded empty. They often carried 5,000 to 6,000 German prisoners of war to internment camps in Canada and the United States. To prepare them for war, the sisters were painted a dull, battleship grey. Their portholes were blacked out. Across the shipping lanes they were known as the Gray Ghosts or the Gray Ladies.
The Mary logged 966 kilometres on the New York–Boston–Halifax–England run. Zigzagging at 28 to 32 knots, she could outrun any ship or U-boat Germany could throw at her. Hitler put a price on her head: a reward of $250,000, an Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, and a hero’s reception in Berlin to the U-boat captain who could sink her. With the power of 160,000 horses in her engine room, she provided scant opportunity for eager wolf-pack bounty hunters. Because of her great speed, she crossed the ocean unescorted. Her greatest danger points were the headlands off Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, and Canada’s east coast where the wolf packs lay in wait. She received sea and air escort protection in those areas.
When the Mary was requisitioned as a troop ship, her luxurious fittings — several kilometres of carpeting, expensive art deco furniture and 200 containers of china, silver, and crystal — were removed and stored. Tiers of bunks, six high, were built in, and she could carry more than 16,000 on a single crossing. There were life rafts for only half that number.
Her log of July 30, 1943, contains this entry:
New York to Gourock [Clyde], 16,683 souls aboard. New York, 25 July, 1943. Gourock, 30 July, 1943. 3,353 miles [5,396 km], four days, 20 hours, 42 minutes. 28.73 knots. The greatest number of human beings ever embarked on one vessel.
The Queen Mary was the first ship to transport an entire armoured infantry division in a single crossing. She sailed under the Union Jack, but the U.S. military considered her one of their “ships of the Line” and, like all U.S. warships, she was “dry” except when Winston Churchill was on board. The British prime minister — code named Colonel Warden — made three wartime crossings with his daughter, Mary, and Brigadier Orde Wingate (on occasion Chindit commander), First Sea Lord Louis Mountbatten, and famed Dambuster squadron commander, Wing Commander Guy Gibson, V.C. The Chindit commander was a member of the Allied forces behind Japanese lines in Burma (now Myanmar).
Severe rationing was in effect in England, but not aboard the Queen Mary. Twice a day in six sittings of 2,000 each, soldiers could eat all they wanted and were encouraged to take cold cuts and sandwiches away for snacks during the day. Her vast food lockers held 400 tons of food: 70,307 kilograms of meat, 9,707 kilograms of ham and bacon, 8,000 jars of jam, 14,243 kilograms of canned fruit, 24,313 kilograms of butter, powdered eggs, and milk, 200,000 eggs, 60,000 cartons of ice cream, and 13,154 kilograms of fresh fruit. To slice enough ham, the slicing machines were started up in New York and operated non-stop throughout the entire voyage. Every morning there were 30,000 fresh eggs to go with the ham.
Initially, she carried only puny Lewis and Vickers machine guns and one 10-centimetre deck gun. Subsequently, she was fitted with Oerlikons guns and rockets, but none was ever fired in anger. She also was equipped with one of Britain’s very early, very few, and very secret marine radar units.
Even though she gave German U-boats the slip, her war was not without mishap. In 1942, off the northwest coast of Ireland, she was joined by Royal Navy escorts, the 4,200-ton cruiser HMS Curacao and four destroyers. All ships sailed at flank speed in prescribed zigzag courses.
The Curacao zigged when she should have zagged and the Queen Mary cut through 8 centimetres of “armour plate like a knife through butter.” Her bow was guillotine sharp and had been especially strengthened for collisions or icebergs. Horrified watchers on deck saw halves of the Curacao on either side. More than 335 British sailors died. The 81,237-ton Queen Mary, under strict orders not to stop or slow down, sailed on. Destroyer escorts picked up 72 survivors. Seventy tons of concrete were poured into the Mary’s bow for emergency repairs, and she had to make for Boston because there was no dry dock space anywhere in Britain.
After the war, she brought U.S. and Canadian servicemen back home. She also made 12 crossings carrying 12,886 war brides and children — and 10 stowaways. The retired Queen, 1,001 Atlantic crossings under her keel, is now at anchor in Long Beach, California, as a floating museum and major tourist attraction.
Paul Gallico, the highest paid magazine writer in the United States, may have been a passenger on the Mary when she was struck by the rogue wave. Cosmopolitan magazine had sent him off to Europe to be their war correspondent. Years later he wrote a best-selling book about a luxury liner that turned turtle in mid-ocean. Hollywood bought the film rights and it became a blockbuster movie called The Poseidon Adventure.