On 27 May 1936 the Queen Mary left Southampton for New York, via Cherbourg. This was the vessel’s maiden voyage, and nearly one million observers watched it inch out into the Solent on its inaugural journey, accompanied by a flotilla of smaller ships and boats. So great was the excitement that 15,000 people had paid five shillings a head to visit the ship in the week before it departed on its maiden voyage. Newsreel footage of the era shows crowds of excited visitors touring the ship, particularly families, with children in their ‘Sunday Best’ outfits, their fathers sporting suits and over-coats, and their mothers wearing hats and fur stoles. A trip around the Queen Mary before it sailed was a thrill, even if the visitors were not actually passengers, and were ‘gonged off’ by stewards when it was time for them to return to shore. The money raised went to charity, but Cunard had not anticipated the public’s subliminal feeling that they had a right to own a piece of this mighty vessel; by the eve of sailing, every ashtray on board had been stolen as a souvenir.
Many had anticipated the launch of the Queen Mary for years, and now it was sailing day at last; passengers trotted up the gangways, to be directed to their cabins by officers and stewards. Baggage handlers took charge of tons of intricately labelled luggage, while armloads of bouquets were delivered by bellboys to the waiting arms of stewardesses. Among the floral tributes, a five-foot-long replica of the vessel, constructed out of white flowers, stole the show as it was carefully carried aboard. As the time of departure neared, most of the 2,079 passengers on board milled about on deck, hoping to catch a sight of their nearest and dearest down below on the quayside, so that they could wave frantically at each other, while the 1,100 crew readied the ship for its inaugural voyage. The band struck up for the umpteenth time, the last hawsers were cast off, and the great ship almost imperceptibly inched away from dry land. Small tugs adeptly nosed the Queen Mary out of the basin and into the Solent. In more open water, there was an armada of craft of all types and sizes – excursion paddle-steamers hired for the day, pleasure craft, fishing boats, naval cutters, yachts and dinghies. All were full of cheering onlookers, keen to provide a personal escort. Overhead, planes buzzed the ship, with news cameramen on board, recording the spectacular event for newsreels to be shown in cinemas, where it was watched avidly and triumphantly by millions. ‘To Britons, she represents the restoration of Britain’s supremacy on the seas. With her goes the hope and pride of a nation,’ boomed the commentator above the swelling chords of ‘Rule Britannia’. Among the passengers was a fourteen-year-old British girl called Heather Beagley, travelling to New York with her family. She recalled the ‘tremendous excitement’ of the voyage, and likened it to ‘going to the moon now’.1
All classes were free to mingle on deck on this first voyage, and afternoons afloat were often spent in reclining chairs in the open air, with a rug over the knees, while an attentive steward hovered with a trayful of tea and cakes. The sumptuous interiors of the ship conjured up a fantasy world, especially in the evenings. As an entity, the ship most resembled a vast, floating hotel, but there was an atmosphere of great gaiety, with a constant kaleidoscope of galas, ballgowns, champagne and fine dining. Music for every occasion was provided by Henry Hall’s Dance Band. The team of on-board photographers worked in shifts every night to meet the huge demand for commemorative pictures from party-going passengers.
There were hopes that the Queen Mary might arrive in New York in time to claim the Blue Riband, the much contested award for the fastest cross-Atlantic trip, but the ship was delayed by fog and missed beating the record, held by the Normandie, by a mere forty minutes. Nevertheless, the arrival of the Queen Mary in New York Harbour on 1 June 1936 was rapturous, as a flotilla of vessels of all types welcomed Cunard’s new flagship, and the quayside was packed with cheering well-wishers. Heather Beagley recalled that aeroplanes flew alongside and overhead in salute, and fire hoses played over the Hudson River, casting rainbows in the sunshine with their arcs of spray. The pandemonium raised by the competing sirens, plane engines, bands and well-wishers’ whistles and whoops was drowned out by the Queen Mary’s sonorous horn, a resonant vibrato subsequently likened by Edith Sowerbutts to hearing Dame Clara Butt singing ‘There’ll Always Be an England’.
Cunard’s flagship vessel was intended to dwarf all other contenders on the lucrative and prestigious transatlantic route. The Queen Mary combined the finest classical marine architecture with advanced engineering expertise. Cunard believed that approximately 70 per cent of this ship’s revenue would come from the American market. Consequently the interiors were reassuringly traditional, although leavened with a certain amount of whimsy and a restrained form of modernism. The veteran architect Arthur Davis, who had designed the interiors of the Aquitania, the Franconia and Laconia, had once more been engaged in 1935 for this new ship; in fact, this was his last major commission. According to his daughter, Ann Davis Thomas, speaking in 2004, ‘he finally did the Queen Mary, which he hated. He was made to do it in Art Deco style, and it was not his bag. But the curious thing is, somehow, he did it. He managed to do it, and it’s become almost a prototype of Art Deco.’2
The Queen Mary’s interiors incorporated subtle, natural materials and fine finishes. More than fifty tons of wooden veneers, taken from fifty-six different species of trees, represented all the countries of the British Empire. The accommodation ranged from luxurious staterooms to the more compact but well-designed third-class cabins. Cunard claimed that the public rooms represented ‘those fundamental characteristics of British homes which are generally admired and appreciated by men and women of all nations’. However, when Cecil Beaton travelled on the Queen Mary on its maiden voyage, he criticised the lack of theatricality in the ship’s interior, particularly the absence of a spectacular staircase suitable for making the grande descente. ‘When constructing a boat, even a luxury liner, the English do not consider their women very carefully. There are hardly any large mirrors in the general rooms, no great flight of stairs for the ladies to make an entrance.’3
Women were more actively involved in the creation of the Queen Mary than in any previous British-built ships. The role of female artists, interior designers and artisans working on the preparation of the Queen Mary was acknowledged in the press, especially in an article in the London Evening Standard on 11 February 1936. Sisters Doris and Anna Zinkeisen provided numerous paintings for the prestigious Verandah Grill and the white and gold Ballroom, while Dame Laura Knight created a special picture for one of the private dining rooms. Lady Hilton Young’s marble plaque of Queen Mary, set in a panel of special burr walnut, was to be installed at the head of the main staircase facing the Main Hall. Meanwhile, Hetty Perry provided a decorative map, to be hung under the clock in the tourist smoking room, as well as wall decorations for the children’s attractive playrooms in the tourist section. Margot Gilbert also painted a sequence on the theme of ‘Dancing Through the Ages’, representing the art form from stately measures and classical dances down to jazz.
The same newspaper article also recorded the role of thousands of unknown women working in manufacturing, engaged in provisioning and fitting out the great ship: ‘busy fingers are plying needles and machines in Glasgow and Liverpool, in London and Ireland. Women old and young are putting every endeavour into their skilled tasks. Women operators are engaged in preparing fabrics and making upholstery; women’s handiwork is being employed in making pillow-cases and coverlets, and even in preparing compass equipment, the latter a most delicate task.’4
The Queen Mary was luxuriously fitted out to meet every possible need. There were two indoor swimming pools, beauty salons, libraries and children’s nurseries for all three classes, a music studio and lecture hall, a telephone system that could connect passengers to anywhere in the world, outdoor tennis courts, a squash court and dog kennels. There was an arcade of shops, with twenty-four large window displays, including haberdashery, gifts and tailoring. A fountain, deep sofas and baskets of fresh flowers enhanced the air of relaxed luxury. The ship was also the first transatlantic liner to have a purpose-built Jewish prayer room on board, available to all classes of passenger – an enlightened response to the growing mood of anti-Semitism in parts of mainland Europe.
The largest single space on board was the first-class main dining room (the Grand Salon), which was three storeys in height. At one end was a large map of the transatlantic crossing, with twin tracks representing both the more northerly summer/autumn route, and the winter/spring route (further south to avoid icebergs). During each crossing, a motorised model of Queen Mary would indicate the vessel’s daily progress. An even more exclusive alternative to the main dining room was available to cabin-class passengers – the Verandah Grill on the sun deck. This à la carte restaurant could seat approximately eighty diners, and it was converted to the Starlight Club every night after dinner. Another popular spot for elite socialising was the Observation Bar, an art deco-styled lounge with wide ocean views.
Cunard’s marketing department promoted the vessel’s modernity, its technological sophistication and, above all, its breathtakingly vast scale. The Queen Mary – A Book of Comparisons was published in 1936 listing newsworthy statistics about the longest ship in the world. Modernist cartoons in red and black, like a Futurist version of the Beano, illustrated a plethora of impressive facts and figures. The engines generated a mighty 200,000 horsepower, while the ship, at 1,018 feet in length, exceeded the height of the Eiffel Tower (984 feet), the Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt (461 feet) and Westminster Tower, the home of Big Ben (310 feet). There were three acres of deck space given over to recreation, and twenty-one lifts, while the ballroom was the largest ever created on a ship. No detail was too prosaic: over 10 million rivets were used to construct the ship, and 30,000 electric lamps illuminated it, while six miles of carpet were cleaned every day with scores of vacuum cleaners.
Feeding the huge numbers of passengers and crew required victualling on a vast scale. Some of the staple foods apparently carried on an Atlantic round trip included 1,000 pineapples, 50,000 lbs potatoes, 3,600 lbs cheese, 3,600 lbs butter, 6 tons fresh fish, 60,000 eggs, 20 tons meat, 12,800 lbs sugar, 3,600 quarts milk, 1,200 lbs coffee, 2,000 quarts ice cream, 200 boxes of apples, 280 barrels of flour and 5 tons ham and bacon. The kitchens covered an acre, and over 40,000 meals would be served during a single voyage, using 500,000 pieces of china, glassware and table silver. On-board linen supplies included 210,000 towels, 30,000 sheets, 31,000 pillow cases, 21,000 tablecloths and 92,000 napkins. In addition, the Queen Mary carried 5,000 bottles of spirits, 40,000 bottles of beer, 10,000 bottles of table wine, 60,000 bottles of mineral water, 6,000 gallons of draught ale, 5,000 cigars and 20,000 packets of cigarettes on each transatlantic voyage.
In the 1930s ocean liners captured the public imagination in the way that aircraft and spacecraft were to appeal to later generations. The perception of technological rivalry with the ships of other nations was bound up in this appeal; the French had launched the superlative Normandie the previous year, and inevitably the two super-liners were compared.
The Normandie had entered service in 1935. It was daringly avant-garde, and it re-established France as the pre-eminent nation for visual and material culture. Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT, and typically known overseas as the French Line) had commissioned the best French designers and artists to provide chic settings of unimaginable luxury and modernity. The Normandie was the biggest ship afloat when it was launched, and the largest art deco object ever created, according to Ghislaine Wood, co-curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum exhibition, Ocean Liners. It was breath-taking in its audacious approach to interior design. The ship was full of huge public spaces, designed like the most daring theatrical or movie sets, with dramatic entrances, mirrored surfaces, framing doorways, ornate screens, settings where the passengers could pose and ‘grandstand’. The first-class dining saloon was nearly 300 feet long, rising through three decks to accommodate 700 diners. The entrance boasted bronze doors twenty feet high, and the decorative scheme was a medley of onyx, gold and crystal, with illuminated glass fountains and lights by Lalique.
There were many opportunities for the woman of fashion to make a spectacular grande descente, as vast, decorative mirror-lined staircases linked the various public rooms of one floor to another, acting as catwalks for the well-dressed passengers.
The ship was heralded as a triumph of the modern age and instantly became the pride of the French Line. An estimated 100,000 spectators had lined New York Harbour for its triumphant arrival. Its passenger list included Ernest Hemingway, Marlene Dietrich, Walt Disney, Salvador Dali, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, James Stewart and Bing Crosby. The Normandie was chic, sleek and fast, securing the prestigious Blue Riband on its inaugural transatlantic crossing. Despite the Normandie’s understandable appeal to the international fashionable set, to celebrities and Hollywood moguls, maharajahs and millionaires, the ship was not commercially successful in its own right. CGT ran it mostly at a loss, subsidised by rather more modest vessels of the same line, despite the iconic advertising poster by Cassandre.
Just eleven years after the Armistice, the German merchant fleet were once again serious rivals in transatlantic trade. In July 1929 the German liner Bremen sailed on its maiden voyage to New York and won the coveted Blue Riband with an average of 27.38 knots. The Bremen’s sister ship, the Europa, also broke speed records in transatlantic crossings in 1930. The Europa and the Bremen were the twin transatlantic flagships running between German ports and North America. Noël Coward was familiar with both, having crossed the Atlantic on one of them (he claimed he could not tell them apart) in the spring of 1932. He later wrote about his vague sense of suppressed guilt in patronising a German-owned ship, even though the Great War, which had menaced his teenage years, seemed so far in the past. Despite the apparent sense of equanimity among the European nations in the early 1930s, he maintained a lingering sense of unease about the future.
Sir Percy Bates, Cunard chairman, noted as early as 1930 that shipping was not an end in itself, but rather a part of the worldwide ebb and flow of people and commodities. He wrote that shipping could not flourish when trade was sick, and he identified the main cause of the Great Depression as fear, not just among individuals, but also as it affected nations. He was surprisingly prescient in correctly identifying some of the fault lines that would fracture the fragile world peace by the end of the decade: ‘Spain is concerned with revolution; France nervous about Germany; Germany afraid of Russia; Russia afraid of her own people; England of economic troubles; even America is perhaps afraid of these … the result is slow paralysis of international trade, with corresponding evils for shipping.’5
Nationalism and politics had become inextricably bound up with each other during the early 1930s. The post-war rivalry between international shipping companies had intensified, and each ‘great ship’ that was launched was imbued with ideas of patriotism and aspirations to maritime superiority. The international shipping companies were sensitive to political developments in other countries, especially the ominous rise of the National Socialist Party in Germany. The issue of whether foreign visitors should offer the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute when visiting the country was broached in November 1933, just ten months after Hitler came to power, in the Canadian-Pacific Gazette, the on-board newspaper of the Empress of Britain. The leading German newspaper, the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, had already recommended that foreign visitors should wear special identification badges, as ‘Germany is anxious to avoid any further unpleasantness such as that which followed the attacks on British and American citizens who failed to give the Hitler salute … Failing the introduction of the badge system the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung advises foreigners either to give the Hitler salute for the sake of peace, or else avoid all occasions in which it might be required.’
With Germany resurgent under Hitler, the rise of National Socialism had profound repercussions for that nation’s merchant navy. Hitler intended to reward those supporters who had swept the Nazis to power in 1933. The ‘strength through joy’ initiative encompassed the building of two cruise ships, with single-class accommodation on board for model workers. The Robert Ley sported a swastika on its funnel, and was launched in 1938. Newsreel footage survives showing Adolf Hitler visiting the ship amid cheering crowds, who were delighted to be able to join the ‘cruising classes’.
Needless to say, the limited opportunities for women hoping for careers at sea in German-owned ships rapidly diminished under the Nazi regime. In 1937 the Daily Telegraph reported that:
Great indignation has been aroused in conservative German shipping circles by the news that a woman, Fraulein Annaliese Sparbier, formerly a schoolmistress, is working for a master’s certificate, with a view to becoming a captain in the German mercantile marine. Fraulein Sparbier is now serving on board a trawler as an ordinary seaman. The ‘Deutsche Seeman’, the official organ of the German merchant service, asks severely whether such activities will help Fraulein Sparbier to ‘do her duty as a woman and bring healthy and strong children into the world’. Her ambitions, it adds, are incompatible with the ideas of womanly tenderness and sense of duty. ‘When Fraulein Sparbier doffs her thick shoes and stockings and her oilskins, and enters the haven of marriage, she will be sorry to find she has lost some of her charm. Surely, if her love for the sea is so tremendous, she could become a stewardess in a liner.’6
In Britain many women who had avoided entering ‘the haven of marriage’ were now gainfully employed aboard the Queen Mary, including the resourceful Edith Sowerbutts, who had been recruited as a stewardess for the Cunard flagship in 1936. Edith was offered the job because she was very experienced, competent and, incidentally, fashionably slim, despite her enormous appetite, in the same way that air hostesses were required to be glamorous and soignée in the Jet Age two decades later. As the Evening Standard had reported, the Queen Mary employed an unparalleled number of women working on board: among the ship’s company were swimming instructresses, hairdressers, a masseuse, nurses and female switchboard operators, and there was considerable prestige in working on the Mary, as it was known informally. The stewardesses were managed by a chief stewardess who in turn reported to the purser. Their working conditions were now far better, as they had a simple rota system, with more time off during the working day. In addition, after four or five return transatlantic trips, there was a month ashore for rest and recuperation, during which the seawoman could sign on for fifteen shillings a week on the dole. There was always a risk that any resting stewardess might be ‘crimped’, that is posted to a lesser ship of the same line, if the company was unexpectedly short of personnel, but generally the Queen Mary maintained the same staff, and morale was high. Edith was always relieved to get back on board her favourite ship, as it carried the most prestigious and wealthy passengers, and the tips were excellent, as much as £20 per month.
Apart from the launch of the Queen Mary, 1936 was a tumultuous year. With the death of King George V in January, the Prince of Wales became Edward VIII, a prospect he viewed with dread. After a suitable period of court and public mourning, preparations began for his coronation, which was planned for May 1937. However, the illicit relationship between the prince and Mrs Wallis Simpson was already known to those in society and government circles. Within months the impasse would result in the constitutional crisis of the abdication. Meanwhile, the British press maintained a stout code of silence, though British subscribers to American journals were puzzled as to why large rectangles had been cut out of their magazines by the scissors of the censors. That momentous year ended with the abdication of Edward VIII, who rather melodramatically broadcast to the nation that he could not continue as king ‘without the support of the woman I love’. Most of the British public were completely nonplussed; they had never heard of Mrs Simpson, but the story erupted in the press on both sides of the Atlantic and the American journalist H.L. Mencken described the romance as ‘the greatest story since the Resurrection’.7 Winston Churchill, himself the product of a marriage between an American femme fatale and a British aristocrat, wondered out loud why the king should not be allowed to have his ‘cutie’. Noël Coward, acerbic as ever, replied, ‘Because the British people will not stand for a Queen Cutie.’8
Wallis’s countrywoman, Lady Astor MP, was in New York with her long-suffering maid, Rose Harrison, when the news of the abdication broke. Nancy was livid; as an eminent society hostess, she had long been aware of the romantic relationship between the prince and Mrs Simpson, and had tried to persuade the future king against continuing it. But Rose found her mistress’s unsympathetic attitude difficult to understand. Both Wallis Simpson and Nancy Astor were ambitious American-born women, who had reinvented themselves by entering British society, finding acceptance in elite drawing rooms and royal circles. Both women had undergone the considerable stigma of divorce, having previously been married to volatile and violent drunks, before finding more gentlemanly second husbands through their travels across the Atlantic. But Nancy Astor was vehement that Mrs Simpson should not become queen, and cried bitterly when told what the New York paperboys were shouting below in the street as the news first broke. Perhaps she was concerned that the British public might now see her too as an ‘upstart’ divorced American woman. On her return to Britain she was asked to make a radio broadcast to the United States and she was at pains to explain that the abdication occurred because Wallis could not marry the future king as she was a divorcee, and not because she was American.
Rose speculated that it was some consolation later to Lady Astor that her great friends, the Duke and Duchess of York, were to accede to the British throne in place of Edward VIII. The coronation was still planned for May 1937, even though the dramatis personae had changed. Cunard embarked on a major promotional initiative to bring thousands of Americans to London to attend the celebrations, and, perhaps wisely, their marketing literature featured an impressionistic scene of the famous gold coach pulled by horses, with a tactfully indeterminate (though presumably regal) figure inside.
Meanwhile, Cunard pressed ahead with another giant ship for the transatlantic route. The new vessel was intended to be a replacement for the venerable Aquitania, which was due for decommissioning in 1940. Hull 552 was laid in December 1936 at John Brown’s, and, following the abdication, it was given the name of the Queen Elizabeth, the new title of the Duchess of York. Queen Elizabeth had been furious when her brother-in-law abdicated as she had never intended to undertake the very public life expected of the consort of the monarch. When Elizabeth had finally agreed to marry Bertie in 1923, after turning him down twice, it had been assumed the couple would lead mostly private lives – a necessity given his shyness and bad stammer. Nevertheless, she took to the new role with as much grace as she could muster. At the height of the Munich Crisis at the end of September 1938, Queen Elizabeth travelled to Clydeside with her two young daughters to launch her namesake, with 300,000 people watching the ceremony to dedicate the world’s largest passenger ship. The queen spoke of ‘the great ships that ply to and fro across the Atlantic, like shuttles in a mighty loom, weaving a fabric of friendship and understanding’.
Such a benign, constructive image was conjured up despite the darker and starker global realities of the late 1930s. The inexorable rise of the dictators in the Old World – of Mussolini, Stalin, Franco and Hitler – was creating vast ripples across Europe. Those with foresight and overseas connections assessed their options, and some decided to leave their homelands by crossing the Atlantic. One woman who made her escape was the film actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr, whose real name was Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler. She was born in 1914 in Vienna to a wealthy and cultured family of assimilated Jews. Her flourishing career as an actress attracted notoriety in 1933, when her fifth film, Extase, was criticised for its nudity and frank sexual content. When Hitler came to power in neighbouring Germany in 1933, the film was banned on the grounds of public morality. Hedy resumed her stage career, and the following year, when she was nineteen, she married an Austrian armaments manufacturer, Fritz Mandl, fourteen years her senior, also of Jewish ancestry. He tried to buy up all surviving copies of Extase in order to destroy them, though this merely inflated their price on the black market. Mandl was obsessively jealous about Hedy, his beautiful and elegant spouse, and constantly imagined that she might have an affair with another man. He insisted that they live in a grand but remote country house where he could entertain political and military contacts such as Mussolini. Hitler, however, would have nothing to do with Mandl because of his Jewish origins.
In 1937, months before Austria became part of the Third Reich, Hedy escaped. Her marriage to Mandl had become odious to her, and the political situation in Austria and neighbouring Germany was increasingly threatening people of Jewish origin. Those Jews and anti-Nazi activists who could were leaving in droves, and many creative people were heading to America, seeking work in Hollywood, including Billy Wilder and Fritz Lang. Hedy longed to resume her career as an actress; she loathed her husband’s political machinations, his pro-Nazi contemporaries, and she disliked being a trophy wife, required only to look beautiful and say nothing, ‘standing still and looking stupid’, as she put it.
The various accounts of how Hedy managed to escape her husband’s surveillance read like the plots of 1930s thrillers. One story is that she drugged one of the housemaids who resembled her, and while the servant slumbered in her bed, Hedy dressed in the girl’s uniform and escaped on the maid’s bicycle. She reached a station and took the train, eventually reaching Paris where she filed for divorce, before slipping across the Channel to London, where Mandl’s influence was less strong. In truth, following a furious argument about her wish to return to the stage, her husband stormed out to spend the night in one of his hunting lodges. Before he could return, Hedy quickly packed some clothes and furs, and her jewellery, though she had very little cash. By her own account, ‘I managed to leave Vienna that night, veiled and incognito and with all the trappings of a melodrama mystery. And I went straight through to London.’9
At a small party in London, she was introduced to the head of MGM Studios, Louis B. Mayer. He was scouting for new talent, recruiting talented actors who were keen to leave Europe because of the political situation, and naturally he knew the banned film Extase. He was impressed by Hedy, but only offered her a contract worth $125 a week, and that on condition that she paid her own way to America. She suavely declined his offer, but devised a plan to obtain a better deal. Mayer and his wife had already reserved their return passage to the States on 25 September on the elegant French ship, the Normandie. Hedy booked one of the more affordable cabins on the same voyage. Wearing a succession of gorgeous evening gowns, and her best jewellery, night after night she made the grande descente down the mirrored staircase into the first-class dining room, accompanied by a succession of wealthy and ardent young men. The glamorous setting of the Normandie showed her beauty to its best effect, and jaws dropped at her elegance, deportment and evident ‘star quality’. Douglas Fairbanks Jr, a fellow passenger, accomplished actor and an important player in the film industry in his own right, could not take his eyes off her. As a result, Mayer scrambled to sign her up, this time offering her a starting contract of $500 a week if she could master English, and was willing to change her surname to something less Teutonic and more euphonious.
This voyage and her decisive action changed Hedy’s life. She escaped her marriage, her old life and the repressive atmosphere of Austria. She had staked everything she possessed on a single transatlantic ticket, in order to try to secure a film contract. By the time she arrived in New York, aged just twenty-two, she had a new name, Hedy Lamarr, and was hailed as MGM’s latest discovery, greeted by a barrage of press interest and flashbulbs. By October 1937 she was living in Hollywood; she starred in a film, Algiers, with Charles Boyer which was a huge hit in 1938. She was courted by John F. Kennedy, among others, and became friendly with the maverick millionaire Howard Hughes, but she married a much older screenwriter, Gene Markey. Her film career took off spectacularly, though her marriage foundered in the early 1940s.
It seems fitting that the splendid setting of the Normandie, with its mirrors, uplighting and grandstanding opportunities enabled Hedy Lamarr to secure a lucrative film contract. She exploited the dramatic potential of the grande descente, just as a consummate actress would time and judge her entry on stage. By the mid-1930s the ocean liner had become a potent symbol of the glamour, modernism and chic lifestyle perpetuated by the blockbuster movies of Hollywood. The theatrical interior design of the vessel appealed to the international set and the ‘beautiful people’ of Hollywood, influencing the set design of movies. Indeed, there were even movies set on ocean liners: the 1937 musical comedy Shall We Dance stars Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, who become romantically involved on an ocean liner on its way to New York. In a ‘mixed race’ dance number considered daring for its time, Fred Astaire encounters a group of African-American crew apparently holding a jam session in a spotlessly clean, art deco-style ship’s engine room, and tap dances to their music, with rhythms inspired by the vessel’s engines.
There was a real symbiosis between Hollywood, the heart of the movie industry, which acted as a ‘dream factory’ in the inter-war years, and the ocean liner, which on every voyage carried people full of hopes and aspirations. Not only did actors and actresses regularly travel the Atlantic to appear in films and stage shows, but there were also movie moguls seeking lucrative deals, theatrical impresarios and talent scouts who were travelling to other countries to find the ‘next big thing’. Naturally, the publicity departments of each shipping line were glad to supply flattering photos and benign press stories about celebrities and royalty, free of charge, to newspapers and magazines, to persuade less well-known mortals to travel on their vessels in future.
Wise stars knew how the PR machine worked and played along with it; Mae West was considered a ‘good sport’ because she would willingly pose for press and in-house photographers. Marlene Dietrich was another much travelled celebrity during the 1930s and was frequently photographed and filmed on board ship. Glamorous and elegantly draped in furs, she was willing to co-operate with the press, seeing her public persona as part of her job. A thorough professional, while on board ship she never appeared in public for breakfast, rarely at lunchtime, but would make a spectacular entrance at dinner. Her favourite table in the Queen Mary dining room was the most prominent, the one preferred by her friend Noël Coward, but fortunately they never travelled on that ship at the same time.
Edith Sowerbutts met many celebrities including Robert Taylor, David Niven, Gary Cooper, Doris Duke and Douglas Fairbanks Snr. She described Paul Robeson as ‘every inch a gentleman’, and he was a regular on the Queen Mary. He remembered the names of the crew, and often mingled with them in the Pig & Whistle, the crew’s after-hours bar, even performing there during one voyage. Edith recalled his beautiful speaking voice, and she regretted missing the chance to hear him sing, as female crew members were not allowed to join the men in the Pig & Whistle.
For the women who worked on board the great ships, proximity to glamour was one of the appeals of the job. In an era when film stars and actors were international household names, there was considerable cachet to being intimately involved in caring for the requirements of these stellar figures when they travelled by ship. Of course, despite their glittering careers and constant appearances on the silver screen, the ocean-going famous were mere mortals, constantly ringing for a hangover cure, breakfast in bed, a massage in their cabin, an attractive snack on a tray, advice on avoiding seasickness, the marshalling of their entourage, and the endless bringing and despatching of messages, flowers and gifts.
Celebrities had their own favourite ships. Film star James Stewart, French-born novelist Colette and Josephine Baker loved the Normandie. The French Line’s Île de France was the favourite of Gloria Swanson, Yehudi Menuhin and Arturo Toscanini. Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington preferred the Queen Mary, which Cary Grant called the Eighth Wonder of the World. Bing Crosby was also a regular traveller on the Queen Mary and he was a keen photographer. He became friendly with the on-board Ocean Pictures photographers and would often join them in the darkroom as they developed that day’s crop of images.
Until 1939 Edith Sowerbutts worked on the Queen Mary as a stewardess. The ship was a great improvement on her previous vessels: there were service lifts between the kitchens and the small deck pantries where each stewardess was based, and a phone linking the two so that passengers’ food orders could be relayed to the kitchen clerk. Edith noted that the ship’s designers had obviously never tried to lay a silver service tray for breakfast in the tiny pantry, but otherwise the labour-saving devices were appreciated.
Edith’s own breakfasts on the Queen Mary were brought to her by the deck waiter. She usually had orange juice, coffee, bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade – she had a big appetite. She consumed it standing up, between responding to early morning passenger calls, taking breakfast trays to her passengers, and bedmaking and dusting her cabins once her passengers were safely out of the way. At mealtimes Edith and her shipmates would often find an unoccupied cabin where they could eat a snack, and they would meet again later for a clandestine cocktail and cigarette before starting their evening’s work, which involved tidying staterooms, putting away clothes, and turning back bedcovers while the passengers were dining or dancing. Their own supper would be between 8 and 9 p.m. The quality of the food was excellent but stewardesses rarely had a chance to eat a whole meal undisturbed.
Until 1939 stewards and stewardesses on the Queen Mary worked every day while at sea from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m., and would usually have two hours off in the afternoon. This was an opportunity for the women seafarers to mingle socially; they might sit in deckchairs on a small closed-off section of the crew’s deck, with a packet of cigarettes, some knitting and plenty of ripe gossip. There was occasional friction: some were former domestic servants, such as housemaids, parlour maids, or ladies’ maids, and those who had previously worked in grand households were sometimes suspected of suffering from ‘folie de grandeur’.
Accommodation for female crew was still very cramped. Edith shared a tiny cabin with her old friend Ada Norfolk, another stewardess. On getting up at six thirty every morning, they had to take it in turns to dress, as there was limited floor-space. Edith would wait on the top bunk while Ada ritually donned her stockings and shoes. She would leave the stockings concertinaed around her ankles (‘Russian boots, dear,’ she remarked wryly) until she could get her suspender belt on and attach the stockings. Underwear came next, and eventually she clambered into her grey uniform dress and attached her white cap to her hair. Only once Ada was dressed and tucked up neatly on the lower bunk was there enough room for Edith to dress. They set out on a five-minute walk from their cabin to their stations at midships.
Ada Norfolk had previously worked as a senior stewardess on the Olympic, Majestic and Berengaria. Perhaps uniquely, she had run away from the circus, and ended up going to sea. She came from a long line of performers and showmen; her father was a clown and had his own circus, and her brother was a juggler. Many years before, the family were sailing to America to fulfil a circus booking, when the purser took a shine to young Ada. Despite their eighteen-year age difference, they married. When he died, Ada was left to bring up two young children. As a ‘company widow’, she was employed as a stewardess on United States Lines, where she had met her husband. Ada had survived the torpedoing and sinking of a ship off the coast of Ireland during the Great War, and described the experience in a very matter-of-fact manner: ‘It was a lovely day in June, dear. It was quite pleasant in the lifeboat for a while, and then we got picked up.’10 In idle moments, Ada fondly recalled that in the early years of her marriage, during a brief sojourn in California, she had met a pleasant and handsome young British chap, anxious to make his mark in Hollywood. This unknown was called Charlie Chaplin.
The chief stewardess of the Queen Mary was Mrs Nin Kilburn, who always looked after travelling royalty. Mrs Kilburn came from a Liverpool sea-going family – one of her sisters and an aunt were stewardesses on the Lusitania. When that ship was torpedoed in 1915, a deck steward tried to save the sister, but she insisted on staying on board until she found her aunt. In the confusion, the aunt was saved, but Mrs Kilburn’s sister drowned. Nin Kilburn was a former school teacher; in the 1930s, when unemployment was high, it was not unusual for well-educated and well-qualified women to pursue better-paid careers at sea. A talented linguist, she was paid an extra £1 a month for interpreting French or German.
While long-lasting and valuable relationships often developed between women seafarers who shared adversity, seasickness and tiny cabins, there were also friendships between them and some of their passengers. Some proved to be superficial and illusory: Violet Jessop recalled one well-heeled American socialite who was recovering from a personal calamity, and who relied on her emotionally throughout an entire transatlantic voyage. They spent many of Violet’s few and precious off-duty hours in ‘intimate and soul-revealing talks’. On arrival in New York, the grateful passenger insisted Violet must come and visit her any time she was in the city. A few months later, Violet dropped in at the plush hotel where her acquaintance lived. She quickly realised that the woman seemed puzzled as to how they knew each other. She was welcoming, but Violet recalled, ‘I knew she had not the faintest idea who I was.’11
Some wealthy travellers would book crossings on specific ships in order to be in the care of their favourite stewardesses; in fact Cunard would offer the services of a named ‘special’ stewardess at a supplementary charge for those passengers prepared to pay extra for a familiar face. Miss Paddock, who spent her working life as a stewardess with White Star Line, always looked after Harriet Cohen, the professional pianist, on her transatlantic trips. They became great friends, and Miss Paddock was one of the guests on This is Your Life, a popular British TV programme, when it featured the musician’s biography. Another famous pianist, Dame Myra Hess, was usually attended by Janet Austin on the Queen Mary. When Miss Austin reached the age of sixty-five and retired, Dame Myra provided her with a small flat at her home in St John’s Wood in London, to ensure their friendship continued. Many stewardesses would be sent money at Christmas by some of their former passengers, usually in the form of $20 bills, and some were even remembered generously in their wills. Ada Norfolk, Edith’s cabin mate, unexpectedly inherited a substantial legacy long after she retired, left to her by a former Tiller Girl with whom she had been friends when they were both young and had crossed the Atlantic together between the wars.
Stewardesses were careful not to leave valuables or money in their own cabins, especially when in port, in case of theft. By the end of a return voyage they had often accumulated a substantial sum in tips from grateful passengers. This could be stored in the purser’s safe, or they could deposit it with the branch of the Midland Bank on the Queen Mary. Traditionalists, however, preferred to conceal it on their persons, either in a special reinforced pocket sewn into an old-fashioned petticoat, or in a purse secured around the midriff, and some stewardesses developed mysterious lumps and bumps under their uniforms. As soon as they disembarked in Southampton and had been paid, they would visit the Post Office and bank their wages, before heading back to their families. Edith recalled: ‘It was comforting for all of us, we female sea-dogs, on arrival at home, to be able to meet all the bills and commitments and no longer have to stint ourselves personally. My own responsibilities had always halved my earnings. Alone I could keep myself quite well. Now in the Queen Mary the money I made was a veritable godsend.’12
The stewardesses often had to deal with elderly ladies losing their false teeth. Passengers were very partial to removing their uncomfortable dentures to consume soft fruit in the privacy of their cabins, and they often forgot to re-insert them after they had finished eating. If they were unlucky, a dish of discarded peel, pith and cores might be flung through the open porthole, without the stewardess spotting a set of dentures on the same plate. Passengers were also adept at purloining the silver cutlery, as well as the distinctive silver cruet sets, much valued as souvenirs. A stewardess’s ruse for retrieving them was to insist that she needed them ‘for cleaning’. Eventually the cutlery and cruet sets were stocked as merchandise for sale in the on-board ship, along with the attractive white cube-shaped teapots and milk jugs designed specifically for the Cunard Line. Passengers were encouraged to buy the tea sets as souvenirs, rather than pilfering them from their breakfast trays.
The single aspect of life on board the Queen Mary that Edith most feared was a storm at sea. Despite rarely suffering from seasickness herself, she would listen with apprehension to the warning signs as a storm approached. There might be a clatter of metal trays or crockery from the stewards’ pantries as the ship lurched or rolled. Baggage would start to slide across the floors of the cabins, and would have to be secured by the stewards. Carpet would be placed on top of polished floors to enhance grip, while stewards and waiters in the public rooms would secure all the chairs to pillars or walls, using lanyards so that they couldn’t slide about. However, so dramatic could the force of a storm be that occupied chairs had been known to break away in the dining saloon, careering from one side of the room to the other, taking their passengers with them.
The Queen Mary was notorious for its lively performance in heavy seas, a fact that Cunard was keen to conceal from the travelling public. Smaller ships would sail up a wave, crest it, and hurtle down the other side, bobbing on the water like a cork, and providing a sensation for the passengers like being on a roller-coaster ride. But the vast Queen Mary – nearly a quarter of a mile long – would labour up a wave and seesaw on its apex before plunging forward and downwards, a much more vertiginous drop for anyone travelling in its stern or bows. It was estimated that the difference between the crest and the trough of a wave during a severe storm could be the equivalent of eight storeys in height. The ship was also prone to rolling from side to side, and a list of more than 40 per cent was recorded on a number of occasions. During one ferocious storm in the late 1930s that lasted for five days, one stewardess rolled right up the bulkhead of her cabin and back again. She remembered never having seen so much damaged crockery and china, the alleyways were running with seawater, and even some portholes had been smashed by the force of the waves. While beleaguered and frightened passengers were wedged into their bunks with pillows to keep them both prone and safe, the cabin crew – struggling to stay upright themselves as the ship pitched and lurched – attempted to minister to them, bringing dry biscuits and bottles of Canada Dry ginger ale in vain attempts to combat seasickness.
A particularly memorable storm at sea occurred in April 1938. The Queen Mary finally reached Plymouth five hours later than expected, after experiencing a terrifying ordeal. An eighty-mile-an-hour gale had driven the ship eastwards, with waves more than a hundred feet high crashing over the decks. As the storm reached its crescendo Miss Lily Pons, a professional soprano singer, defied the howling winds and the suspension of the normal rules of gravity to star in a public concert for charity. The ‘pocket prima donna’, as she was known, was determined that the show should go on, though Miss Pons had had an inkling that she might be in for a salutary experience:
The night before, my bed crashed into the stateroom wall. My trunks and all the furniture in the room were piled up in a heap. Stewards came and clamped down my bed. But I was determined to keep my promise. The ship was rolling so badly when the concert began that safety ropes were placed in the room, so that the audience could hold onto them. When I started to sing, I was clutching a rope. I let go of the rope unconsciously – and the next thing I knew was that I was sliding along the stage. I could hardly keep my feet but I went on singing, and £300 was collected for seamen’s charities.13
The gale lasted twenty-four hours and was physically and mentally exhausting. Passengers and crew were repeatedly tipped off their feet, furniture was smashed, and the damage to crockery and glassware was unprecedented. A grand piano broke loose from its moorings in the salon, and swept across the room like a three-legged behemoth on castors – fortunately, people in the vicinity managed to leap out of the way. An American banker who was dozing in a reclining chair when the ship suddenly lurched sideways, woke up in the scuppers with a broken arm and a black eye. A theatrical producer, Marc Connelly, said: ‘It was the worst storm I have ever experienced, and I have crossed the Atlantic thirty times. Fortunately, the gale was behind us but the seas were like a mountain range of water. I have never seen anything so aweinspiring.’14 Mr Connelly said he saw a dozen people being carried away by the crew and brave passengers for medical attention. It took six stewards to lift one man, who was unconscious. Ray Noble, the Queen Mary’s dance band leader, said he was surprised there were so few casualties. When the Queen Mary put in at Plymouth, forty injured passengers were taken off to be treated for injuries in local hospitals, and the ship limped back to Southampton for substantial internal repairs and provisioning.
But 1938 was a memorable year for tumultuous events on land as well as at sea. Tensions in Europe had been building steadily as the true nature of Germany’s Third Reich became clearer, to its own nationals, its neighbours and perceptive international observers. In particular, for those who worked in transatlantic travel, or who travelled regularly, it was apparent that many more Europeans were on the move. They were not travelling abroad for leisure, pleasure, romance or business: they were running to escape from what appeared to be the growing menace of anti-Semitism. Discrimination against the Jews had occurred in cyclical waves throughout Europe since the Middle Ages, but during the 1930s the economic consequences of the Great Depression led to increasing animosity against them. Some politicians looked for scapegoats to account for their national malaise, and the Jews were convenient and easy to blame. France had a number of very active right-wing political factions, and in Britain Sir Oswald Mosley founded the British Union of Fascists, ostensibly as a force against unemployment. Before long, his organisation was involved in street battles with recent Jewish immigrants living in the East End of London. However, it was Germany under the National Socialists – and, as the decade wore on, its annexed or overrun neighbours – whose Jewish communities were most desperate to escape by emigrating, ideally to North or South America.
As the conditions in Europe became more hostile to the Jews, the shipping companies responded. As early as November 1933, just ten months after Hitler came to power, the need to increase the capacity of the kosher kitchen on the Aquitania was discussed by the Cunard board. It was apparent that increasing numbers of Jewish emigrants were planning to leave Europe, especially those of German origin. Understandably, they preferred not to sail on German-owned ships, preferring French, American or British shipping lines where they were treated more respectfully. Kosher food was provided and listed on the menus of all Cunard passenger ships, and separate kitchens were maintained to comply with strict dietary rules. Provision had also long been made on the more enlightened ocean liners for religious observance for Jewish passengers. White Star Magazine noted that:
for Jewish ocean travellers crossing the Atlantic in the latter part of April [1927] special arrangements were made by the White Star line. During the voyage of the Olympic which began at Southampton on April 15th, Passover services were held, three rabbis who were travelling in the ship having charge of these. Special steps were taken to ensure the proper preparation of food in accordance with the Jewish ritual.15
The Queen Mary was the first ocean liner to be equipped with its own Jewish prayer room, and Cunard appointed a rabbi to ensure a kosher kitchen and catering department for observant Jewish passengers. The numbers of those planning to leave Europe grew rapidly in the 1930s, though total immigration numbers to the United States for each nationality were still limited by the 1924 quota laws. For many, the great ships provided a lifeline; if they could obtain a visa and raise the funds to buy the tickets, they could sail for the New World. By 1938 about 150,000 German Jews had already fled the country, and they were now spread across the globe; some had found sanctuary as far away as Shanghai. Following the Anschluss, the annexation of Austria in spring 1938, a further 185,000 Jews found themselves living under Nazi rule.
-As described in the Washington Post, two families’ tales illustrate the dilemma. Austrian-born businessman Mark Tennenbaum had anticipated the growing menace and had planned an escape route, sending money to a trusted friend who was living in neutral Switzerland. Through his contacts, the friend was able to arrange American visas for Mark and his wife, Earnestine, and their two-year-old son, Robert, and as instructed he also bought first-class tickets for the three of them to travel on the Queen Mary. Mark Tennenbaum had reasoned, ‘Give the money to the Brits, not the damn Nazis!’ because punitive measures imposed on emigrating Jews by the Nazi regime included confiscating all their money as they left the country, leaving them only the equivalent of $4 per person in ready cash. The Tennenbaums visited their friend, ostensibly for a holiday, then travelled from Switzerland to Cherbourg to board the Queen Mary, clutching their precious visas and tickets.
Mark was a keen amateur cameraman, and film survives of the small family exploring the deck of the Queen Mary as they sailed to America and a new life. The footage shows an excited small boy, Robert, in a double-breasted overcoat, short trousers and round sunglasses, holding the hand of his elegant mother, who is wrapped in a smart outfit with a fur collar and hat. She is pointing out the features of the ship, and encouraging him to make friends with another youngster. But in an unguarded moment, for a few seconds Earnestine gazes into the camera lens; her smile has been replaced by an expression of apprehension and regret. ‘She looks so sad, and it was for a good reason,’ Robert commented, viewing the film again, eighty years later. The Tennenbaums had experienced increasing anti-Semitism, and had been obliged to abandon two thriving businesses, their property and possessions in order to make their escape. Nevertheless, he recalled in old age, ‘The bottom line was that the Queen Mary saved me and my mom and dad, saved our lives.’16
The noose tightened on later émigrés: three weeks before Kristallnacht on 9–10 November 1938, the night when thousands of Jewish businesses and properties were attacked and destroyed, Ludwig Katzenstein’s father resolved it was time for the family to escape their home near Berlin. He had secured emigration visas for the family, and using their dwindling fund of Reichsmarks he purchased four last-minute boat tickets on the Queen Mary, which was leaving from Cherbourg for New York. The family took the train through Germany, but at the border with Holland the train was stopped, and all the passengers’ papers were checked by the Gestapo. A new edict had been introduced just the day before their flight: all Jewish citizens were required by law to have a red letter ‘J’ stamped into their passports to make them valid. The Katzensteins’ documents were not in order because they lacked this new stamp. The family were detained and put into a holding cell, while the train left without them. Ludwig was only six years old; he remembered his father was allowed to go into town, probably to pawn something to get enough money to bribe the guards, and on his return the letter ‘J’ was added to their passports and the family were free to leave on the next train. However, it was now evening, they were now many hours behind schedule, and in danger of missing the ship. Ludwig’s resourceful father persuaded the train master to call the captain of the Queen Mary, to ask the ship to wait. He knew that if they missed this sailing, they would have lost their last chance to get to the USA, as they had no more funds. Commodore Robert Irving received the message and delayed the departure of the great ship and its thousands of passengers and crew by six hours, so that the Katzensteins could scramble up the gangplank and on to the safety of the Queen Mary. Ludwig recalled: ‘My father asked him to wait until four people got there. That captain waited for six hours. He saved our lives … it was a miracle. It shows, in my mind, considerable humanity.’
After the repression and mounting sense of fear they had experienced in Germany, the voyage on the Queen Mary was a revelation. ‘We ate kosher on there, and they had a synagogue. We had services in that synagogue, and on Shabbat they had special services. It was just wonderful.’ When they reached New York, and saw the Statue of Liberty, he remembered, ‘You felt free for the first time, after so many years.’17
Those working on board the transatlantic ships were aware of the palpable fear among most of their Jewish passengers as the international political situation deteriorated. Edith Sowerbutts, while working as a stewardess on the Queen Mary in 1938, was located on B deck for one voyage, and the cabins in her care were en route to the ship’s Jewish prayer room, which was open to all classes of passenger. Every day, she would encounter Orthodox Jews from third class nervously asking for directions to the synagogue, and she and the male bedroom steward would direct them. Among the first-class staterooms on B deck were some cabins occupied by a cosmopolitan group of Dutch Jews. They were obviously accustomed to wealth, but they had left everything behind them, convinced they knew what would happen if they stayed. At the end of the voyage, Edith and the bedroom steward were summoned together to the staterooms, to be thanked with courtesy, and offered a substantial tip each, which she was sure they could probably ill afford. The steward, whom Edith had previously considered a rough diamond, politely declined, saying: ‘From people like you, we take nothing. We thank you, the stewardess and I, and wish you luck. It has been our pleasure to look after you.’18 Edith wished she had thought of that speech.
Dorothy Scobie, who came from a working-class Liverpudlian family, was enraptured by the sight of the models of ships in the Cunard Building when she was a child, and longed to go to sea. She was employed as a stewardess on a number of the less prestigious Cunard-White Star ships crossing the Atlantic from Liverpool, from 1937 till the outbreak of war, and her career afloat eventually spanned more than twenty-three years. Fares on the Liverpool to New York route were usually keenly priced because the ships were smaller and older, but Dorothy noticed there was a rising demand from European passengers needing the cheapest possible one-way tickets to America. In the summer of 1939 she also observed a psychological change in her third-class passengers. Many of them were refugees from Russia, Hungary, Germany, Latvia and Austria, who had already made arduous journeys from their homes to get to a British port, and across country by rail to Liverpool to pick up a ship to the United States. They were perpetually anxious and seemed poor; in particular, many of the Jews fleeing Germany and Austria by this stage had very few possessions, as they had either escaped in a hurry with what they could carry, or had had all their property confiscated by the authorities before they left the country. Dorothy recalled:
These people had embarked in Liverpool and none of them had big trunks. Always they counted and recounted their dozens of suitcases and brown paper parcels. Hat boxes, string bags and attaché cases. Most of the men had briefcases which they never let out of their arms … What sorrows had they left behind? Indeed, whom had they had to leave behind? What traumas had they already witnessed in their short lives?19
Many European refugees followed on the transatlantic ships, hoping to escape the coming conflict, but not all would find sanctuary.