This silent Cine-Kodak newsreel film from the mid-1930s presents the building and launch of the passenger liner RMS Queen Mary. The film contains some wonderful images of the John Brown & Company shipyard at Clydebank in Scotland. At :50 the ship’s 35-ton propellers are seen. At 1:06, an aerial shot shows the ships nearly finished hull sans smokestacks. At 1:50 the launching of the ship is shown and at 2:09 she slides down the ways. At 2:39 she is shown on Clydeside. At 2:50 King Edward VIII arrives to review the ship. At 3:15 she is seen at the end of her test run and start of her maiden voyage.
At 4:12 another Kodak Cinegraph film shows highlights of Central London starting with views of the Thames and its massive power plant. At 5:00 the House of Parliament is visible in the distance. What might be the Royal Yacht is also shown. At 5:28 St. Paul’s can be seen in the distance. At 5:30 a tug moves by with a barge in tow. At 5:46 busy docks are seen with horse drawn wagons visible. At 6:14 the Tower Bridge is seen. At 6:40 a passenger liner is shown, along with another seen at 6:51 (possibly RMS Queen Mary). At 7:00 what appears to be the Chun Yee Society in Chinatown is visible. At 7:00 San Sam Sing & Co., a Chinatown mainstay, is shown.
The RMS Queen Mary is a retired British ocean liner that sailed primarily on the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967 for the Cunard Line – known as Cunard-White Star Line when the vessel entered service. Built by John Brown & Company in Clydebank, Scotland, Queen Mary, along with RMS Queen Elizabeth, were built as part of Cunard’s planned two-ship weekly express service between Southampton, Cherbourg and New York. The two ships were a British response to the express superliners built by German, Italian and French companies in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Queen Mary was the flagship of the Cunard Line from May 1936 until October 1946 when she was replaced in that role by Queen Elizabeth.
Queen Mary sailed on her maiden voyage on 27 May 1936 and captured the Blue Riband in August of that year;[4] she lost the title to SS Normandie in 1937 and recaptured it in 1938, holding it until 1952 when she was beaten by the new SS United States. With the outbreak of the Second World War, she was converted into a troopship and ferried Allied soldiers for the duration of the war.
Following the war, Queen Mary was refitted for passenger service and along with Queen Elizabeth commenced the two-ship transatlantic passenger service for which the two ships were initially built. The two ships dominated the transatlantic passenger transportation market until the dawn of the jet age in the late 1950s. By the mid-1960s, Queen Mary was ageing and, though still among the most popular transatlantic liners, was operating at a loss.
After several years of decreased profits for Cunard Line, Queen Mary was officially retired from service in 1967. She left Southampton for the last time on 31 October 1967 and sailed to the port of Long Beach, California, United States, where she remains permanently moored. Much of the machinery, including one of the two engine rooms, three of the four propellers, and all of the boilers, were removed. The ship serves as a tourist attraction featuring restaurants, a museum and a hotel. The ship is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The National Trust for Historic Preservation has accepted the Queen Mary as part of the Historic Hotels of America.
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
