The history of Los Angeles
At Windsor Way in Long Beach, within the Los Angeles area, stands the RMS Queen Mary, the Cunard ocean liner launched on the Clyde in 1934. Moored permanently at the Port of Long Beach since 1967, it opened as a hotel and museum in 1971, after once carrying over 16,600 people in a single wartime voyage.
Windsor Way, Long Beach, sits beside the RMS Queen Mary, the retired Cunard ocean liner launched on the Clyde in 1934 and permanently moored here as a hotel and museum since 1967. The ship once carried over 16,600 people on a single 1943 wartime voyage and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.
A secret royal name launched a record-breaking liner
The RMS Queen Mary is a retired British ocean liner, now a permanently moored hotel and museum in Long Beach, California. Workers at the John Brown & Company shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland, began building her in December 1930. She was known only as "Hull Number 534" for years, because the Great Depression halted the work in 1931. Cunard needed a government loan to finish her, and the price was a merger with its rival, the White Star Line.
Queen Mary of Teck launched the ship on September 26, 1934. The name had been a secret until that day. Cunard wanted to call her Victoria, keeping with a company tradition of names ending in "ia." A delegation asked King George V for permission to name her after "Britain's greatest queen." He said his own wife, Mary, would be delighted. Cunard had no choice but to call the ship Queen Mary.
The Queen Mary sailed her maiden voyage from Southampton on May 27, 1936, commanded by Sir Edgar Britten. The Queen Mary crossed the Atlantic so fast that fog forced her to slow down on the final day. She still won the Blue Riband that August, the prize for the fastest Atlantic crossing. She lost that title to the French liner SS Normandie in 1937, then won it back in 1938, holding it until 1952.
The Queen Mary's wartime speed carried a deadly secret
When World War II began, the Queen Mary became a troopship. The Queen Mary ferried Allied soldiers across the oceans, her speed making her nearly impossible for German U-boats to catch. On one voyage in 1943, she carried over 16,600 people, the most ever carried on a single vessel, a record that still stands. In October 1942, she accidentally struck and sank one of her own escort ships, the light cruiser HMS Curacoa, off the coast of Ireland. Of the 338 crew aboard, 239 died. Under strict orders not to stop for fear of submarine attack, she sailed on with a broken bow.
Jets ended the reign of Cunard's two Queens
After the war, workers refitted the Queen Mary for passenger service again. She returned to the Atlantic run alongside her sister ship, RMS Queen Elizabeth. Together the two "Queens" ruled transatlantic travel for over a decade. The pair fell out of fashion once passenger jets made the ocean crossing to New York feel slow and old-fashioned. By the mid-1960s the Queen Mary was losing money for Cunard every year she sailed.
Cunard retired her in 1967. The City of Long Beach bought the ship to use as a hotel, museum, and restaurant. The Queen Mary left Southampton for the last time on October 31, 1967, and sailed to the Port of Long Beach. Most of her machinery came out before she opened to the public. Workers removed one of her two engine rooms, three of her four propellers, and every boiler. She opened to visitors in 1971, close to the ground where this point now sits.
Federal officials named the moored liner a historic landmark
As a hotel and museum, the Queen Mary became a fixture of Long Beach. Federal officials listed her on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993, recognizing the ship as a landmark of American and British maritime history. The Queen Mary also joined Historic Hotels of America, a program run by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Visitors have reported ghost sightings aboard for decades, and the ship has hosted paranormal investigation events built around those stories.
A man was found killed blocks from the ship
In recent years, the city has closed the Queen Mary for what officials call "critical repairs," needed to keep the aging hull and decks safe. Across the harbor, closer to the waterline than the ship itself, a different vessel tells a colder story. The Soviet submarine Soviet submarine B-427 sits about 600 feet from this point, a Cold War attack submarine now open as a museum exhibit beside the liner.
A few blocks inland, Long Beach carries its own darker record. In August 2020, police found the body of a man in his 50s on the 300 block of Windsor Way, near the harbor waterfront. The man had been experiencing homelessness. An autopsy a week later found blunt force trauma to his upper torso had killed him. Long Beach Police opened it as a homicide investigation.
The Queen Mary sits permanently moored at the Port of Long Beach, her hull closed for repair but still open to view from the dock.
Every person, building and event in this story opens into its own dig in the app — and Strata will dig the ground under your feet instead, wherever that is, in about a minute, with every source shown.