The steam power and the glory
After years facing one final voyage to the breaker’s yard, TS Queen Mary makes her return to the Clyde in majestic fashion
REAL flesh-and-blood royalty would not have drawn such Clydeside crowds yesterday – the whole quayside lined with spectators; the excursion craft Clyde Clipper on her special four-hour cruise for the occasion; the flotilla of small craft and the exuberant sharing of snaps on social media...
Why such excitement at the return of a battered, dingy old ship, long stripped of her machinery, away from the Firth since January 1981 and which ended her service (latterly with Caledonian MacBrayne) nearly 40 years ago?
Well, the Queen Mary is not any old hulk. For one – in terms of gross tonnage and certificated passenger capacity (1,820) – she was the largest Clyde pleasure steamer ever built.
Launched at the yard of Denny Bros, Dumbarton, in March 1933, she was, even by the standards of today (far less in the middle of the Great Depression), of extraordinary style and comfort.
Most of the Clyde steamers had to carry mail, light cargo and even the occasional car; do regular ferry dashes midweek for impatient commuters. The Queen Mary, though, was built for pure summer fun.
She was exceptionally beamy, most roomy, beautifully fitted out in the Art Deco style of the day and combined ample covered accommodation with abundant open deck-space.
What was more, she was specifically built for excursions from Glasgow – a daring step after some decades when, given city-centre smog and the filthiness, at the time, of the Clyde itself, most chose to head for the likes of Gourock, Wemyss Bay or Craigendoran and catch their steamer there.
As a result – and given her rapid success on all-day doon-the-watter excursions from Bridge Wharf – the folk of the Second City of the Empire fast took the new pocket-liner to their hearts and, after some years of absence, she resumed cruises from Glasgow near the end of her CalMac career.
BUT she was also a turbine-steamer. Fabulously smooth, quiet in operation, and confidently fast on her three propellers (she attained nearly 19 knots on trial) she could handily sail round Arran or up Loch Fyne and back on one day’s outing.
And it was on the Clyde that Sir Charles Parsons had first, at the dawn of the last century and with her elder sister, the King Edward, proven the efficiency and safety of steam-turbine technology – with the result that, by the time Clyde yards were churning out the celebrated Dreadnought battleships, all were fitted with Parsons turbines.
Many more turbine-steamers would over ensuing decades serve the fare-paying Clyde public, on a booming holiday and excursion trade that would endure into the 1960s.
Plenty of these (the King George V, the Saint Columba, the Marchioness of Graham and the lovely Duchess of Hamilton among them) are still fondly recalled.
There’s a good story about the Queen Mary, too. Buckingham Palace permission had, of course, been sought to name her after the King’s consort. But when, two years later, Cunard White Star approached the Sovereign to ask if they might name their vast new liner after Queen Victoria, directors went weak at the knees before King George V and their spokesman fatefully grovelled: ‘Your Majesty, we seek your permission to name this vessel after our nation’s greatest Queen, and...’
‘Thank you,’ he boomed, already bored witless and keen to get rid, ‘my wife will be very pleased.’
So there was nothing for it but to call the Cunarder Queen Mary, and the owners of the 1933 original had then to be begged to change the name of their own far smaller craft.
Thus, from 1935 to 1976, she sailed the Clyde as Queen Mary II, though sported a plaque and a portrait of our Queen’ s Granny as gifts from a gushingly grateful Cunard White Star.
But, by 1975, this old girl was the very last of the Clyde turbines, finally withdrawn in September 1977.
AND, just a year ago, languishing at Tilbury since 2009 after many brushes with death since her Clyde withdrawal, she seemed certain for scrap. She had narrowly escaped the breaker’s yard by a sneeze in 1980, was stripped of practically everything sellable by a subsequent proprietor, and in 2009 (after decades as a floating restaurant in London) was almost hauled off to France.
She survived, at last, because last July she was ‘arrested’ after her latest but unlucky owner, businessman Ranjan Chowdhury, had failed to pay her harbour dues – and, being duly put up for auction, was last October bought for just £20,000 by a charity determined to save her.
‘Friends of TS Queen Mary’ boasts comic and actor Robbie Coltrane as patron, and subsequent appeal for funds opened many corporate pockets, the money necessary to fix her up for the long tow home being amassed in a matter of weeks.
They now hope to whip up some £3million to refurbish her for a new life afloat in Glasgow city centre, by the much-loved Finnieston crane; a sought-after venue for meals, drinks, nights out, weddings and so on.
Her return has moved hearts all the more because the tale of every other Clyde steamer – the indefatigable Waverley apart – has ended unhappily. No others survive and those snapped up for preservation met assorted sticky ends.
It’s unlikely the 1933 beauty will ever again sail under her own steam. There is barely enough Clyde cruising demand these days to keep the Waverley going and, of the Queen Mary’s three turbines, two are in museums and one is missing.
But, right now, it scarcely matters. Against all the odds, she’s back: the Queen Mary is home.