The RMS Queen Mary began in December 1930 as Hull 534 at the John Brown and Company shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland, and the Great Depression halted work in December 1931, leaving rooks nesting in the rusting frame for over two years. A British government loan revived her on condition that bitter rivals Cunard and White Star merge, and by 1934 they were Cunard White Star. Cunard meant to name her Victoria, but when executives asked King George V to name the ship after Britain’s greatest queen, he assumed they meant his wife, Queen Mary. She entered service in 1936 at a cost of 3.5 million pounds, with a traditional vertical bow and 56 kinds of veneer that made her more popular than the sleek French Normandie.

In World War II she became the Grey Ghost, stripped of six miles of carpet and packed with bunks, and in July 1943 carried 16,683 troops, still a record. Hitler offered a million Reichsmarks and the oak leaves to the Knight’s Cross to the U-boat captain who sank her, and Winston Churchill crossed aboard as Colonel Warden. Jets arrived in 1958 and took the mail contracts, and Cunard retired her in 1967. Long Beach, California bought her for $3.45 million, removed her engines, and pumped 8,000 tons of harbor mud into her fuel tanks to keep her upright.

• Her interior included a Jewish prayer room, a deliberate rejection of Nazi Germany’s antisemitism.
• In October 1942 she sliced the escort cruiser HMS Curacoa in half, killing 338 men, and under standing orders never stopped.
• In December 1942 a rogue wave estimated at 92 feet rolled her 52 degrees, near her critical angle of about 55.
• Artist Doris Zinkeisen restored her war-damaged Verandah Grill mural and hid a tiny mouse in it to mock Cunard’s rodent-free claim.
• Later owners included Jacques Cousteau and the Walt Disney Company, and amateur radio operators still broadcast from her as W6RO.