Showing posts with label CALIFORNIA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CALIFORNIA. Show all posts

Long Beach California - RMS Queen Mary

RMS Queen Mary docked in Long Beach

As time passes and as new birthdays arrive for me, it is becoming harder than ever to improve on previous birthday celebrations. For example, on this website, I am to be seen in a video celebrating my 73rd birthday by drinking burgundy wine in Burgundy, France. What can beat that?

Last week Pat and I undertook the task of celebrating my 75th birthday. We chose to do so with a lady, whom I first met many years ago and who is my age. She is world famous under the name of the RMS Queen Mary and it was the Cunard Line that built this magnificent ocean liner. The initials ‘RMS’ are short for Royal Mail Ship and have been much prized in the shipping industry since 1840, when the postage stamp was invented. They signify that the ship is one that has been commissioned by the Crown to carry the Royal Mail. The liner made her maiden voyage in 1936, just as I was preparing to make my own entry onto the world stage.

Cunard had planned to call her The Queen Victoria and told the King of their intention to name the vessel after “Britain’s greatest Queen”. King George V, grandfather of Britain’s present Queen, had married Mary of Teck who was a minor German princess. He told Cunard that his wife was delighted with their suggestion to use her name and had given her permission. Thus Cunard was rather stuck with the RMS Queen Mary.


RMS Queen Mary was a troopship in WWII

The RMS Queen Mary broke many records in achieving fastest transatlantic crossings, but it is her record breaking during World War Two that is particularly impressive. She was taken over by government for use as a troopship and moved many US soldiers from stateside to the European front. On occasions, she carried as many as 16,000 soldiers. There were so many people on board that they had to sleep in shifts. Never before or since has any ship carried so many passengers.

It was during the war that she was involved in a tragedy that killed hundreds of sailors. Escort ships naturally protected The Queen Mary against Nazi submarine attacks during her transatlantic troop carrying activities. In October 1942, an escort ship named HMS Curacoa was literally “run over” and sunk by The Queen Mary, which could not stop to pick up survivors. Her orders, with U-boats in the vicinity, were to stop for nothing. Most of the 339 man crew of the HMS Curacao was lost at sea. Winston Churchill sometimes used The Queen Mary to visit the United States during the war. He insisted that the lifeboat assigned to him be equipped with its own machine gun so that, if the ship was sunk, he could fight on and avoid being taken alive.

After the war, the Queen Mary regained its position as the greatest passenger liner for transatlantic crossings and it was in that capacity that I had the privilege of sailing on her from New York City to Southampton in December 1963. Weather was bad and, for that reason, the voyage was not a comfortable one. By that time however, the jet age had arrived and there now were faster and cheaper ways of crossing the Atlantic Ocean. This circumstance turned the Queen Mary into a major financial loss maker for Cunard and, for that reason, she had to stop work in 1967. I am pleased to say that I was able to continue working for more than forty years after my contemporary, the Queen Mary, had to retire.




The Queen Mary has spent her retirement moored in the harbor at Long Beach, California. It was here that, together with our daughter Tara, Pat and I visited her last week to celebrate my 75th birthday. The Queen Mary is now used as a tourist attraction, museum, hotel and restaurant and it was the first time that I had seen her since my 1963 voyage. The big staircases, with their brass rails in the art deco style, were just as I remembered them. We joined a shipboard tour called Ghosts and Legends, which involved walking down those staircases into the very bowels of the ship. The staff on the ship seemed to enjoy meeting someone, who had actually sailed across the Atlantic on her. Such visitors are apparently rarities. Fortunately, at the end of the tour, there was an elevator to take us back to the top. I could not have climbed back up.


Art Deco bar on the Queen Mary

At the lowest point in our tour, we were 36 feet below the waterline, and it was good that the elderly vessel was not leaking. The basis for the Ghosts and Legends tour is the great deal of paranormal activity going on in the bowels of the ship. While at sea, the occasional passenger has died or perhaps been murdered, but a more fertile source of ghosts is provided by the crew of the HMS Curacao. When the Queen Mary sliced through their ship in 1942, many crew members must have gone to their deaths without the slightest idea of what was happening. That their spirits should still be haunting the bowels of the Queen Mary seems entirely logical.


Daughter Tara Patten posing as "Queen of the World"

Before we left the Queen Mary, Tara went to the very front of the ship to be photographed (see picture) in a style reminiscent of the pictures of Kate Winslet in the film, Titanic. If only that ship could also have enjoyed a comfortable retirement in the sunshine of Southern California. Our birthday visit to the Queen Mary was delightfully nostalgic. Yet where can we go on future birthday celebrations that won’t be anti-climactic?

This piece, written by Bob, was originally posted on our website on September 13, 2012.

Coronado Island California - Connected By The Silver Strand

View Coronado Island, CA in a larger map

The last story that I wrote for this website was about Mount Dora, Florida, which is not a mountain. This story is about Coronado Island, California, which is not an island. Located in the middle of the San Diego Bay, Coronado Island is connected to the mainland by a ten mile isthmus called The Silver Strand and is the safest area in Southern California, because the crime rate here is zero. Not surprisingly, it is one of the most expensive residential areas in the entire United States. Even the small homes are very attractive and are in the seven figure price range. About 25,000 people live on the island.

Governor Ronald Reagan opening Coronado Bridge
Pat and I visited Coronado in September 2012. One can reach Coronado by taking a ferry from the San Diego waterfront. Alternatively and as we did, one can drive across the San Diego-Coronado Bridge which soars high over the water and which was opened in 1969 by Ronald Reagan when he was governor of California. Our driver showed us a photograph of her father with Governor Reagan at the opening ceremony. Her father was the mayor of Coronado at the time.

The views from the bridge are truly spectacular. It’s like looking down from an airplane as one sees the whole of Coronado, as well as the San Diego skyline. There are no barriers to prevent anyone jumping off the bridge, which is so high above the water that one imagines that the death of any jumper would be inevitable. Indeed, hundreds of jumpers have plunged to their death here. As a venue for suicides, the bridge ranks third in the country.

Coronado Bridge Suicide Counseling sign

To discourage potential suicides, there are notices every few yards giving the telephone number of a suicide counselor. Amazingly, a few jumpers have survived and (when interviewed later) they almost always tell of the regrets that they experienced during their descent. In other words, on the way down, they wish that they hadn’t jumped.

San Diego skyline from Coronado Island
Coronado Beach is ranked by The Laboratory for Coastal Research as the best in the country. It consists of very fine sand. The US Navy operates a Navy Air station on Coronado and this occupies half the land on the island, which is home to three aircraft carriers. In addition, Navy Seals train at the Naval Amphibious Base on the southern side of the town.




Coronado is also home to the famous Hotel del Coronado, which was built in 1888, only three years after the town was founded. The hotel has been the location for the shooting of many popular films, including one of my favorites – Some Like it Hot, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon. I first saw the film when it was released in 1959. The plot involves two musicians witnessing the St Valentine‘s Day massacre in Chicago and then fleeing to Florida, disguised as females, in order to escape the mob. I was disillusioned to learn that the scenes in Florida, which I so much enjoyed, were in fact filmed at the Hotel del Coronado. However, it remains a wonderful film.

Kate Morgan

In November 1892, a young woman named Kate Morgan checked into this hotel and was found shot to death in her room five days later. At the time, the death was treated as a suicide, but it now appears that she may have been murdered. Her ghost has often appeared in the hotel since then, accompanied by other curious paranormal events.

President Bush with Ben Press
For example, in May 1983, then Vice President George H W Bush was a guest during his official visit to San Diego. The secret service agent assigned to protect him was given Room 3502, Kate Morgan’s old room. He did not last the night and left, complaining of breezes and billowing drapes although all the windows were closed. He also objected to gurgling sounds and a ghostly glow in the room.

Gondola rides around Coronado Island
Coronado Island claims to operate the finest gondolas to be found outside Venice, Italy. These ply the canals in the Coronado Cays, which is a residential area in the southern part of the island. Whether or not one travels by gondola, one certainly does not need a car on Coronado. A speed limit of 25 mph is in force for the whole island, which is very flat and little over a mile wide. Therefore everything is within walking distance, but bicycles and golf carts are much in evidence on the island. Where does everyone go, apart from the beach? Probably to a restaurant or a café, because there are over 70 of them on Coronado.


Yet one man who was in no mood to walk around here was Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly the Atlantic. He flew from New York to Paris, France in 1927 in his plane, The Spirit of St Louis, which was built under his supervision in nearby San Diego. After taking possession of the plane, Lindberg took off from Coronado. He circled the island and flew west for a few miles over the Pacific. Then he made a U turn and headed for St Louis, Missouri, where he landed at Lambert Field.

The next lap of his journey was from St Louis to New York, from where he flew off across the ocean to Paris and into history. But how many of the millions who attended New York City’s subsequent tickertape parade to honor this epic flight knew that the journey began on tiny Coronado Island?

This piece, written by Bob, was originally posted on our website on January 21, 2013.