Historians Tour the RMS Queen Mary (Hotel)

[Music] well all right we're on the queen mary we're on the queen mary i'm not sure exactly which deck have you been uh a forward to see the former third class areas uh yeah yeah they're like you can only ow that's all locked off you can only get into the uh stairwell that's one of the watershed moments of my life so you decide an adventure for the first time i wasn't sitting in that theater it was a big big theater like the first week it was out maybe even the first day and all in the curtains you know slowly open you know all of a sudden here comes this intro music by john williams just these aerial shots of this model going through it just gives me goosebumps even today to think about it you know it had such an effect on me well it really was a great film like i said last night was the first i saw it yeah so all this of course is the original beautiful quarter cut oak just look at that tiger ribbing it's just beautiful just like olympic that's the folks we'll have there going out onto the folks of the queen mary oh gosh i forgot my sunglasses here we go amazing to think that one of these was recovered from titanic's debris field with the actual compass card in the glass with the oil that's that's in there intact see all the compass bearings on it now if you look at uh movies of queen mary and service in the 50s in particular you can find them on youtube these were not painted black they were painted sort of an anti-fouling red the gutters the waterways here which is interesting and then the you know the the artist slash historian in me wants to get down there with a razor blade kick and pick and see if my friend is still there yeah i gotta find that original in service go all the way back to the maiden voyage and see what color it might have been then you know like titanic was it gray was it black was it maybe maybe the uh the mask brown just think of the history the scale is just so vast you hardly even get any you know stereo separation with our little measly human eyes it's just so big and so distant even just from here to the bridge the face of the bridge [Music] so i just uh noticed these these drains here um the titanic wreck video from the various you know expeditions that have been out there on some of them they get close enough to the to the corners of the officer's quarters roof right by the expansion joint and on the aft end of the officer's quarters roof right before the raise up over the first class staircase there are two little drains like this on either side but they're they're a lot smaller very small yeah i don't know maybe like this but it's just reminiscent to see that you just thank god yeah except this doesn't look like it's brass it looks like it might be iron on titanic i believe they're grass yeah you get that firsthand experience that ambiance the lighting exactly the sounds as you're walking through the corridors paneled in wood that's absolutely very reminiscent when you think of this ship was you know designed and built just 20 years basically after titanic the original lights actually you can see where they were fitted in a lot of cases and these are first-class stateroom lights you know sort of so-so reproductions the lights that were originally here in the corridors were just bare uh tubes but they were incandescent they look like fluorescent but they're actually incandescent too are they covered in any kind of case i don't believe so oh really yeah these these are sort of copies of what was in the first class state rooms and suites but not not in the corridors right so there's a lot of mixing and matching and changes that have gone on over the years like carpeting for example i mean the corridors had no carpeting whatsoever in service but you have to do that for a hotel because it muffles the footage people are sleeping so another one of those changes now here's a here's an older unchanged light here in this in this cross corridor here and look at the color of this this is what i mean about this sickening daylight tube in here it's just look at how green the wood looks underneath it are you filming us no i'm not filming see you can you can really see the sheer here on the queen mary but we're in the middle of the valley so it's hard to notice and my head's in the way all right totally at the end of the corridor and then look look aft and you can really yes absolutely tell a photo and that really shows it it's interesting to think that on the maiden voyage queen mary didn't have the handrails along the side because they thought that the ship would be so steady that she wouldn't need it but she ended up being quite a roller so hand rails were quickly installed [Music] well that has the same sticker over there there is some numbers there that has the same sticker as the chairs yeah but that's because they thought it was from the queen mary maybe it's from the media or ibernia are these original chairs i'm loving their design i don't think so they could be but uh not too over the top just just the right amount of art deco yeah the wood looks pretty new see here where it's been well it has the um foundation logo on it 1997 to 99. well maybe it's an inventory that maybe it's an actual artifact bill might not bill will know [Music] when a ship goes to sea for the first time she captures her society in other words when the queen mary was new she was britain 1936 she was class oriented she had a particular style she had a particular demeanor and that was british upper class pre-war the difficulty with a ship is they become time capsules in a way that is not good after the war society was turned over uh class distinctions were far less important and the world was not living in the posh nobility of 1936 you had a sort of scrappy realism of shortages of labor unrest of dislocated people and the queen mary did not quite fit that world anymore so kinard came in and they started making changes they made third class a lot more comfortable they made second class more attractive and very often it's at the expense of first class little nibbles we need this lounge we need that deck space first class continued in a grand way but not really in the epic way from the 30s finally by the time the 60s came around again society had changed once more cruising was the mainstay and the queen mary just is not a cruise ship that's what sealed her fate too big to fit into the popular ports and no air conditioning and limited private baths that wasn't going to fly in 1965 so the ship had to be decommissioned she wound up in long beach and long beach actually kept a lot of the showstopper rooms like the first class lounge the first class smoking room and the cocktail bar the observation bar that's still there and you know if you close your eyes you can really imagine being back in time uh watching the doors and hoping fred astaire might pop in for a high ball or something like that this is gorgeous these by the way are original they go all the way back still functional i hope i don't know one of the first ships to be outfitted with this kind of sprinkler system throughout distribution box gq3 from section box grng switchboardroom radiator and towel rail c d cabin 61 and 63 and 65. these have all been relabeled in cabins too yep you can see where the originals were but these are these are origins no lights will come on you know and i i need a steward uh and the original steel work is red somewhere on the ship i think there might still be one or two but uh these used to be like bakelite inserts and they said i'm trying to remember what they say ash hash ends not a yeah i saw one okay yeah they're still around i wasn't thinking it's not ash trays but ash hands i think that's it yeah they're cigarette ends mm-hmm those are not butts cigarettes i think that's the one forward yeah mm-hmm yeah wait they just so what do they do it's not like an actual tray oh no i can't believe it this is what used to be original linoleum here and you could see the deck let's see right here that's theirs the deck was called out you know in the linoleum it was inset maybe maybe on the next level this is absolutely original linoleum here for sure original light fixtures with their bottoms all removed probably so that they could change the fluorescent lights that are in there this is the bane of my existence looking at fluorescent lights inside queen mary it's just a ghastly light but at least they're not daylight bulbs you know daylight tubes these are sort of a soft white so let's go up to the top level here here's a cigarette ends thing it's missing the thing in the middle here there you go that's original right there wait where's that there's the first class smoking room right there through that door and the bathroom so this has all been redone here because just a few months ago this was an absolutely original restroom in here with the with the tile yeah see this will be this will be original tile here so the women have heavy seas they'd be wearing their high heels and you'll notice all this collection of pock marks in the tile in the corners because weather would get really rough they would be hanging on to the railings here and their weight would shift on and off their high heels and eventually you know dig into the tile but you'll see this in you know in corners you won't see it in the main walkway because they wouldn't be walking here they'd be hanging on to the rails here and create this and there's a couple of telephone booths up near the front entrance where i mean it's just full of these little pock marks where the women's high heels just dug into the linoleum tile a long long disused elevator is original wood beautiful just with things leaning up against it that's doesn't that kill you and look to the lifeboats red red and green one's still left what do you think this one oh this was to the life notes well and this is just a red that's what the arrows are for yeah this would have been probably okay that's the sun guys really that's the sun how's that the sun oh see how it's it's concave from this side oh the sun on the clock yeah this is the you know the sun so maybe the clock is not a midships you know maybe it's to the side or something here our deck outside window outside windsor room so this is all new you know since the 70s but that's definitely the sun and that's why there's light in there if we went down into the gigantic dining saloon we would see the other side one of these panels uh nobody knows about but you can open it up and there you're looking right at the back of you know the uh like the clock the one in the saloon the dining salon the main our deck zone so we might need to go down one more deck all right so we're trying to find where the panel is for the clock in the saloon it might be right here actually we're on a deck ken is hot on the trail we've been through this one yeah but we didn't open everything here this is the exact center this is the center line yeah this has to be yet this has to be it i'm telling you this is it it's not gonna it's not gonna move it could be oh we can't open the panels above and see where we are i mean like it might yeah maybe the panels at least will give us a clue if we open those up i'm telling you that's got to be it though this is just the same thing this is the roof that doesn't happen this is the roof of the salon how about we go inside let's climb up there that has to be it that absolutely must be the clock panel right there in the midst of you know all this new wiring since the you know early early 70s late 60s here's an old toggle switch there on the left an old ceramic you know it's just sitting there it's obviously original you wonder what that would have controlled up in the roof in the crawl space oh yeah you can see it clear across the hole the whole room when you look through the crack there you see lights surrounding the entire you know coving of the ceiling if you look that way look at the distance all right so here's a cool thing that we just found a little secret that i'm sure most people who even work here are unaware of all right so come on over here let's let's say we want to close the window the sound of the shipyard is just terrible all right so we close that up we latch it like you're supposed to although on the original ship there would have been screws on top of this but i think souvenir hunters took them one still remains there but still really bright i don't like this well i'm in luck because there's this little thing right here watch this that's right and it's filthy because i bet the hotel doesn't even know it's here it's got the little finger hole right there there's another plate right here this looks like it's on a track too but this doesn't move and then over here the original blind is there too but this doesn't budge at all so we've got three things that should move only one does but it's still really cool and of course all last night i had it closed just because i wanted to have it closed because it's so cool but it's all so filthy like i'm gonna leave that closed when i check it out and the cleaning lady is gonna come in and i have no idea how to open it or even what the dink it is and she's just gonna look at it and be like so this is the starboard shop we're up in piccadilly circus and this was originally the drawing room as you were saying but what else well this room the queen mary did not have chapels so in first class there you see the drawing the photograph of the drawing as i looked originally this panel here which is in the museum now is folds back and exposes an altar but they have massive mass in first class here in second class the second class library had the same arrangement a panel would fold back expose an altar for math in the second class there we go oh there's a cross there's the crucifix see in this drawing room so uh the church of england stuff was in the library which is next to it it's across from it right so yeah very very nice we're outside cabin a15 which during the queen mary's voyages was cabin a25 they renamed it when they converted the queen mary to a hotel now this cabin belonged to audrey pearl during the return maiden voyage when queen mary returned back to england for the very first time audrey pearl was a regular passenger on board the queen mary and she was pretty significant because when she was three months old she was on board the rms lusitania which was another cunard liner when it was torpedoed and sunk in 1915. she was only three months old she was traveling on board with her parents a couple of her siblings and a couple nannies she and her parents both survived i think one brother sister and her nanny survived but the family did lose two sisters i believe two young sisters and a couple of the nannies were all lost on the sinking of lusitania surprisingly she was willing to go back on a cunard ship and she chose this one that she was put in this cabin right here you got to go down this little side corridor off of a deck and uh this is it right here originally cabin a25 i think it's occupied so we're not able to go inside she was a saloon class passenger aboard the lusitania and she was in first class here on the queen mary she was also the very last survivor of the rms lusitania to pass away she passed away in 2011. this is an example of a basic queen mary tea set so you have your tea cup right here you need your bread plate a waste dish the waste dish was for spent tea bags or anything like that so that's new for me and don't forget your sugar right there and there are actually two sizes of teapots this is a smaller size you have your creamer right there and your hot water jug so this is like a tea service set for one person because usually you get a teapot and it fits like it's good for like two or three people but it's very interesting that this is all just a one person set that's pretty cool and this is original china from this ship of course i really like the pattern i actually kind of want to get some for myself over here we've got silver most of this silver is also from the queen mary but there's a few surprises in here for example here we've got a soup terrine and we got a round serving platter with a domed cover i'm literally reading the labels because i don't know all this stuff all that well but this this is a really cool piece because it's actually from the olympic yes many when cunard shot was shutting down their warehouses they had many fittings from the olympic they either transferred them to the queen mary while she was sailing or locked in storage and i was just put on here so this is olympic rms olympic yes that's right you heard me correctly sister ship to the famous rms titanic which most of you know now cunard and white starline were competitors as as all of you guys know but some of you might not know that in the 30s during the depression the british government said hey we'll bail you guys out if you merge so then for a brief period like through the war it was junard white star and therefore some of the china that was for the white star line got merged with the dog sorry got merged with the cunard china and then it was just all put into service some of them on the same ship they would have white star line stuff they would have cunard stuff and um then all together now here they've appeared and this is this is queen mary china but also olympic china silverware you know what i'm saying it's cool all right so kosher foods kosher eating people who stay kosher they have to have separate plates because everything has to be clean according to the torah and here we have the kosher plates which are kept separate for food that's cooked differently and it's actually quite rare to come across this stuff but for some reason i've been seeing it everywhere lately not just here but like on ebay and things like that which is pretty cool but here we've got kosher dinner plates kosher side plates kosher teapot and the same exact pattern that we just uh not teapot tea cup in the same exact pattern that we just saw in the other display case we got kosher silverware this whole display case is kosher stuff and that's that looks like just a picture of the galley i doubt that's the kosher kitchen it is the kosher kitchen thank you that's a very big kitchen the queen mary also had a synagogue on board which was not common at the time he had one and the queen mary had one titanic did not although titanic olympic did also have a kosher service and there is some kosher um dishware that still survives from the olympic and i think there's been some recovered from the titanic maybe so you'd see the kosher menus for the queen mary which is pretty neat so this is a pretty neat display case we've got going on here i really have absolutely no idea maybe you guys can comment if you do i have no idea why some of this just says milk i mean like i get it it's milk on that maybe that's a creamer or maybe that i don't know but why is it on plates what's going on with milk i mean we got meat over there is it and there's no upset there's no third option that's a pot that just says kosher no hebrew but i guess that's for the cooks because they don't need to see the hebrew writing we are this is a watertight door over here legend says that this is one of the most haunted places on board as well because someone was walking through it when the door was closing and the door closed on him and cut him in half and it was a real accident the man's name was john petter he was recently signed up to the ship they were closing the watertight doors as a matter of routine and those doors have a bell that rings in advance before the door moves and better for whatever reason and we'll never know why decided that he was going to chicken the door and and jump through it and the door caught him and he was crushed as i recall the the nature of the the damage the injury was from the collarbones across the sternum to about where the liver is and he was i he was not pinched in half but you know that's there's nothing left of that midsection you're supposed to have two people um to actually control the door one holds the handle open the guy one his partner goes through he holds to handle the other side while the other one goes through well this kid tried to do it on his own and he got caught and it uh and it completely crushed him uh we had to uh we had to make room it was on the way out so we had to keep the body uh in our freezer we actually had to empty out a fruit locker freezer um and put the body in there uh it was on just off of the working alleyway up in the in the bowels of the ship here's a pretty cool direct connection to the titanic we're on the promenade deck right now actually the second glass promenade and these windows would have been just like this on the titanic these are the famous windows that you would have seen on any deck where it's enclosed where along the promenade deck it has the open space and then they enclosed it because of weather and vibrations and all sorts of reasons as to why they get closed part of a deck but what's cool is you can still see the socket right here and you can see the glass pane and you can see how it slides down this one doesn't move anymore but just like on the titanic it would have now during the sinking of the titanic officer lightsawer took life before which was one of the very first light bulbs ready to be launched from the titanic he got it swung out he lowered it down to a deck because the legos were designed to be launched from adec and then he told a bunch of sailors to take a group of passengers down there and open the windows and put them through and then he went off and he launched like five or six other light bulbs aft on the ship so he comes back late in the sinking like 20 minutes before the ship disappears he looks over the side he sees life mode four which should have been the first lifeboat to leave the titanic still sitting there outside adec and he has this moment of like what the heck why is it still there so he goes rushing down to adec promenade and he talks to the sailors and they couldn't find the crank to unscrew the windows and open them up so that lifeboat was just sitting there with a crowd of people waiting for like an hour they go off they find the crank they crank it i don't know clockwise or counterclockwise but they crank it open the window cranks down and then white taller himself along with the other sailors they put deck chairs because the ship's leaning they use deck chairs as bridges going out to the lifeboat which is like a good couple feet away now and they go climbing out these windows which probably would have been a little bit bigger on the titanic they go climbing up and out and water is like 10 feet below them unlike right now where it's like 50 feet down they launch it and it's one of the last lifeboats to leave uh madeline astor and a couple of others who are not coming to me right now but they got off through this and this is where john jacob astor the richest man on the ship and one of the richest men in the world asked white taller may i accompany my wife she's like nine months pregnant lightsaur said no he handed her a pair of gloves said i'll see you in new york and she asked him to go find their dog which was being kept in the kennel and he actually did go and find the dog and release the dogs so that's what these windows would have been like almost identical so this is another reason why the queen mary is able to give us historical information help us get the titanic right there's always been a little neat feature of the titanic that i've noticed or that's there that's not easily known if you just look at it at a glance a lot of you guys will know it but i like how the second class promenade goes along the sides of the titanic to a certain point around the second class stairs and then it actually cuts across the ship between interior rooms but it's exterior i don't know i just thought it was kind of like this this neat mesh of interior and exterior that you don't usually see it's almost like a little maze or a tunnel of exterior i thought that was neat well here we go the queen mary that's gone but it had it it has traces of it still so here we are you can see the original interior of that exterior roof along the promenade with these windows that i was just talking about now they've changed it when they converted it into a hotel and this is now the second class lounge which would have been in there originally is it the lounge eric the lounge thank you second class lounge would have been in there originally but they expanded it out to give it a little bit more floor space for like conventions or private events but on the original ship this all still would have been exterior promenade just like you saw out there or you see on the promenade deck upstairs and if you follow along here you can still make out a little bit this was the original wall going into the exterior bit and you can still see some of the entrance doors over there which still exist you can still see these hints of this being the original second-class promenade but then if you come out here if you follow me through these doors into the second class stairwell thank you good sir come out here now this would be an interior space the exterior would be out there but we're going to reach right about here i want to say at this wall or maybe this this point this would have been the exterior connection it probably would have been quite narrow but if you come in here this is unlocked this is going to be a little hard to do with the lights it's a light switch perfect and you can see the original floor in fact you can see the division between the original floor and what would have been the interior so that's just a pretty neat thing you can still see the evidence when you come across to the opposite side of what is now a hallway what wouldn't have been back then you can see more of that floor and it would have carried right over there to the opposite side of the ship that still all would have been exterior and it would have been encased so it wouldn't have gotten wet in the rain or anything like that but you still would have had that fresh sea air and one last little bit of evidence you can't see it on this side but if you come over to the opposite side of the ship if you can see you can still see the hint of what the exterior second class entrance would have been on the starboard side now the decking is not original i believe it's an it's a very nice replica of that and this would have this would have been exterior as well with this wall and these entrance doors right here so i love how it's been all made into an interior space but i love how there's still that hint of seeing what it would have been like on the original ship with the exterior uh promenade deck it's almost like archaeology really going through this ship and finding these things it's pretty cool right now we're in the queen mary's second class enclosed promenade deck it's pretty similar to what was on board olympic titanic those ships pre-date the queen mary by about 20 years but second class was definitely on the agenda for improvement the nice thing about an enclosed promenade deck is it allows second-class passengers to get out and stretch their feet and walk and have a look at the ocean on days that really aren't really not too too nice not too pleasant in some cases you might have deck chairs and those by the way are rented in there by reservation only you can't just walk up to a deck chair and claim it for your own also right behind me are a set of doors they're similar to what was on board olympic and titanic these are called luggage embarkation doors getting luggage around onboard a ship is always a nightmare and usually what happens is the night before the uh disembarkation the luggage is gathered in the unused promenade decks and it's sort of used as a queuing area to get the luggage off the ship expeditiously and without getting in the way of passengers or provisions that are coming back on board in the other direction [Music] [Music] so i turned the sun off and i turned it on

Channel: Part-Time Explorer

Views: 91,522

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Id: phtDDfKFiXw

Length: 37min 7sec (2227 seconds)

Published: Mon May 24 2021