HMS Curacoa and Queen Mary 

A lot of You Tube channels are copycats but you generally do stories that no one else does and I really like that.

My father was aboard Queen Mary when this happened. He was an RAF sergeant on the troopship's permanent military staff. At the time of the collision, he was eating a meal. He felt a slight shudder, and the liquids on the table shook. Despite being on the ship's staff, he was kept in the dark about the accident until after the war. After her next Westbound voyage, she went into drydock to repair her bow. Even then the reason was kept secret.

Her sister ship HMS Caroline ( the last surviving ship from the battle of Jutland) is a museum ship in Belfast, well worth a look if you are ever there.

This sad case is a prime example of two things. Assumption is the mother of all cockups, and Clear communication is essential to any successful operation.

Seeing a new THG video in the morning is like finding a prize in a cereal box :)

When I was a kid my retired naval officer father would use this as a cautionary example: no matter what you "think" the rules physics ultimately determines the bigger ship has the right of way.

The Poseidon Adventure novel was written by Paul Gallico based on a 1942 incident of a rogue wave nearly capsizing the HMS Queen Mary. The history of this ship is amazing. And the ship can still be visited in Long Beach, California.

History might be forgotten by average folks but never by the history guy

Just to add context, the British covered up several tragedies in WW2 because of concerns for public moral. Other examples are the sinking of HMS Lancastria, and the Luftwaffe’s carpet bombing of Bristol. Remember Britain was losing millions of tons of shipping, and England was being bombed relentlessly. The government worried in case the public and military gave up under the pressure, like France.

My US Coast Guard experience showed how crowded the sea really is. We were constantly having to be very careful not to get involved in maritime "fender benders."

In the navy there’s this expression, “Naval regulations are wrote in blood”. Because new regulations are wrote after such disasters. This wasn’t the only incident of a smaller ship being sliced in half by a larger ship

Her sister ship, the Queen Elizabeth, was being built in Greenock when the war broke out so she was launched to free up the drydock. She went first to New York and then to Singapore to be fitted out as a troop ship. When war with Japan broke out she was hastily transferred to Esquimalt, BC, Can just west of Victoria. Esquimalt has a drydock which had been built large enough to fit the HMS Hood so she was fitted out as a troopship there. At the time my parents lived in Victoria and my dad worked in Esquimalt. I read in a history book when I was in university this was claimed to be one of the best kept secrets of the war. When i read that to my parents my dad laughed. he told me that every bridge connecting Victoria to Esquimalt was choked with traffic as everyone went to see the Queen Elizabeth.

Another piece of history almost forgotten because of obfuscation. Thank you THG for brining it to light.

As soon as you mentioned the "Mary", a few things came into my mind. Firstly, I had a stroll around the Old Queen when she was laid up as a museum/hotel in Los Angeles, and found her elegant and fascinating, even in her retired condition. This contrasts with my Dad, a Glaswegian, who never set foot on her, but remembered her being built on the Clyde, rising higher and higher above the houses until she formed his whole childhood horizon until her eventual launch. Another thing: you mentioned that she was named after GeoV's consort, Queen Mary. Actually, Cunard originally intended to call her the Queen Victoria. Protocol (or more likely just swank) led them to meet with the King, Victoria's grandson, and ask his permission to use the name. "Your Majesty," they proudly proclaimed, "We wish to name our new vessel after the finest Queen Britain has ever had!" "Oh," replied George, "My wife will be SO pleased!" The Cunard directors had to swallow all further conversation and bow to the inevitable. British singer Tommy Steele had an odd story to tell. He had started out as a merchant seaman, and crewed on the Queen Mary. Much later, famous and able to afford it, he took the Queen when he went to try his luck in the USA, a natural combination of nostalgia, affection for the vessel, and a confirmation of how far his talent had lifted him. First morning of the voyage, though, he awoke from a nightmare. As he put it: "Every ship has its own particular sounds and characteristic motion. In the dark, I was back on the Queen Mary, and all that whole life of the successful singer had just been a dream. I reached up above my head. As a seaman, you had a bunk with a small light above you. If the light was there, then I was still Able Seaman Tommy Hicks, a cheerful nobody with unfulfilled ambitions. It wasn't there. I reached instead for the bedside light, looked around the 1st class cabin, and thanked my lucky stars.' (NB, this may be slight;y paraphrased from memory). Speaking of the Merchant Navy, into which the Queen Mary was effectively requisitioned (though she might actually have flown the White Ensign rather than the Red), many thanks for including the British Navy losses during the war. Also to be remembered are the seamen of the Merchant Navy, civilians who crewed the convoys despite tremendous risks, to keep Britain supplied. Their casualties are reckoned to be over 47, 000, including nearly 6,000 taken prisoner. This represents just over 25% of their total wartime compliment, the highest losses of any branch of the services, military or civilian. The UK likes to think of itself as a seagoing nation, so naturally we hold them in the highest regard.

On a lighter note, my Great Uncle Col. William Gilmore, an Amry engineer-inventor in WWI, and my Uncle Authur David Sandiford, a renowned marine architect were in charge of converting the Queen Mary to a troop ship. Some of the Captian's Quarters' marvelous burl paneling became a dressing screen Aunt Mary had When they went to restore The Queen Mary in Long Beach they called the 2 in because the conversion was done so quickly and hardly documented and they needed them to recall the changes made Uncle Bill also invented something we all have in our kitchens In WWI it was nearly impossible to get large, heavy butcher paper rolls into the trenches for wrapping food or spreading on a table to do amputations. There was no easy way to handle such wide paper rolls with all the mud and enough rain would destroy the paper. William thought to make a smaller roll in a small cardboard box with a thin metal serrated edge on it, so soldiers could just grab the edge of the paper with their fingers, pull some sheet out, and cut off a piece cleanly, and with very little design change, it's what we pull plastic wrap and aluminum foil out of today I have seen the Patent, but of course, being an Army engineer, he was never able to capitalize on the invention

I've probably said this before. As a serving bridge Quartermaster in the Coast Guard and the Navy, I always found that the greatest threat to the lives and safety of the ships I served in were my fellow crewmen themselves. Not paying attention. Not letting other ships know of your intentions. Lax, lazy assumptions of what is happening rather than active taking charge of the situation. I saved my ship 3 times from extremis (imminent danger). Twice by my own actions and a third time racing to help my shipmates when they'd been the first to discover that a fellow shipmate, high on LSD, had set the ship adrift from the dock in Ketchikan, Alaska... narrow channel, mean tidal currents.

Living in Long Beach, I get to see the Queen Mary every day.

My girlfriend's father in 1973 told me how he was on the QM when it happened. he was an american soldier and was on deck. He said he felt a slight rumble and he saw both halves of the Curacoa float by. The QM never slowed down.

This was a nice memorial to those who perished. Many thanks.

Growing up in Southern California the Queen Mary has always been part of my life. I remember when she was brought to Long Beach to be made at first into a museum and then a hotel after Disney purchased her I also remember her when they had sandblasted her after she arrived and had a film of rust and then a new coat of paint. On the tour through the ship you could go all the way down to one of the propellers that they had housed off, that ship left a impression on this 62 year old man that I will never forget! And she is still there doing her thing, what a beautiful lady she is!

The HMS Queen Mary is now permanently docked at Long Beach, California. It is now a hotel and museum. I stayed in a cabin room for a week. Took the haunted tours of the pool room, mechanic room and the bow chambers where the poor dead soldiers were trapped. The guide described the events leading up to the accident just like this video. I liked staying in the ship's cabin. Sleeping in history.

My grandfather was on the Queen Elizabeth on her first troop ferry voyage of American troops from San Fransico to Sydney. He said they initially had two destroyers as escorts, but when the seas got rough they couldn`t keep up, so the liner left them behind.

My 3rd ship, USS Kinkaid DD 965, collided with a freighter in the Straits of Malacca September 1989. Tore a 14' by 56' hole starboard side aft of the helicopter hangar. Bow struck the stateroom of Kinkaid's navigator. He was killed instantly. 12 other crew members injured.

What I particularly like about this channel is, apart from being interesting, on whichever side of the Atlantic you live, that all the pictures shown match the spoken narrative, and wherever possible they are of the actual item being narrated. This is in stark contrast to another set of channels where any picture seems to OK, and at least one spoken fact is totally wrong. In this instance, we could easily have had a picture of a sailing ship instead of the QM! Mind you, it becomes a game to spot the errors in the other channels!

This same type of accident occurred in World War 1 with an American destroyer named USS Shaw (DD-68). Ironically, that ship was sliced in two by another Cunard liner, the 45,000-ton four-stacker RMS Aquitania. This accident was caused by the destroyer's steering gear jamming as she turned toward the troop filled Aquitania, which she was assigned to escort. Aquitania sliced off some 90 feet of the Shaw's bow and killed 12 members of her crew in a matter of seconds. The stern section of the Shaw remained afloat, and under her own power, she would eventually reach the safety of the port of Portsmouth. Like the Queen Mary in this incident, Aquitania was also unable to stop to render assistance to the men of the Shaw. It's interesting how much history can repeat itself.

The enormous shipyard that built the QM is sadly long gone, just a few relics left on the Clyde to remind us of it, but the enormous Titan Crane is still there. This massive piece of engineering was used to fit out the ships once launched, lifting heavy components like boilers, gun turrets etc onto them. It has thankfully been preserved and restored, with an elevator now added (the original crane operator had to climb the steps, so his work day started earlier than his colleagues!), it's well worth a visit for any history buffs passing through the Clydebank area.

Many don’t know, but on the Queen Mary was Company A of the 116th from my hometown of Bedford, VA. June 6,1944 most of them would perish in the first wave on Omaha Beach. The National D-Day Memorial is there, just outside of downtown, of of Route 460. I highly recommend a visit to anyone who enjoys history.

I knew about this incident, read about it but learned something new today and I thank you.

Queen Mary had the same problem we have each morning with squirrels on the way to work.

What was the name of the Muslim Turkish prince who saved Irish people during the famine? The guy who secretly sent ships to Ireland against the wishes of the English Royality? That Turkish Prince is worth an episode.

Thank you for bringing light to this unfortunate and tragic piece of history.

Awesome history stories as usual!

The numbers of killed and wounded at the end of the video give a chilling insight into the nature of naval warfare. In land warfare you would expect the ratios to be roughly reversed.

Underrated history channel

Dear History Guy. Many thanks for your videos. HMS Curacoa is named after an island near Australia, not after the former Dutch possession of Curacao. Please notice the different spellings.

Great video, as always! I've always been morbidly fascinated by the history and science of rogue waves...and one of the most terrifying had to be the one that struck QUEEN MARY broadside in the dark off of Scotland in a storm during an Atlantic crossing in December 1942, when she had thousands of US troops aboard. Would love to see you do a video on the legends and history of rogue waves sometime....!

THANK YOU for this EXCELLENT video! It is very important to remember the sacrifices made by individuals as they worked for the common victory.

Thanks for another great episode. You are a terrific storyteller.

I first learned of this incident when I visited the Queen Mary in Long Beach during the mid 1980s, (the Spruce Goose was still hangered in its protective dome nearby,) although I did not remember the name or type of ship that the Queen Mary struck. It is often noted that on some occasions, the ghostly sounds of the Queen striking the Curacoa can be heard coming from deep within the bow section where the Queen Mary was damaged. FYI: the RU-vid content creator, "Alex the Historian," has a great and extremely detailed video about RMS Queen Mary's wartime service.

Hey History Guy 🤓 This weekend I went to the grand opening of The Sphere here in Las Vegas. It was awe inspiring 👏!

All gave some, some gave all 😢

I don't know how you come up with so many incidents I've never heard of. What a wonderful channel.

One of your best HG

I just love The History Guy, one of my very favorite shows.

The lead ship of the 'C' class was HMS Caroline, launched in September 1914 snd commissioned into the Royal Navy in December 1914. Apart from that one fact a superb and well researched history. The detailed facts of the cause of Curacoa's collision are in dispute to this day (the board of enquiry changed their mind during the enquiry) but it seems that Curacoa was, due to her slower speed, not zig zagging but following a direct course ahead of Queen Mary in order to allow QM to catch up and that both captains were unsure of which ship had priority. QMs rate of progress on the mean course even when zig zagging was faster than Curacoa's maximum speed. An old ship not really up to the job she was given - with tragic results.

Hey History Guy ,🤓Alan Hale Jr use to have nightmares of going down on a ship. The last thing he remembered was how the steering wheel would spin like in the beginning of the show. That's where the scene oriented. 🌈🌈🌈🌠 The More You Know!

On two seperate occasions aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne sank her escorts. One was an Australian Navy destroyer and again on exercise with the US navy an American destroyer. Sailors came to believe the carrier was cursed

Great story telling and rememberance

~The final judgement~ Both captains did everything right, even though everything went wrong. When in areas that are dangerous, always be alert, even if you are being told the best of the best are overseeing your way.

The captain of the Queen Mary had the lives of 10,000 US servicemen plus the crew of his own ship to look out for. As unsettling as it was he could not risk them for the sake of rescuing a few hundred sailors. It's not that lives were cheap, but when faced with a hard choice you have to do what is considered the higher priority.

I was fortunate enough to tour the Queen Mary just last week. This video make me want to go back again soon and see it with a new perspective. On a side note, thanks for all you do (particularly the aviation videos). I look forward to meeting you in a couple of weeks in Germany!

It's so daft that both captains were so set in their ways and headstrong that they didn't even think to ask the other who would give way. It must have been obvious to at least one of them that they were going to eventually cross paths with the other and at that point they foolishly assumed the other would get out of their way, rather than simply having a conversation or adjusting their course to stop it happening. Madness based on blind pride.

Thank you. I'm a Pompey lad and knew nothing of this, until now.

Such is war and very sad......Thank THG🎀..... Shoe🇺🇸

Well made, as usual! It's a shame you cited Butler as a source so often... he's a well known plagirist.

How cruel war is. 700 Hundred man gone missing from on day to another,with only a few knowing what happen but absolutely forbidden to talk abaut the truth. To live with that in your conscience ,knowing that were Hundreds of families in absolute grief and agony,without any news or explanation abaut the very sad Faith of their loved ones. For some,this is just another "fog of war" incident,but the burden for some others should have been a Torment. War is the worst Creation of Mankind.

Keep in mind that many of those lost at sea, navy and merchant mariners, have no known grave. Relatives can’t visit them in person. It’s harder to keep those memories alive. They deserve to be remembered.

British ideology is that of superiority in maritime lore. Two British captains making a tragic mistake? Yes we must never talk about this.

My late father retired RN was on one of the other escort ships at the time and told me about this incident.

The fate of HMS Dasher was also kept secret. Especially as there is a teniuos link to The Man Who Never Was.

Sometimes hard decisions have to be made in combat!

Thank you for sharing this story. I had never heard of it previously.

Thank you for sharing.

I appreciate you and thank you for making content.

You should do an episode on how thanks to the Ultra codebreakers, the troopships were always routed away from where the U boats were known to be. No troopship was ever sunk, I am pretty sure not even fired at. Or if Doenitz wasn't such a micro manager control freak calling the subs all day long to find out exactly where they were, and letting the Brits know in the process, the U boats would have been way more deadly. PS The Germans knew about 'Huff Duff", but never realized the code was broken.

My grandfather was aboard Queen Mary when this happened. They were not allowed to write home about it until after it was written about in Stars and Stripes.

QM is now the most earthquake-proof hotel in Southern California.

This is admittedly a generalization, however, it is likely true. This is a case of British stoicism trumping common sense. Both the Captains were so sure of their understanding of the navigation rules, that they never considered consulting for a navigation plan. It was left to the Admiralty to take these lessons learned and forward revised convoy procedures later.

You should do a video on the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne

THG you rock! Peace

War is ugly. War should be avoided whenever possible but self-defense when attacked is a required response. Nice memorial for the Royal Navy.

thanks

I cant tell you how much I love your content.

Nothing better than a History Guy video on a Monday morning.

Being in the Navy isn’t necessarily a “safe” way to serve during wartime. WOW! What a story! While it seems that such a naval operation would be highly coordinated, it wasn’t at all. Ironically, just before I watched this video, I saw one about the sinking of the Andrea Doria. While incomprehensible that such things can happen, going to sea is, and has always been risky.

1st class. Thanks for sharing

"their lives would be cheap" YYUUUUP.

I read about this in the book titled "Adorimini: A history of the 82nd Fighter Group in World War II", by Steve Blake with John Stanaway , published 1992. Page 15.

What a tragic tale of mismanagement of the seas. How sad no one thought it important enough to discuss what was happening between these two vessels. Did the cruiser's captain not understand that the Q.Mary was much faster?

This is the most detailed account of the tragedy I have ever seen.

I stayed on the Queen Mary and took a tour where they talked about this tragedy. I'd put the blame entirely on the Curacoa, though, as in wartime the escort ship is considered less valuable, being required to risk or even sacrifice itself to protect the ship(s) it's escorting. The ship it is protecting thus has priority and the escort should yield to it. The captain or person at the helm clearly did not understand this concept, nor the concept that tonnage always wins, with tragic results.

I assume the two captains couldn't confirm their zig-zag patterns or right-of-way because they were under radio silence. Still, you'd think they could use an Aldis Lamp to communicate.

I visited the Queen Mary in 1994 and took a behind the scenes tour. The gentleman walking me through the ship told me this same story. He told me about it being secret for decades and that after the ship was relocated to Long Beach, people had reported hearing strange noises inside the bow area of the ship. The noises would sound like crashing and crunching of steel and men screaming. It was a mystery to those who claimed to have heard it because at that time, this tragedy was unknown to them. I had forgotten about that story until watching the video. Did people really have those experiences? I have no idea….

Can the History Guy please cover the great Hinkley fire (in MN)?

I remember reading about this decades ago.

The description of what led to it happening, and decisions made reminded me of my driver's ed class, when we were discussing the driver's license manual and who had right of way in different situations, and the teacher went over them with us and then I think it was him that said (maybe a classmate and he repeated it?), "it is better to yield right of way and be wronged than to think you have right of way and be dead wrong." If _either_ captain assumed that premise instead of "of course they'll yield" the collision likely wouldn't have happened. And the captain who should have assumed this first was the one on the comparatively tiny vessel that was also a bit slower. Because in a collision between the two, it's his clipper that will end up worse off. Even with much similar in size semis and sedans, if I am driving a sedan and a semi decides it wants to turn in front of me, or change lanes or whatever, I will choose not to be where it wants to be. Typically when turning or changing lanes you yield to traffic that is continuing straight, but I am not about to trust that that huge truck will follow that or have even seen me. And that's something that _can_ avoid collisions. I don't mess with trains at all, and that is much closer in scale to these two ships. So I can't imagine the thought process that led to them thinking the inherent survival instinct of "don't get run into by big hulking monster" and general awareness of "don't crush tiny thing" somehow didn't apply in this scenario. Even in wartime, as sure lives were cheap, but at least it we treat them as a wartime commodity they could have been lost against the enemy not lost randomly because they didn't communicate or give way when it made sense. Like if they aren't going to value those men as people, at least value them as necessary for the war effort and not to be wasted. Now my head hurts from trying to understand this royal navy "logic" from the time.

My father sailed on the RMS Queen Mary twice: first, going to war and then returning home. He said she sailed without escort, because she put on speed and outran everything in the Atlantic.

No wonder the Queen Mary is haunted!

My Dad, PFC, Hq & Hq Sqdn, 8th USAAF, came home after the war on the Queen Mary.

50,758 dead, 820 missing, 14,663 wounded. Lest we forget.

I have a picture of my dad sitting by the cargo boom returning on the Queen

My uncle was transported aboard her in WW2. He served in the 44th Infantry Division.

"He was right, dead right as he sailed along but he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong!"

Hardly a secret, the tour guides on the Queen Mary tell you about this on every tour (that's where I first heard about it). In this case, it's understandable why the details were concealed during the war. (I'd also point out that, in addition to covering up historical events, as we see so often today, things that never happened can be invented to serve political agendas today, as well. Doesn't apply in this case, but I thought I would mention it.) I would also question whether it "had to happen", even during wartime captains have a lot of autonomy in their judgment and actions to safeguard their ships and crews. Leaving a bit more distance in this case would have been the sensible decision, since any slight momentary increase in risk would have been preferable to losing an entire ship and crew.

I'm pretty sure there already was a Grey Ghost before the QM... USS Enterprise, CV6 which was reported sunk by Japanese Navy aviators at least on 3 occasions, yet always returned to strike harder back...

It's appalling that neither captain had the common sense to signal the other ship. It makes one wonder just how "competent" they were as well as calling into question the training they received.

I wonder when the Queen Mary became haunted before or after the war?

They let the boat sit there for a while until it actually _became_ New Jersey...

This month’s copy of Smithsonian magazine has a long article about the destruction of Port Chicago in California in July 1944. African-American sailors were forced to load artillery and bombs onto ships with a minimum of training. It ended up with two ships being completely destroyed, one that was vaporized completely beyond recognition, and the other flipped end over end into the bay. Over 800 men died, and the all white command structure blamed the black shipmen for the disaster. I haven’t finished reading the article yet, but it looks like it is a piece of history that will affect the American Supreme Court in a most positive way. It seems to be a bit of forgotten history, but the amount of destruction is almost on the scale of the Texas City explosion in 1947.

I'd like to see a story on the lancasteria