Model Ship Queen Mary

Considered by many the apogee of British passenger shipbuilding, Cunard-White Star Line's Queen Mary was laid down just as the Great Depression began to take hold in Europe, a circumstance that held up her construction between 1931 and 1934. A stately ship, Queen Mary was the second 1,000-foot ship to enter service, following the French Line's sleek Normandie.

Queen Mary's speed made her one of the most popular ships afloat, and she earned handsome profits for her owners until the outbreak of World War II, which found her at New York. After lying idle for six months, she entered service as a troopship in March, sailing unescorted from New York for Sydney, via Cape Town. The Queen Mary ferried troops between Australia and Suez until the United States entered the war, when she began braving the North Atlantic with only her speed to protect her from German submarines, whose commanders were reportedly offered a reward of $250,000 for sinking her.

Faster than any warship afloat, the Queen Mary ocean liner was known as "the Gray Ghost." So great was the imperative for speed that when, on October 2, 1942, she rammed HMS Curacoa, she could not stand by to rescue the cruiser's 364 crew, only 26 of whom survived. The Queen Mary passenger ship was the third-largest ever to sail the North Atlantic seaway and the largest to survive. Remains (as of 1997) one of the last reminders of the technological and aesthetic genius that dominated the North Atlantic Ocean for more than a century.