Perhaps the most famous of all the giants of the Atlantic is the Queen Mary, launched on May 28 1936 from John Brown and Company's yard on the Clyde.

Her maiden voyage was carried out in thick fog, and it wasn't until August that she steamed across to New York under the full power of her 2000 000 hp turbines to beat Normandie hands down. Despite a brief return by the French liner the Queen reigned over the North Atlantic until 1952 when the United States Line's flagship of the same name set an astounding record for an Atlantic crossing of 3 days, 10 hours and 40 mins, a record which, I feel sure, will never be broken by any passenger liner in the future.

Laid down in 1930 work on "No. 534" as the Queen Mary was known, was halted a year later when the financial crisis brought industry to a standstill. For three years the eerie skeleton of the future Queen Mary lay towering above the houses on Clydebank until 1934, when a Government loan of £9.5M was awarded to the now amalgamated Cunard/White Star Line, and two years later the Queen launched her namesake into the Clyde.

At 81 237 tonnes gross and 1 018 ft long the Queen Mary was the largest and longest ship ever launched and she eventually entered service after undertaking a round Britain trip to show herself off to the nation.

For three years, while her sister ship Queen Elizabeth was growing on the stocks, she sped backwards and forwards across the Atlantic filled to capacity every voyage, a round trip taking her first from Southampton to Cherbourg and then on to New York. On the return voyage an extra call was made at Plymouth to land passengers for London who were taken up to the capital by the Great Western Railway's special Boat Trains, which avoided the need to spend another day calling at Cherbourg.

At the beginning of the War the Mary was covered in grey camouflage and entered service as a troop carrier. Operating from the Clyde, the only safe place with suitable depth and docking facilities, she was sent all over the world and in fact, first met her sister ship the Queen Elizabeth off Sidney Heads, Australia. When the US entered the War in 1941 the two Queens were used for transporting troops on a vast scale across to the European theatre. Their passenger capacity was increased from 2000 to more than 15 000 troops on each voyage, which must have been near absolute capacity of these, the two largest ships in the world.

Thanks to their high speed, the Queens were allowed to travel alone, without a warship escort, across the Atlantic as nothing afloat could have caught them.

Unfortunately this did have terrible consequences when, late in 1942, the Queen Mary was approaching the British coast coming in down the west of Scotland, when she encountered a convoy with the escort vessel HMS Curacoa in attendance. To confuse enemy submarines ships in convoy sailed a zig zag course and this was the case with the Curacoa.

The much smaller ship was on a course diagonally across that of the Queen but all on the bridge expected her to turn away on another tack of the zig zag. Indeed, officers on board the Curacoa were busy taking souvenir photographs of the giant liner as their ship continued on course straight into her path. The Queen's bows sliced straight through the Curacoa without the slightest jolt being felt aboard and , without faltering, she steamed on forbidden to stop for anything. Only a handful of the shattered Curacoa's crew survived the icy waters.

After seven years as the "Grey Ghost" she sailed at last into Southampton once again to resume her role as Transatlantic ferry. The Queen Elizabeth, meanwhile, was in dry dock having her wartime camouflage removed which had been painted on at her launch in anticipation of her secret dashes across the Atlantic during the war.

In July 1947 the Queen Mary, now also in shining new Cunard livery, and the Elizabeth settled down to operating a weekly service between Southampton and New York, just as they had been designed to do so many years before.

Unfortunately, with the advent of air travel and the shrinking market for travel across the Atlantic by ship the two Queens became something of a liability for Cunard.

After being used as cruise ships in the Caribbean during the winter months and still proving unprofitable, these two great ships were sold to become only ghosts of what they once were.

Queen Elizabeth was sadly destroyed by fire in Hong Kong harbour but the Queen Mary can still be seen and visited in Long Beach, Los Angeles where she lies at the heart of a hotel and conference centre complex.

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The 2 Queens in New York harbour.

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Standing room only!