text: RMS Queen Mary had her internal power plant and boilers removed during conversion, her water, sewage and electrical systems tapped directly into the city's. No longer able to generate her own power, she was officially reclassified as a building and no longer under the care of a crew nor seaworthy. RMS Queen Elizabeth, on the other hand, was still a seaworthy vessel even though she was officially retired. She was still generating her own power from her own steam boilers and maintained by her own Cunard skeleton crew of approximately 100. The inefficient fuel burning rate that ended her career in the first place was now bleeding her owners dry before her conversion could even begin.
  Meanwhile Cunard, the majority owner, had its own troubles in 1969. Engine trouble with RMS Queen Elizabeth's direct replacement, the brand new Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2), left the Line little choice but to sell its portion of the RMS Queen Elizabeth to the highest bidder and recoup its mounting losses. Several bidders came and went without a sale and Cunard threatened to repossess and sail the ship back to Southhampton for scrapping if the partners didn't buy them out. The partners still believed the ship profitable. Armed with additional investors and funds, they reorganized the company into Queen Ltd. and purchased Cunard's portion for $8.6 million. RMS Queen Elizabeth had finally left Cunard's ownership, 29 years after she was built.
  Now the plan was to again convert the ship into a floating hotel with convention center rooms, a yacht club and a marina. The owners' goal was to have the ship moved to her permanent home by June of 1970. One of the first cost cutting measures Queen Ltd. did was layoff all 118 officers and crew that were maintaining the RMS Queen Elizabeth. They instead hired a small local staff to run the ship's power generation efforts and tend to maintenance.
  The inexperience of the tiny staff to maintain such a massive ship became apparent in the coming months. Many of the ship's lower decks were left completely unattended allowing for things to go wrong and troublemakers to take advantage. In August 1969, a mentally disturbed security guard attempted to start several fires below decks. In October another electrical fire started and was quickly extinguished by staff before the fire department was alerted.
  Eleven days after that, the Port Everglades Fire Chief made a surprise inspection of the RMS Queen Elizabeth during one of her public tour days. There he found over 2,000 tourists wandering nearly every deck of the ship unsupervised. When he asked staff members about fire prevention and evacuation procedures, he found there were none in place. RMS Queen Elizabeth was henceforth declared an extreme fire hazard and ordered closed indefinitely until Queen Ltd. created safety procedures for tourists and addressed a total lack of fire safety.
  This was financially devastating, the final deathblow. While Queen Ltd. did bring the ship up to the new safety standards, the company never recovered financially. A last ditch attempt to take the company public in January 1970 collapsed when the US economy declined that year. The ship remained open until May 1970 and the company filed for bankruptcy. Finally out of money, Queen Ltd was liquidated and the ship herself went up for auction.
  Chinese millionaire C.Y. Tung got wind of the RMS Queen Elizabeth's auction and purchased the ship for just over $3 million. His plan was to convert the ship into a floating university. Upon purchasing the ship, Tung renamed her the Seawise University and began making preparations to sail her to Hong Kong.
  Intended to be both a floating university and luxury cruise ship, the RMS Queen Elizabeth was completely stripped down. The ship's interiors were modernized, equipment and safety systems updated. The ship was scheduled to sail to Japan for final outfitting and her maiden voyage as Seawise University but this would never happen.
  The cause of which has been never been officially determined but in the afternoon of January 9, 1972 five separate fires broke out onboard the former RMS Queen Elizabeth. The fire protection system had not yet been completed so there was nothing to fight the blaze with until fireboats arrived. The flames quickly spread and within hours, the entire ship was engulfed. The water the fire boats sprayed on the ship to fight the blaze sent her listing to the bottom of the shallow Hong Kong harbor, ending her career forever.
  Once the flames died away, all that remained of the RMS Queen Elizabeth was a half sunken hulk of twisted, melted steel. Within the next several months, the ship would sit, rusting while the insurance company sought scrapped bids.
  Over 40% of the ship, containing the keel and boilers was left to rot on the bottom of the harbor. They would remain there until the 1990s when land reclamation efforts forever buried the wreckage in millions of tons of rock and concrete.
  RMS Queen Elizabeth would remain the world's largest passenger shipwreck for more than 30 years until the 2012 sinking of the Costa Concordia in Tuscany.
  I grew up in the 1960s in Netley, alongside Southampton Water just outside the city limits of Southampton. Both the Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, together with SS United States and SS France were seen every couple of weeks, in fact as kids we could sometimes watch them go past as we were having lunch at home!
  In September 1968, shortly before RMS Queen Elizabeth was retired, my father took me to visit the liner in port in Southampton. It seems incredible now, but there was no security, and we were allowed to roam freely around all areas the ship for several hours - and even enjoyed some tea in one of the restaurants!
  I also enjoyed a trip with dad to visit the USS Little Rock when she visited Southampton a couple of years earlier in September 1966 - a ship that is happily still with us thanks to the efforts of the good people of the Buffalo Naval & Military Park.
  I actually sailed as a child with my parents and siblings in November 1963 to Nassau for a Thanksgiving Cruise. We left NYC on Nov. 23rd. My parents decided that with the assasination of JFK we should still go. We had a great time and we even saw the happenings in D.C. while on the ship. It was a beautiful ship and had a wonderful staff. There was plenty for everyone to do day and night!
  As an undergrad 1957-58 at UC Santa Barbara, I returned to New York on the Queen Elizabeth after five months traveling in Europe. We sailed into NY harbor at 12:01 am on my 21st birthday 27 Jan 1958.
  In 1964, after a year teaching math in Switzerland, our family of four sailed from Cherbourg, France to NY on the Queen Mary. Our 'new' VW van was in the hold, ready to drive Route 66 home to Santa Barbara.