NEARLY CAPSIZED

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 6, 2 October 1943, Page 5

NEARLY CAPSIZED

When The Queen Mary Had

Five Inches To Spare

LONDON, September 30. Though it is .common knowledge, that the liner Queen Mary has been playing a most important role as a troop transport during the war, the extent of her travels only now can be disclosed. She played perhaps the biggest individual part in saving the situation at El Alamein in the summer of 1942. In the same year she transported thousands ot American soldiers. Once she steamed right through a pack of submarines which was estimated to number 25, and not one of them had time to get a torpedo trained on her. Once she went out from England with men and stores representing half a fully-equipped division. One passage from England round the Cape mid north to Suez, 12,000 miles, was made in a few weeks. She was one of the most marked ships in the world,.and Axis agents everywhere have done their best to warn the enemy navies of her movements. Once the German pocket battleship Lutzow was specially dispatched to the Atlantic to destroy her. Last winter, when fully laden witn American troops, the Queen Mary ran into a terrific gale, and a giant wave swept her broadside. She listed till her upper decks ..were awash. Officers afterward said that, they were convinced that she could never right herself. Her safety depended on five inches. Had she gone those live inches further the Queen Mary would have been no more.