#hsitory

The Esteban Echeverría Public Library

Four Hoplites of the apocalypse, choose your fighter, etc etc

this was a fun little bit of commission work, thank you for our support <3

May 27th 1936 saw the maiden voyage of liner Queen Mary.

According to legend while the Cunard-White Star Line’s new Hull Number 534 was under construction at the John Brown and Company’s shipworks on the Clyde no women were allowed anywhere near it in case a feminine presence should distract a male worker from a delicate task at a critical moment. There were in fact many problems, but in the end the new vessel was formally launched with all proper ceremony in pouring rain on September 26th, 1934, it would be two years before she would actually be able to take passengers.

Another legend has it that Cunard wanted to name the ship Victoria, but after asking the King George V for permission to name the ship “after Britain’s greatest queen”, he replied that his wife would be delighted. The king died shortly before the ship’s maiden voyage.

By May 1936 she was at last in Southampton ready for her maiden voyage to Cherbourg and then across the Atlantic. Supplies loaded included 50,000 lbs of fresh meat, 50,000 eggs, 14,500 bottles of wine and 25,000 packets of cigarettes.

Excited crowds watched the ship leave, a band played and an armada of vessels escorted her out of Southampton harbour. Fog prevented any hope of an Atlantic passage in record time and the ship was found to roll alarmingly and require far more handrails. At its worst, apparently, you could walk along a corridor with one foot on the wall.

The Queen Mary reached New York harbour on the morning of June 1st. Admiring crowds watched her make her way to her berth as bands played her in and many paid a dollar to charity to see round her. Cunard-White Star’s publicity department made much play of the approving comments from American publications: ‘A new peak in luxury at sea’ (New York Times); ‘Just about the most beautiful ship afloat’ (The New Yorker); ‘Regal a ship as ever ruled the waves’ (New York American). In August the Queen Mary took the coveted ‘blue riband’ of the Atlantic with a crossing in record time and the ensuing rivalry between her and the French Normandie would be constantly in the news for the rest of the decade.

The Queen Mary is now berthed at Long Beach California and it costs from about $140 for a nights stay, a tour of the ship cost from $35.

#9. William Henry Harrison (pneumonia, 1841)

#12. Zachary Taylor (indigestion, 1850)

#16. Abraham Lincoln (assassination, 1865)

#20. James A. Garfield (assassination, 1881)

#25. William McKinley (assassination, 1901)

#29. Warren G. Harding (heart attack, 1923)

#32. Franklin D. Roosevelt (aneurysm, 1945)

#35. John F. Kennedy (assassination, 1963)

I cannot for the life of me draw a halfway decent caricature of JFK. Here are a handful of my failed attempts.