Commodore and Christopher

The morning the 81,235-ton Queen Mary sailed into New York Bay last week with day breaking behind her, no hoarse flurry of twelve tugs fumed out to ease her into her mid-Manhattan berth. For three days the harbor's 300 tugs had been tied up by a strike of 2,000 tug hands, seeking $5 to $10 more a month than the present scale of $3.63 to $5 daily brings them. Last word from Longshore Tsar Joseph Patrick Ryan had been that the Queen Mary would be left standing in the harbor, "a blow to the prestige of the port."

What happened when the Queen Mary came abreast of her berth at West 50th Street was no blow to the prestige of the port, but it was a mighty confirmation of the prestige of British seamanship. At 6:10 a. m. the 1,018-ft. ship lay in mid stream. Wind was down, tide was slack. Ten minutes later her 118-ft. beam was dead-centred in the 400-ft. slip between the Cunard and Italian Line piers. From the fo'c'sle head whistled two long, light heaving lines attached to ten-inch hawsers. Two men in a rowboat fished the light lines out, rowed them to the Cunard pier. Soon rhythmically functioning stevedore crews had the ship's main hawsers fast. Over board went more heaving lines, back & forth skipped the rowboat, and at 6:44 the Queen Mary was snug in her berth, gang planks in position to land her 1,602 passengers. No skipper had ever docked so large a vessel unaided.

Commodore Robert Beaufin Irving, the ship's greying, trained-in-sail skipper, gave credit where credit seemed due--to the balmy weather and to St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers. No Roman Catholic, but a stanch Covenanter, Commodore Irving totes two St. Christophers, one a statue given him by a Galway pilot, the other a medal from a passenger. Swore he: "I spun that medal around and said, 'Well, St. Chris, what about it?' He said, 'Go to it.' " Next day sheepish operators and tug hands came to a hasty agreement. Said chagrined Tsar Ryan: "St. Christopher ought to be made to join the union."

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