The next day, work began on converting the luxury liner into a vessel of war. All of her luxurious interior was gutted, even the superb woodwork being removed.

¿ Piers Plowman and Stephen Card, Queen of Bermuda and the Furness Bermuda Line

In the early 1930s, the residents of Bermuda were introduced to two new forms of transportation, the one perhaps mundane but most useful, the other possibly one of the most luxurious passenger liners ever built and an essential link between the island and New York, then as now, Bermuda's premier travel hub.

On land, the Bermuda Railway Company's "Rattle and Shake" began its Somerset to St. George's runs, an alternate method of travel to the bicycle, horse, or by foot. On the high seas, the sumptuous Queen of Bermuda crossed the Gulf Stream for the first time, to join her sister ship, the Monarch of Bermuda, in providing the island with the finest in floating transportation to and from the East Coast.

A brochure by the Furness Bermuda Line advertised the attractions of the Monarch and Queen, its "royal super-liners", perhaps ushering in the condition that prevails today whereby the ship, and not the place, is the destination.

"For luxurious comfort, for last-word modernity, for perfect security and stability, these two great liners are the unquestioned rulers of the sea-trail to Bermuda. The Furness Line bridged that two-day voyage to the 'blessed isles' with every boon of modern travel when they launched these two superb cruise ships. There are many sparkling innovations on the Queen of Bermuda and the Monarch of Bermuda, such as cocktail bars, grand swimming pools hand in glove with the most complete gyms afloat, gay cafes for nightlight, tea verandahs for sipping something festive while you watch the deck tennis."

One wonders if these floating Xanadus would have improved Mark Twain's humour that produced his memorable statement that Bermuda was Paradise, but you had to travel through Hell to get there.

The Queen first arrived in Bermuda on March 9, 1933 and thereafter was a constant visitor into late August 1939, when the guns of war were put on battle stations in Britain. Although known with the Monarch as the "Millionaires' Ships", many Bermudians of ordinary ilk travelled back and forth on these vessels for business, school and pleasure. They were, after all, the only way for most passengers to go.

That way of life came to an end with the beginning of war in early September 1939 and the end of the conflict would bring major changes in Bermuda's transportation systems. The railway would be replaced by the motorcar and shipping would be radically affected by airliner travel. The war would transform the Queen itself and thereafter its former glory could not be replaced, as many of the luxurious accents were missing.

In mid-September, the Queen arrived at Belfast in Northern Ireland and its reduction to an Armed Merchant Cruiser, later troop carrier, proceeded apace. A great part of its luxurious decoration came from the exotic woods, used throughout the vessel, even in "steerage". That millwork was catalogued, stripped out and placed into storage for reinstallation after the war.

Nine guns were emplaced, as well as two depth charge chutes. The first duty of the Queen was in towing anti-torpedo nets for tests by the Admiralty. Real war duty came in February 1940, when the Queen was added to the South Atlantic Command, with patrols in that ocean and later in the Antarctic. In the latter, the German raider Pinquin was raising havoc with the Norwegian whaling fleet, and the Queen spent several months guarding those ships.

Other duties followed and by May 1943, the Queen had steamed 178,000 miles as an Armed Merchant Cruiser. The ship was then converted to a troop carrier and was released from war service in April 1947, having put 192,000 miles astern in that duty, moving some 97,000 soldiers. Another refit followed and on February 14, 1949, the Queen of Bermuda returned to a great welcome in Hamilton Harbour, minus her exotic millwork.

Two stories emerge, one having it that the Queen was reported sunk and as part of the propaganda, a public auction was held to sell the timberwork held at Belfast. The other states that the ship would be unusable after the war and therefore it was best to sell off its assets in storage.

The constant of the two is that all the exotic timber was sold in 1943 and Belfast became a centre for cabinet making, executed in the finest and rare woods that once gave the Queen of Bermuda its sumptuous decor.

Dr. Aubrey Brown was a young apprentice who participated in the stripping of the Queen in late 1939 and that event determined the course of his life in the field of woodworking. It was a career that would take him to exotic lands where some of the timbers originated and in each place, he set up his own workshop and left behind fine furniture that he and his students created.

In the early 1990s, the Queen of Bermuda again crossed his bow, when he made an elaborate development of the recently revived art of "Intarsia", which is the making of mosaics in wood rather than ceramics. Instead of using the same timber, stained to give different hues, Dr. Brown used different coloured exotic timbers, some of the pieces being the last of his cache, collected as a young cabinetmaker, of the wood taken from the Queen in her Belfast conversion to an Armed Merchant Cruiser.

He took the gold medal at the 1992 Woodworker Show for his magnificent interpretation of the "The Hidden Forest" by Judy Roberts, the doyen of the Intarsia rebirth in the United States.

Describing the original contact with the timbers of the Queen, Dr. Brown wrote: "These young enthusiastic woodworkers were lovers handling what they adored".

Like many mariners who sailed with her and Bermudians who knew her well, Dr. Brown's passion for the Queen of Bermuda has permeated his entire life, in his case through an accident of war.

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Dr. Edward Harris, MBE, JP, FSA, Bermudian, is the Executive Director of the Bermuda Maritime Museum. Comments can be sent to drharrislogic.bm or by telephone to 799-5480.