Since we arrived around nine in the morning, we had some time to kill; crew boarding didn’t begin until noon. Morning duties and shift changes were still underway on board. Knowing that guests would be disembarking until half-past ten, I took advantage of this waiting period to scout the port, to poke around and see what lay where. The disembarkation and embarkation operation was in full swing. A massive queue snaked outside, where new guests patiently waited for their predecessors to vacate the vessel so they could slowly take their places. I bypassed the queue and headed toward a ship I had spotted from the bus earlier. From a distance, it seemed odd, archaic compared to modern vessels. It boasted massive funnels and looked like a steamship from a bygone era. It bore a striking resemblance to the Titanic. The three large smokestacks were the main association leading to that conclusion.

I know, I know – I always seem to circle back to the Titanic. But when you work in this industry, such comparisons impose themselves naturally. As I got closer, I could verify that my instinct was spot on. Docked there was, no less, the Queen Mary!!!

A historic vessel of the twentieth century and one of the premier tourist attractions of Los Angeles. It was a genuinely splendid surprise. Today, it serves as a floating hotel hosting tourists from all over the world. It became operational in the early twentieth century. After the Titanic tragedy, she was intended as a balm for the wound opened by that disaster. At the time, she was the largest and most luxurious ship in the world, one on which the Queen herself sailed. During World War II, she saw active service, her decks fitted with military equipment and an array of weaponry. Today, however, the Queen Mary is most famous for ghost stories. There are even books describing numerous sightings and unexplained phenomena that allegedly occurred on the ship during her years of service at sea. Whether truth or fiction, savvy Americans maximize every whisper and tall tale to turn a profit in the modern age.

The discovery of this ship in our immediate vicinity thrilled me. One of the great attractions was situated literally a hundred meters from where my own ship was docked. It was an opportunity I would absolutely have to seize. I lingered there for a while, taking in as much as I could. I was just about ready to head back to the crew assembly point when I caught a detail out of the corner of my eye that I had nearly missed. Literally in front of the Queen Mary, in her “front yard,” so to speak, lay a real submarine!? I was stunned that I had almost overlooked such a thing. It’s not exactly that a submarine is small or inconspicuous, but when something is the furthest thing from your mind, it is entirely possible to look right past it. I walked back to inspect it more closely. It was indeed a submarine, and according to the placards outside, it was the “Russian Scorpion”, covered in Russian and Soviet markings.

While I had heard and known something about the Queen Mary, I knew absolutely nothing about this submarine. It was yet another surprise, and yet another massive reason to visit this place as soon as I could. For a little stroll I had merely planned to kill time, I had discovered a great deal.