Wednesday 1st October 2025

South Lawn Hotel. Milford Road, Milford on Sea, SO41 0RF

Monthly Meeting

Stephen Hoadley is an experienced public speaker having spent 20 years as a museum curator and academic, specialising in modern history.  Last year he delighted us with his talk on the history of domestic appliances.

Today's talk is about the origins of the Queen Mary, the traumatic story of its construction during the great Depression, its launch on a very wet day in 1934, through to its triumphant maiden voyage from Southampton in 1936.  We'll learn who travelled on the Queen Mary, what it cost, and what did the passengers eat.  Intriguingly we'll learn what she left Southampton with thousands of, of which almost every single one had been stolen when she reached New York.