It’s fair to say the RMS Queen Mary was what the Titanic could have been. A grand, luxurious ship, outfitted with state of the art amenities, designed to not only carry passengers from England to New York, but to do it in style. How many other ship maiden voyages had a poem dedicated to them? “Hearts will glow with admiration/When our new liner leaves the quay/And the name, loved by the nation/Will give her charm and dignity” — that one, composed by popular musician Horatio Nicholls, was the kind of tribute given to the ship before it had even left port.

On this day, May 27, in 1936, the RMS Queen Mary left Southampton-Cherbourg en route to New York, her massive engines churning out 30 knots of speed, unprecedented for a ship of that size. If not for a fog bank during the voyage, she could have easily broken some world records.

The Queen Mary’s fate would not be as luxury liner, however. At the outbreak of WW II, all unnecessary luxuries were removed and a complement of machine guns and anti-aircraft cannons were installed as the ship was turned into a troop transport. It would travel everywhere, from the Suez to Australia, and towards the final years of the war serve as a ferry for American soldiers redeploying from the Atlantic to the Far East.