First comes the launching, followed by the fitting out and the maiden voyage, in this case of Queen Mary. Launched in 1934, with her initial voyage in 1936, her keel was laid two months after Rostron’s final voyage in November 1930. She was thus not of his era, but instead was Cunard’s decisive answer to a new generation of transatlantic challengers. However Rostron would have been all too familiar with the scenery, as well as the hazards, of her Hudson River arrival that appears at the end of this excerpt.