In September 1944, Churchill again embarked on the Queen Mary en route to the second Quebec conference. His private secretary, Jock Colville, described the meals on board as gargantuan in scale, epicurean in quality and a shaming contrast with the shortages at home. The weather was hot, so Churchill spent much of the time in his cabin reading the novels of Anthony Trollope or playing bezique. On his return home, again on the Queen Mary, his doctor, Lord Moran, recorded that he was in a sober mood. He gazed at the enemy submarines on a vast chart in the map room and asked the First Sea Lord how long it would take the Queen Mary to sink after she had been torpedoed. He was told that it would probably take several hours because the ship was divided into watertight compartments. Churchill was afraid, not of dying, but of being captured and so he arranged for a machine gun to be kept in his lifeboat.
Reprinted from History Today
