ABSTRACT
I first read Einstein’s wonderful book on relativity in the library of the ocean-liner, the Queen Elizabeth. This was in the middle of the war, in 1943, when she was a troop ship, a vital lifeline linking England with America. This particular crossing to New York, in mid-winter, was not entirely uneventful. There was a violent storm: several of the ship’s boats were smashed by the waves breaking over her decks and some of our chaps were injured on the companionways, for the bow and stern of the ship moved up and down sickeningly over some 50 feet, so that one was alternately immensely heavy and then almost weightless. The ship carried a large gun on her stern, which may have had some effect; but she was driving through the massive waves of the gale at her full speed, which she would never do in peacetime, and she zig-zagged with violent turns to make attack more difficult. Too fast for convoy protection, she was alone and unprotected on the Atlantic run.
