Ahead of the 80th anniversary of the maiden voyage of RMS Queen Mary, built at John Browns in Clydebank, we asked readers to share with us their memories of sailing on the great Cunard liner and you did not disappoint. Emails and calls came in from across Scotland and as far afield as America and Australia. Here are some of their stories ...

THEY met 49 years ago but the time evidently has not diminished the everlasting bond between Ellen and Richard Stalley.

Giggling like teenagers the happy couple recount the tale of how they met: on board the majestic RMS Queen Mary Cunard liner sailing from New York to Southampton.

It couldn't have been a more romantic setting.

Both aged 23, Ellen, who worked in social services in Ohio, was going on holiday, on a once-in-a-lifetime a tour of Europe while Oxford graduate Richard was coming home after a year on a Fulbright scholarship at Harvard.

They were travelling in third class, or tourist class as it was known on the ship, to save money, and first met in the cinema, a multi-purpose public room filled with rows of chairs that couldn't have been more different from the glamorous image most people have of the great ship.

"We left New York late in the afternoon and met the following day, within 24 hours of setting sail," remembers Richard, 72, retired professor of psychology at the University of Glasgow.

"We didn't spend a lot of time exploring the ship because we just wanted to be together.

"For me it was very accidental coming home on the Queen Mary. I had been counting out my money to figure out how long I could hang on in America and originally I planned to come back on the Sylvania.

"Then I recalculated and decided I could spend a few more days in America and switch to the Queen Mary."

The couple live in Jordanhill, Glasgow, where they can see the Titan Crane and the site of the former John Brown shipyard at Clydebank, where the Queen Mary was built more than 80 years ago, from their back garden.

Looking through photographs of their first few days together and remembering their voyage, Ellen explains that she refused to travel on a package tour and ended up making the trip with another American girl, with a holiday planned visiting England, Holland, Germany, Italy and France, before flying back to the Midwest from Paris.

She thought this would be her only trip to Europe. Life worked out rather differently.

"There was limited entertainment on board because we were in tourist class. There was a bar where they had music and you could dance," she says.

"It was too cold to play any kind of games on the deck. You didn't want to sit out there and most people stayed inside. You can see in one picture the wind is blowing our hair.

"Although we were both in tourist class, I was one level up from Richard. He was in the bottom of the tourist class where there weren't any portholes in the cabins. He was below the waterline.

" You didn't have your own bathroom or toilet, you had to walk down the hall. And there were bunkbeds in the cabin. It wasn't like a luxury cruise. If you jumped out of the top bunk, which I was in, you could nearly hit the wall."

The dress codes of first class didn't apply in tourist class. Though Ellen did get a peek at life on the upper decks when she lost her way on the ship one day.

"First class was very posh. Richard never saw first class but I did. He arranged to meet me at the swimming pool and I got lost because I have no navigational abilities at all," she laughs.

" I found my way to the first class pool but he wasn't there, obviously he went to the proper swimming pool.

"I remember somebody was trying to chat me up and took me through first class so I saw the public rooms. It was very luxurious, quite different from the part of the ship we were in."

The young lovebirds made the most of their time together on the five-day Atlantic crossing.

"I had schemed to go to London with Ellen when we arrived in England," says Richard. "I wasn't expecting my parents to come down from Lincolnshire to meet the ship docking at Southampton.

"They saw my face fall and knew that something was wrong."

Ellen and Richard were forced to go their separate ways but not before exchanging addresses. They wrote regularly, and Ellen returned to England on holiday the following year when Richard was back at Oxford.

They married in the US in August 1969 and flew to Glasgow the following month to set up home, where Richard had started working at the university. Ellen picked up her career in social work after a period of study and life carried on.

Two children and one grandchild later, they still look back with fondness and affection on the great Queen.

"We have a soft spot for the ship," says Richard.

Ellen adds: "When we look at the model at the Riverside Museum and we're with somebody we always say, 'That's the ship we were on.'"

Mae McCulloch looks back on her trip on the Queen Mary as one of the most exciting periods of her life.

In 1953 the 21-year-old from West Virginia had just married Glaswegian Robert and they were heading to Scotland to start married life together.

The couple met two years previously at a convention in London and after a romance carried out by letter across the Atlantic their fate was sealed.

Travelling in tourist class, or second class, unfortunately Mae didn't get much of an opportunity to experience the ship's unique facilities.

"It didn't matter to me what class we were travelling in or how the ship looked because I was seasick the whole journey, from a few hours out of New York to coming into the English Channel," she says.

"I think I was probably lucky to get two meals. It wasn't allowed to take food to the cabins but one kind steward brought me a dessert, like a crème brulee, and it was the best thing I ever tasted in my life."

She adds of the December voyage: "The ship had no stabilisers so it just rolled and you thought it wasn't going to come back again."

Robert, who died seven years ago, was left on his own to explore the ship and met Dr Vogel of Switzerland, of Vogel health loaf fame.

"Boarding in New York was exciting, it was just amazing, the grand scale of it all. That was the first big ship I was on. It was so high," marvels Mae.

They set up home in Springburn and then moved to North Kelvinside where they had two girls and Robert worked as a train driver while Mae did secretarial work at the University of Glasgow.

She still has framed photographs on the wall at home of that unforgettable – in more ways than one – journey.

Did you sail on the Queen Mary? Tell us you story by emailing angela.mcmanus@eveningtimes.co.uk or calling 0141 302 7039.