The 'Queen Mary', then known as 'Hull Number 534', had been halted between 1931 and 1934 due to the Great Depression of the 1930s, but the merger of Cunard and White Star Line and a nine-and-a-half million pound government loan saved the vessel. When the work was resumed she was a rusty-red in colour, in the photograph showing her in dry docks been transformed, scarlet below the water-level and pale grey above. In the summer of 1934, she was still enginless, and the inside was just vast empty rooms awaiting the work of skilled carpenters, eletricians and plumbers ready for the launch in September.