Either way, I was fascinated recently to learn of the real-life inspiration to one of Hollywood's first great disaster epics.

It was 1972 movie, The Poseidon Adventure, starring Gene Hackman headlining an all-star cast. An oldie, but a goodie which collected two Oscars soon after its release.

For those not of a nautical bent, Poseidon is the Greek god of the sea.

All very appropriate, considering the celluloid tale concerns a big "unsinkable" ocean liner of the same name overturned by a tsunami, a terrifying ordeal for startled passengers and crew soon desperately fighting to survive.

Trapped inside an upended giant ship, in darkness, is the stuff of nightmares, but it could never really happen, or could it?

It's an unlikely scenario, but potentially it could.

Novelist Paul Gallico was inspired to pen the tale after once travelling on an iconic British ship, RMS Queen Mary, the original grand ocean liner. While having breakfast, he felt the vessel shudder when it was hit by a rogue wave.

After some research, a startled Gallico realised his disaster idea was very plausible. For the same legendary liner, transformed in an enormous troopship known as the Grey Ghost in WWII, had been unexpectedly hit once before by a freak, giant wave.

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The 83,000 ton liner almost rolled over then from the sudden impact of the wall of water on her robust, riveted steel hull. Later it was estimated that had the ship tilted only another five inches (12.7cms) it would have capsized.

It's an unsettling thought, considering that during the war the converted, camouflaged luxury liner zigzagged the Atlantic carrying up to 16,000 troops per voyage. She used stealth and her high speed (of 30 knots) to outrun German U-boats.

So, the irony today is that this majestic, surviving greyhound of the sea - long retired - now faces the very real risk of sinking mere metres away from dry land.

Since 1967, the legendary Cunard liner Queen Mary has been permanently docked at Long Beach, California, as a floating hotel and convention centre inside a rock wall jetty.

Launched in 1934, for three years the five-storey tall Queen Mary was the grandest ocean liner in the world, carrying Hollywood celebrities and royalty, like the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

Then only last month, the Los Angeles Times reported the historic tourist attraction needed $23 million in immediate repairs to prevent her potentially capsizing beside her berth.

That comes on top of a 2017 study warning the passenger ship needed as much as $289 million worth of renovation to keep parts of the ship from flooding. The company which had held the site lease filed for bankruptcy in January.

The Disney corporation had even tried in 1990 to incorporate the retired liner in a $3 billion seas-themed amusement park, but that didn't eventuate.

The Queen Mary's desperate plight is very sad, considering she once carried a reported 2.2million passengers in peacetime and 810,000 military personnel in WWII.

Just as interesting is the persistent rumour that the Queen Mary once visited Port Stephens in wartime. But more of that yarn in a moment.

Longer, larger, heavier and faster than Titanic, another legendary vessel, RMS Queen Mary fell victim to changing times, particularly jet travel. And yet, the old Queen is credited with attracting about 1.5million visitors a year (pre-COVID), or 50 million tourists since she dropped her anchor for the last time in Southern California.

People come on board to be awe-struck by this glorious relic from the past some 1019 foot long (310.5 metres) and revel in the ship statistics, such as her plates being held together by 10 million rivets.

Some other visitors are just dying to get onboard for the popular 'haunted encounters' tour. After all, some 600 ghosts are claimed to roam its passageways. Or maybe visitors just want to gawk at the Lego replica Queen Mary inside made of 250,000 bricks.

Over the years numerous TV series have been filmed onboard the impressive, if ageing vessel, which has also taken a star role in many movies.

To me though, the most intriguing use of the ocean behemoth was by Ridley Gladiator Scott in a classy, if underrated, 1987 crime thriller, Someone To Watch Over Me.

The film hinges on a woman witnessing a murder in a Manhattan nightclub disco. To capture the right mood, director Scott filmed scenes in the Queen Mary's atmospheric indoor pool, but with a huge difference.

Scott had the swimming pool drained, then lit from beneath after covering it with a plexiglass floor so that it doubled for an art gallery in the bowels of a New York art deco building.

And now for the burning question, did the original Queen Mary ever visit Port Stephens as a troopship? Well no, as It all seems highly unlikely, impossible even. She needed at least a 38 foot (11.6 metres) draught to safely operate.

Shallow harbour depths within the port would have prohibited entry, let alone leaving the former transatlantic liner any room to manoeuvre.

Anyway, why visit the Bay when there was Sydney Harbour or the well-fortified, deep water naval base at Jervis Bay on the South Coast? The most likely candidate for the biggest ship to ever enter Port Stephens in wartime would be the disguised former passenger liner Manoora, weighing in though at only 10,856 tons. And she did visit there four times.

Back at Long Beach, California, a dockside companion from 1980 for about 20 years was a true aviation icon. Housed in a dome near Queen Mary was the biggest flying boat ever built. This spectacular H-4 Hercules, Spruce Goose, was the brainchild of eccentric mogul Howard Hughes whose later claim to fame was as the front man for the CIA's audacious plan to lift a sunken Russian submarine from the ocean depths.

His Spruce Goose (made almost entirely of birch, really) was the largest wooden airplane ever constructed, six times larger than anything comparable.

The eight-engine aircraft with a wingspan of almost 312ft (95m) flew only once, on November 2, 1947 but for one mile at only an altitude of 70ft (21m).

To save face, Hughes retired his creation, forever. From 1947 until his death in 1976, Hughes kept his costly folly ready for flight in a climate-controlled hangar for the staggering sum then of $US1 million a year.

Since 2001, however, this gigantic white elephant has been in an aviation museum in McMinnville, Oregon.

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