Queen Mary 2 on way to New York

By James Barron
The New York Times

MICHEL EULER / AP The Queen Mary 2, the world's largest and most expensive passenger ship, is escorted by a French Navy vessel, seen in background at left, and by tugboats, as it enters the port of Cherbourg, Normandy.

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NEW YORK — A queen does not have to live by everyday rules, especially a queen whose, um, measurements exceed those of famous ancestors.

The queen in question is the new Queen Mary 2, the 1,132-foot-long Cunard liner. The ship's maiden westbound transatlantic crossing to New York this week has steamship aficionados longing for the days when crossing the Atlantic took days, not hours, and when ships were as stylish as the passengers. Dowdy freighters and impersonal container ships the grand old ocean liners were not.

"This is like the second coming for steamship buffs," said William Miller, author of 60 books on ships and the adjunct curator of the ocean-liner collection at the South Street Seaport Museum. "It's almost mind-boggling, a liner of this size arriving in New York."

The Queen Mary 2 is the longest, tallest, widest and heaviest nonmilitary vessel in history. That includes the ship's famous relatives, the original Queen Mary (now a hotel by the docks in Long Beach, Calif.) and the Queen Elizabeth 2.

QM2 by the numbers Cost: $800 million Length: 1,132 feet, 86 feet longer than the Chrysler Building is tall Height: 236 feet Weight: 151,400 tons, about as much as 390 fully loaded 747s Decks: 17 Crew: 1,253 Elevators: 22 Staterooms/suites: 999 Bars/clubs: 14 Restaurants: 6 Outdoor swimming pools: 5 — The New York Times

The Queen Mary 2 also is the most expensive ship in the world, both to build and to board. It cost $800 million, and accommodations range from $1,869 for a cabin to $27,499 for what the Cunard Line calls a "grand duplex."

Miller added more superlatives: It is the most celebrated ship of its time, the most publicized ship of its time, the most anxiously awaited ship of its time. "I was getting tired last year, hearing another rivet had been put in the hull or some such, but everybody was on the edge of their seat," he said.

Being the world's longest ship — 86 feet longer than the Chrysler Building is tall — has its headaches, though. When the Queen Mary 2 docks in Manhattan early Thursday after a six-day voyage from Southhampton, England, it will be too long for the pier. David Gevanthor, a Cunard vice president, joked that the Queen Mary 2 will be partly in New Jersey because it will extend more than 100 feet beyond its Passenger Ship Terminal berth.

The last time New York welcomed a too-long ship, the city lengthened its too-short pier. The year was 1911; the ship was the Olympic, and carpenters added 75 feet of wood, Miller said. This time, a tugboat will patrol the Hudson River to keep other vessels at a distance as the Queen Mary 2 comes and goes.

That is, assuming the Queen Mary 2 makes it under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. If the Queen Mary 2 were to sail under at high tide, the clearance would be 13 feet. Indeed, the bridge influenced the shape of the ship. "It looks squat and a little bit dumpy, and that's because of the Verrazano," Miller said. "The funnel is flatter than it should be." From its keel to its black-and-red funnel, the ship is 236 feet tall.

Capt. Paul Wright, who was at the helm last month when the Queen Mary 2 arrived in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., was not worried about scraping the Verrazano or about docking in New York. From the ship's bridge, a wide room with plate-glass windows where navigation charts appear on flat-screen computer monitors and the ship's moves are controlled with joysticks, he said that the QM2 handled better than the QE2.

"The QE2 needs good powerful tugs to bring her in, depending on the tide," Wright said. "This one, we will have a tug standing by for the first time, but she would be quite capable of maneuvering in on her own."

If the weather is bad and the water is rough, there always are the bow thrusters, three large propellers. "We can literally make the ship move sideways," he said.

If the bow thrusters can be switched on, that is. A malfunction in Lisbon last week delayed the ship's departure.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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