Queen Mary 2, world's biggest passenger ship, leaves French shipyard

The world's biggest passenger liner, the Queen 
Mary 2, leaves its French shipyard for Southampton, 
22 December 2003. AFP PHOTO FRED TANNEAU

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

SAINT-NAZAIRE, France, (AFP): The Queen Mary 2, the world's biggest passenger liner, was given a low-key send-off on Monday as it left its French shipyard, just five weeks after 15 people died in an accident during the final days of its fit-out.

The 1,132-foot long vessel, which was built over the last two years at a cost of 800 million dollars, was pulled out to sea by tug-boat while tens of thousands of people bade farewell from the shore.

A British maritime flag flew from its deck for the first time, following a handing-over ceremony earlier in the day during which its owner, Cunard, officially took possession of its new flagship to the sound of an orchestra playing the French and British national anthems.

"The ship is absolutely breathtaking," Cunard's chairwoman Pamela Conover said.

After a brief journey to Spain, to get the crew accustomed to navigating its 150,000-tonne bulk, the QM2 will head to its homeport of Southampton in southern England, where Britain's Queen Elizabeth II will formally name it in a ceremony on January 8.

It will then leave on its sold-out maiden voyage, to Florida in the United States, with passengers paying from $1,500 to more than $35,000 for their cabins and access to the top-of-the-range features, including a 1,000-seat theatre, a ballroom and five swimming pools.

During the months of February, March, May, June, November and December 2004, the QM2 has a variety of sailings focusing on the Caribbean. 

QM2's first season of southerly cruising will take her to the Caribbean's Virgin Islands, the Windward and Leeward Islands in the Lower Antilles, Panama's Caribbean coast, the Netherlands Antilles and, on two back-to-back voyages, to South America to celebrate Carnival in Rio.

Built by the French engineering group Alstom to replace the ageing Queen Elizabeth 2 as the pride of Cunard's cruise-ship fleet, the QM2 aims to provide the ultimate in commercial seagoing luxury.

Able to accommodate 2,620 passengers and 1,253 crew, it contains a planetarium, a virtual-reality golf drive, a kennel for pampered pets, a casino, several bars and restaurants, a gym and artwork estimated at five million dollars.

Cunard, a British subsidiary of the US group Carnival Corporation, boasts that the vessel is "the largest, longest, tallest, greatest, widest, and grandest ocean liner in the world."

It is about 30 feet longer than the United States' biggest aircraft carrier, and nearly a quarter longer than the Titanic, the ill-fated ship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1912 after being launched as the biggest luxury liner of its time.

The QM2's arrival supplants the record of the Norway as the world's biggest ocean-going liner.

The ship is called the Queen Mary 2 with the number 2 rather than the Roman numerals II because it refers to a ship and not the monarch, Cunard points out, adding that the liner is taking to the ocean nearly seven decades after its transatlantic predecessor, the Queen Mary, first entered service.

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