Thread: Three Seafaring Queens Spend a Day in New York

Three Seafaring Queens Spend a Day in New York
Henny Ray Abrams/Associated Press
Fireworks explode in the skies over the Queen Mary 2, left, as the Queen Victoria, right, moves into view as they sail out of New York Harbor, Sunday, Jan. 13, 2008. The two ships, plus the Queen Elizabeth 2, lined up in front of the Statue of Liberty, holding their positions for a few minutes as fireworks lit the sky, then they slowly moved across New York Harbor, the Queen Mary leading the other two. This is the only time the three Cunard Queen ships will ever meet.


By FERNANDA SANTOS
Published: January 14, 2008


Deborah D’Ambrosi can recite with ease the weight of each of the Queens — Elizabeth 2, Mary 2 and Victoria, which are among the world’s most luxurious ocean liners. And she came all the way from her landlocked hometown, Olney, Ill., on Sunday just to see “the three girls,” as she called them.


She watched as the liners sailed side by side through New York Harbor and past the Statue of Liberty, under a cascade of fireworks.
“It might be freezing tonight, but I get lots of warmth from this historic experience,” Ms. D’Ambrosi, 48, said as she stood in Battery Park City, a camera dangling from her wrist.


In the annals of maritime history, the Queens’ sailing was momentous. It was the first time in the 168-year history of the Cunard Line, the owner of the liners, that it had three ships named after British queens in the same port at the same time. The company arranged the ships’ schedules so that they departed from New York City ports simultaneously.
The Queens’ meeting, witnessed by thousands on shore and on board, will also be their last, company officials said.


“They are not programmed to meet in any other port,” Cunard’s president, Carol Marlow, said during an afternoon news conference at Pier 88 in Manhattan, with the docked Queen Victoria visible in background. “This is a spine-tingling time.”


The Queen Elizabeth 2, Cunard’s longest-serving ship, left Manhattan for its 26th and final around-the-world journey — a farewell tour that will usher in its retirement in November, when the liner will become a floating hotel in Dubai. The Queen Victoria, which came into service last month, embarked on its maiden world cruise. And the Queen Mary 2, the largest trans-Atlantic liner ever built, weighing about 151,400 gross tons, sailed to the Caribbean from the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal.


For 40 years, the Queen Elizabeth 2 ruled the trans-Atlantic, ferrying up to 1,778 passengers at a time between England and the United States. The Queen Mary 2, which carries up to 2,600 passengers, began traveling the same route in 2004, but in reverse: When the Queen Elizabeth 2 left its home port in Southampton, England, for Manhattan, the Queen Mary 2 would leave the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook for Southampton, said Peter Knego, co-editor of a Web site, maritimematters.com, devoted to the history of passenger ships.

“They would only meet in the Atlantic and were never in port together,” Mr. Knego said. “To have the two of them here, plus a third Queen, is truly momentous.”


It took Cunard two years to prepare for the occasion. The company had to plan each of the ship’s itineraries to make sure the vessels would converge in New York on the same day and to reserve space in the terminals to allow them to dock and depart at the same time.
The plans had to be approved by several agencies, including the New York Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Coast Guard and the city’s Economic Development Corporation. In addition, 4,000 workers had to be on hand to help thousands of passengers disembark and then usher new ones aboard, said Brian O’Connor, Cunard’s director of public relations.


The ships passed by the Statue of Liberty just after 8 p.m., with the Queen Mary 2 leading the way and the Queen Victoria second. Freezing rain was falling, but several hundred people remained at Battery Park to watch the ships and a 14-minute fireworks display.


There was one unexpected element: the rough weather over the Atlantic, which threatened to delay the arrival of the Queen Victoria and throw the day’s schedule into disarray. The Queen Victoria, which can carry 2,014 passengers, and the Queen Elizabeth 2, the world’s fastest passenger ship, left Southampton together on Jan. 6 and for the first part of their journey plowed through choppy seas and waves that swelled to 40 feet, passengers said.


“On the second day, we were quite bad, very seasick,” said Laura Browning, 51, of Manchester, England, who sailed to New York with her husband, Steve, aboard the Queen Victoria.

Brigid LeRiche, 52, who is from Bath, England, and was also on the Queen Victoria, said, “The crew distributed some tablets to those of us who felt sick. “We call them ‘joy riders’ in the U.K.,” Mrs. LeRiche said of the tablets. “They make you feel really good, especially with some Bacardi and Coke.”

The weather eventually calmed, and the Queen Elizabeth 2 and the Queen Victoria entered the harbor at 5:30 a.m., joining the Queen Mary 2, which had arrived from the Caribbean.


The Queen Victoria has a two-deck library that contains more than 60,000 books and a theater with private boxes. There are no rock-climbing walls or pools with waves in any of the ships; life on board is about sipping a glass of Champagne on the deck and twirling to the sound of a live orchestra in the ballroom.


Sunday night, the Queen Victoria left New York carrying 3,000 bottles of Champagne and more than 2,000 lobsters, “all of which,” Ms. Marlow said, “are expected to be consumed before the end of the month.”
C. J. Hughes contributed reporting.

Thanks for posting this. I'm a QM2 fan and I've already had a long discussion with a friend in Charleston this morning. We were both tied to our computers last night watching webcams.

I was up until 1.30am here in the UK watching. Here are some of the pictures I got from the webcams.

Thanks Stephen. It's hard to determine what is what because of so many lights and the darkness. Must have been really spectacular in person.

Thanks The sail out of NYC is wonderful. I was there on QE2 in September 2006. We were due to dock in Brooklyn, but in mid-atlantic we were told we were now docking at Peir 90 . So we got to sail up the Hudson at dawn. We were due to sail at 5, but we sailed late. That was great news because by the time we sailed I had eaten dinner and could go out on deck to watch. New York has to be the second best sail away I have done. (First is cape town)

This video gives a clue at what it must have been like to be there YouTube - Cunard Ship Trio New York Harbor Jan 08

That was wonderful Stephen! They zoomed in on each one so you could tell who was who!