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A Farewell Trip Aboard the QE2
From the Ellsworth American
This is the last year of service for the Queen Elizabeth 2. After this year she will sail to Dubai and become a convention center. She will be preserved in her entirety including her artwork, furniture and everything on her. In fact, she will become a floating museum. She will never sail again.
The QE2 was built over 35 years ago and during those years she has acquired an aura of her own. She was launched in September 1967, and during her career she has carried over 2.5 million passengers, has had 25 world cruises, has traveled 5.5 million miles, crossed the Atlantic over 800 times. Her last sailing will be in November 2008. No ship in service has ever been so loved, and respected and well known.
In April this year she completed her last world cruise, Her sister ship QM2 will now take over that function as well as her trans-Atlantic crossings, a service that Cunard will always provide.
I have sailed on the QE2 many times and it seemed right that I should participate, somehow, in her final world cruise. Accordingly I booked passage on her final segment of the cruise, Los Angeles through the Panama Canal to New York. It was a 15-day cruise, a cruise beyond description.
I flew from Boston to Los Angeles, nonstop. The flight seemed interminable. It took seven hours and included a three-hour time change. These days, free food is not provided, and if one wants a meal one has to pay for it. Most of us chose to live on pretzels and soft drinks. When we landed in Los Angeles we were about to begin the adventure of our life. We stayed overnight in San Pedro, a block away from the ship terminal. As we awoke the next morning there she was, we could see her from our hotel window.
We boarded the ship at noon, as usual, I felt tears come. I was aboard my most favorite ship, once again, but this time, for the last time.
Our itinerary included two days at sea, sailing the Pacific Ocean, then a 10-hour journey through the Panama Canal. We were late getting through the Canal so did not stop at Cristobal as planned. Our other destinations were Acapulco, Cartegena (Colombia) Ocho Rios (Jamaica), Fort Lauderdale and then New York.
Going through the Panama Canal was an experience almost impossible to describe. We shared this with another ship, a huge container ship called the MSC Emma, and side by side we went through the locks, sailed through the lakes and then traversed the next lock. As the ship entered a lock, men in rowboats rowed to the fore part of the ship and took aboard their boat lines which were then attached to small engines, called mules, which pulled the ship through the lock, as water was either raised or lowered in the lock. Side by side the QE2 and the Emma, divided by a platform in the middle, and the mules pulling the ship along, pulled it through the lock and into then the next lake, where the ship, under her own power sailed through the lake to the next lock, where the whole procedure was repeated. We watched as the gates were closed, the water level rose (or fell) and we were pulled along until at the end of the lock the lines were loosed, and off we went. There were many ships going through the canal that day and the captain explained that we were in a traffic jam, so that the normal seven-hour transit took 10. As a result, our scheduled stop at Cristobal was canceled.
Ten hours later, we were in the Caribbean Sea. Ten hours before, we had been sailing on the Pacific Ocean.
As the QE2 left each port, there was a special farewell for her. She had visited these ports many times. This was her last voyage. It was especially true in Fort Lauderdale, where as she drew away from the shore, bands played, people shouted farewell, car horns honked, and small boats as well as fireboats escorted her away from shore and out to sea.
No ship is like the QE2 and no ship can replace the love that people have for this one. She is unique. She can never be replaced.
Her arrival in New York was shrouded in fog. Like ghosts the Verrazano Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and the New York skyline slipped by. On this, her last world cruise, Cunard had opted for her to sail up the Hudson River to her old berth, rather than dock in Brooklyn at her new berth. But as I explained, fog intervened.
The ship will continue to sail until October. She sailed that night for Southampton, and will be here in Maine on Sept. 19. Let us hope that when she bids Maine farewell, the people here will say “goodbye” as have the people everywhere else, to a ship that can never be replaced.
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but all good things must come to an end.
Originally Posted by Lanky Lad
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