From the New York TimesApril 18, 2004
A Ship So Big, the Verrazano Cringes
By JAMES BARRON
A Queen does not have to live by everyday rules, especially not a Queen whose, um, measurements exceed those of famous ancestors.
The Queen in question here is the new Queen Mary 2, the 1,132-foot-long Cunarder whose maiden voyage to New York this week has steamship buffs longing for the days when crossing the Atlantic took days, not hours, and when the 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, the 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 one of the longest, tallest, widest and heaviest nonmilitary vessels in history. It's bigger than its famous relatives, the original Queen Mary (now a hotel by the docks in Long Beach, Calif.) and the Queen Elizabeth 2.
The Queen Mary 2 is also 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."
As if all those superlatives were not enough, Mr. Miller added more: 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 longest cruise ship in the world - 86 feet longer than the Chrysler Building is tall - has its headaches, though. When the Queen Mary 2 docks in Manhattan on Thursday morning, it will be too long for the pier. David Gevanthor, a vice president at Cunard, joked that the Queen Mary 2 will be partly in New Jersey because it will extend more than 100 feet beyond its berth at the Passenger Ship Terminal.
Maritime types like Mr. Miller cannot wait to see that. "She's going to hang out in the river, which has never happened before," Mr. Miller said.
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 the carpenters added 75 feet of wood, Mr. 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 only 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," Mr. Miller said. "The funnel is flatter than it should be." From keel to black-and-red funnel is 236 feet.
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," Captain Wright explained. "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 are always the bow thrusters, three large propellers. "We can literally make the ship move sideways," he said. "We can quite comfortably move the ship against a 25- to 30-knot wind." If the bow thrusters can be switched on. A malfunction in Lisbon last week delayed the ship's departure, but Cunard said the problem had been fixed.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will welcome the ship on Thursday. Tomorrow, he is expected to announce that the cruise industry has agreed to pay additional port fees that will cover modernizing the Passenger Ship Terminal and adding a berth in Brooklyn. Last year, the city rejected a plan for a $100 million terminal at Pier 7 in Brooklyn.
Tomorrow's announcement comes as cruise line officials worry that the Passenger Ship Terminal cannot handle all the traffic headed to New York. Carnival, the big cruise line that owns Cunard, has more than a dozen ships under construction. Royal Caribbean announced last year that it was moving three ships to Bayonne, N.J.
"Even before they built the Queen Mary 2, there were more and more of the ocean liners, the cruisers, leaving from New York," said Burchenal Green, the executive vice president of the National Maritime Historical Society. "The Queen Elizabeth 2 was a start in helping to bring the cruisers and the ocean liners back, and I think the Queen Mary 2 will be significant to New York in the way that the QE2 was. If you remember 20 years ago, the whole New York harbor was sort of in decay."
The city says the cruise industry accounts for 3,320 jobs and adds almost $600 million to the city's economy. Forecasts that passenger volumes will double by 2014 have steamship buffs shaking their heads in wonder.
"We thought the age of the big superliner, and I know that sounds redundant, was over" in the 1970's, Mr. Miller said. "In 1980, National Geographic said that the QE2, at 70,000 tons, would be the last big ocean liner we'd ever see until there are floating hotels in outer space."
The QE2 is now the 79th largest ocean liner in the world, he said, and 100,000-ton liners are almost ordinary. The QM2 weighs 151,400 tons, which is about as much as 390 fully-loaded 747's, the 500-passenger airplanes that did as much as anything to displace ocean liners as the world's high-volume people carriers.
But a 747 does not have 22 elevators opening on 17 decks; 14 bars and clubs; 6 restaurants; 5 outdoor swimming pools or a planetarium. A 747 does not have 708 staterooms with balconies, 281 interior staterooms looking out on a six-story atrium, 4 suites and 6 penthouses.
Or 1,253 crew members who need to restock those personal necessities. How to recognize a crew member when the Queen Mary 2 is in port? "That would be the person walking straight for the store that sells the fabric softener and the toothpaste," said David Dobbs, a waiter.
[ 04-19-2004: Message edited by: CGT ]