Thu Apr 22, 2004 10:10 am by Indy11
I can see one berth from my office. It usually has a Princess Line ship so I guess I am out of luck. I think Cunard has its own berth lower down and another highrise building is smack dab in front of me for those berths.
The older cruise ships looked like ships, I agree. The drawings of the QM2 made her look less like the modern stacked slab boxes with a pointy bow and airfoils added to try to cut down on the wind resistance a little.
She's here until Sunday so I might try to make it into a little outing for the munchkin.
FROM THE NY TIMES:
A Queen Glides Into New York to End Her Maiden Voyage
By JAMES BARRON
Published: April 22, 2004
The world's longest ocean liner sailed under one of the world's longest suspension bridges and beside one of the world's most famous statues this morning, before docking in New York City for the first time.
The ship, the 1,132-foot-long Queen Mary 2, swept under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge as the sun was coming up on a hazy harbor. The ship, carrying 2,600 passengers and 1,200 crew members, soon glided by the Statue of Liberty, led by tugboats, police vessels and Coast Guard boats, all dwarfed by the black-and-white leviathan.
"It's almost floating in the air," said Adina Rafeld, who watched as the Queen Mary 2 passed the waterfront park just north of the Verrazano, in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn.
The passage through New York Harbor brought a smooth ending to a six-day maiden cruise from England that began with rough seas. It was also slowed by gale-force winds and waves that splashed high on a ship that is taller, wider and longer than any other passenger vessel in history. But the $800 million Queen Mary 2 made up the time it had lost, and today turned into its pier at the Passenger Ship Terminal on the West Side of Manhattan on schedule after all.
The ship's arrival had steamship buffs longing for the days when crossing the Atlantic took days, not hours, and when the ships were as stylish as the passengers. But to New Yorkers who watched the Queen Mary 2 ambling toward its berth today — its speed for most of the way through the harbor was a fraction of its 30-knot maximum (34.5 m.p.h. to landlubbers) — the ship was so out of proportion with everyday reality that it defied the brain's perspective-calculation system.
The Queen Mary 2 has 17 decks and measures 236 feet from keel to funnel. That would be tall anywhere, but in New York harbor, it is about as close to the maximum as can be. If the Queen Mary 2 were to sail under the Verrazano at high tide, the clearance would be only 13 feet.
New York has been buzzing with numbers like those all week. And, as the Queen Mary 2 steamed by, some shipwatchers wondered if it would make it into the harbor without scraping the 4,260-foot-long main span of the Verrazano, while others remembered watching what appeared to be tight fits in the past.
On one aircraft carrier, said Tom Garbie, a former cruise-line passenger greeter who now lives in Brooklyn, "they had to lower some of the antennas."
But the Queen Mary 2 had room to spare, crew members on the bridge said proudly. From their perch in a nearly soundproof room with thick plate-glass windows, they steered the ship through some of the nation's busiest shipping lanes. When they blew the ship's horn, as they did when the Queen Mary 2 passed the site of the World Trade Center, the carpeted floor shook.
They looked to the stern, sticking more than 100 feet beyond the pier in the Hudson River, where police boats were on patrol. Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Tuesday that the police were planning a number of special security measures for the ship's arrival, not because of any specific threat but because of all the attention the vessel was getting.
As seamen tied up the ship at the terminal, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and city officials welcomed the Queen Mary 2 during a brief ceremony. "Pretty magnificent, huh?" the mayor said as a band played in the background. He said that he was looking forward to a tour of the ship this weekend "from stem to stern."
"I want to look in every little cupboard and make sure it's all shipshape," he said.
Turning to the Queen Mary 2's captain, Commodore Peter W. Warwick, the mayor said that if the ship were turned on its end, it would be the second-tallest structure on the New York skyline (taller than the Chrysler Building but shorter than the Empire State Building).
"But, Commodore," the mayor said, "we don't ask you to do that maneuver. Please keep it right the way it is."
The mayor joked that he had worried that the captain would call from under the Verrazano "and ask us to raise the bridge a little bit."
"But fortunately you managed to sweep through," the mayor said, "and that was just one of those sights that you'll see in the picture books, 10, 20, 30 years from now. People will look back and say, `You remember that wonderful day?' — the beginning of a colorful tradition."
The Queen Mary 2 is to leave New York on Sunday, sailing back to England with the Queen Elizabeth 2, which will arrive that morning. Maritime types say that will be the first time that two Cunarders have crossed the Atlantic in tandem, rather than passing each other in midocean.
