It was one last rendezvous in the harbor, one last salute to the Statue of Liberty, one last ceremonial escort by spraying fireboats and pleasure boaters.
And then, about 6pm on Thursday, 12 hours after arriving in the predawn darkness, the Queen Elizabeth 2 was gone in the twilight, steaming out of New York Harbor on its 806th — and last — trans-Atlantic crossing after nearly 40 years as the fastest passenger ocean liner in service.
“So she knows the way,” said Carol Marlow, president of the Cunard Line, who was among the well-wishers paying tribute to the ship earlier in farewell festivities on Thursday at Pier 90 in the Hudson River at 50th Street.
The ship’s captain for the last five years, Ian McNaught, 54, was also nostalgic. “When we leave tonight I’m sure there will be a few tears shed on shore and in the ship itself,” he said. But next year, he said, he will take command of Cunard’s newest liner, the Queen Victoria. A new Queen Elizabeth is being built, with plans to launch in 2010.
For its final visit to New York — the 710th — the venerable liner, which was sold last year for eventual use as a floating hotel in Dubai, was joined, from its American home port in Brooklyn, by the four-year-old Queen Mary 2, the latest flagship of the Cunard fleet and a throwback to a golden age of ocean travel before jets, when, as the company slogan had it, getting there was half the fun. The two queens — the grander new one dwarfing the old, just half its size — are staging an unusual tandem six-day crossing to Southampton, England.
“She looks gorgeous, beginning to light up under a Wizard of Oz sky,” gushed Bill Miller, a marine historian and adjunct curator at the South Street Seaport Museum, shouting into a cellphone as he monitored the departure of the Queen Elizabeth 2 from a small boat nearby.
The goodbye was signaled by three short, mournful blasts from the Queen Elizabeth 2’s whistles — “I’m moving astern” — as the ship backed out, streaming a 39-foot-long (12m-long) red paying-off pennant — a foot for each year at sea — a tradition marking the end of a ship’s commission. A duplicate of the pennant was presented on Thursday to Grover Sanaschagrin, 88, who as a harbor docking pilot guided liners to their berths from 1944 until his retirement in 1996.
At Battery Park City, as bagpipers wheezed a musical tribute, several hundred people, some waving small Union Jacks, cheered as the Queen Elizabeth 2, trailed by the Queen Mary 2, passed Lady Liberty.
Next month, the Queen Elizabeth 2 sails to a final resting place in Dubai, the oil-rich Persian Gulf sheikdom. Investors there bought the ship for US$100 million and intend to make it a permanently moored hotel, entertainment complex and museum at the Palm Jumeirah, billed as the world’s largest man-made island and beach resort.
Some marine preservationists and buffs have criticized reported plans to replace the ship’s distinctive funnel and staterooms with luxury suites, saying they would prefer to see the Queen Elizabeth 2 scrapped or even scavenged for its metal in India.
But Nancy Brookes, a former Cunard sales agent, said she wanted the ship intact. “At least it won’t be cufflinks and razor blades in Bangladesh,” she said.
The decommissioning of the Queen Elizabeth 2 leaves only the Queen Mary 2 in regular trans-Atlantic service, making some 20 crossings a year.
On its final crossing, Cunard said, the Queen Elizabeth 2 is sailing full, with about 1,800 passengers paying fares ranging from US$25,445, for a duplex grand suite with veranda, to US$2,992, for a plain inside single room.
The ship collected superlatives. It is still the fastest passenger liner in service, now powered by a diesel system that turns out 130,000 horsepower and can propel the ship to 32.5 knots.
It is the longest-serving vessel in Cunard’s nearly 170-year history. It has a tennis court, a golf driving range, a 13-car garage, a Harrods department store, a theater and a synagogue.
Its crew of 1,016 includes 107 cooks, four fitness instructors, a disc jockey and 10 “gentlemen hosts” to escort unaccompanied women. (There are no female escorts for unaccompanied men.)
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