The rain held off and even the champagne bottle smashed at the first attempt as Queen Elizabeth named the largest cruise liner ever built on Thursday.
The Queen Mary 2, which is the longest, heaviest and tallest passenger ship in the world, claims to take cruising into a new era with every conceivable luxury, including a planetarium on board and a ?3 million (US$5.5 million) art collection, housed in its own gallery.
PHOTO: AP
In front of 2,000 guests on the dockside in Southampton, the Queen, following in the footsteps of her grandmother Queen Mary, who launched the first Queen Mary ship on Clydeside, Scotland, in 1934, uttered the traditional blessing: "I name this ship Queen Mary 2. May God bless her and all who sail in her."
The Bishop of Winchester, the Right Reverend Michael Scott-Joynt, speaking in French for part of the prayers, asked for the crowd to remember the 15 people who died in November when a gang plank collapsed at the St Nazaire shipyard in western France where the ship was being built.
Cunard's director of communications, Eric Flounders, said organizers of the naming ceremony were "mindful" of the tragedy.
Before the naming, attended by the UK's deputy prime minister, John Prescott, and the UK transport secretary, Alistair Darling, the guests were entertained by the pop singer Heather Small and the opera singer Lesley Garrett, who sang Amazing Grace. The Queen and the guests then watched a film of the Queen Mary launch in 1936 and the launches of the first Queen Elizabeth, by the Queen Mother, and her own 1967 QE2 launch.
Earlier the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were given a tour of the 150,000-tonne liner, which can carry up to 2,620 passengers.
Aside from endless restaurants, bars, casinos and shops the ship offers an education program devised by Oxford University and a library. Prices for a six-day voyage start at ?999, but run to ?20,000 for those taking one of the vast duplex apartments.
The QM2 will leave on its maiden fare-paying passenger voyage on Monday, when it sails from Southampton, which will be its home port, to Fort Lauderdale in Florida. With 17 decks and a crew of 1,253, the QM2 is due to take over transatlantic duties from the QE2 in late April.
The two vessels will leave New York together and dock together at Southampton before the QE2 takes on other duties, including Mediterranean cruises.
A massive security operation had been launched ahead of yesterday's ceremony with divers searching the dock and the ship's keel.
The first Queen Mary is now kept in Long Beach, California, having been sold in 1967, and is used as a hotel and conference and exhibition center.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS