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.
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
A colossal explosion in the sky, unleashing energy hundreds of times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. A blinding flash nearly as bright as the sun. Shockwaves powerful enough to flatten everything for miles. It might sound apocalyptic, but a newly detected asteroid nearly the size of a football field now has a greater than 1 percent chance of colliding with Earth in about eight years. Such an impact has the potential for city-level devastation, depending on where it strikes. Scientists are not panicking yet, but they are watching closely. “At this point, it’s: ‘Let’s pay a lot of attention, let’s
UNDAUNTED: Panama would not renew an agreement to participate in Beijing’s Belt and Road project, its president said, proposing technical-level talks with the US US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday threatened action against Panama without immediate changes to reduce Chinese influence on the canal, but the country’s leader insisted he was not afraid of a US invasion and offered talks. On his first trip overseas as the top US diplomat, Rubio took a guided tour of the canal, accompanied by its Panamanian administrator as a South Korean-affiliated oil tanker and Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship passed through the vital link between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. However, Rubio was said to have had a firmer message in private, telling Panama that US President Donald Trump
CHEER ON: Students were greeted by citizens who honked their car horns or offered them food and drinks, while taxi drivers said they would give marchers a lift home Hundreds of students protesting graft they blame for 15 deaths in a building collapse on Friday marched through Serbia to the northern city of Novi Sad, where they plan to block three Danube River bridges this weekend. They received a hero’s welcome from fellow students and thousands of local residents in Novi Said after arriving on foot in their two-day, 80km journey from Belgrade. A small red carpet was placed on one of the bridges across the Danube that the students crossed as they entered the city. The bridge blockade planned for yesterday is to mark three months since a huge concrete construction
RSS