Flush With Excitement Over a Pair of Queens

Betty Gray still has the old steamer trunk with its faded “Cunard” sticker that she took on board the Queen Mary in 1956. Somewhere, she still has the $315 bill for that six-day, one-way trip from Southampton to New York. She says she can remember as if it were last night dancing the fox trot with her husband to big band music in the ship salon.

Onboard the old ship, which is now a hotel and museum in Long Beach Harbor, Lovetta Kramer, its unofficial historian, has been rummaging through dusty file cabinets for bygone first-class menus listing such entrees as fried calf brains, and for faded photographs of Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy relaxing in deck chairs.

Today, at San Pedro Bay, Gray and Kramer will join other former Queen Mary passengers and fans to witness the 70-year-old ship they love as it meets its namesake, the sleek Queen Mary 2. At high noon, the two Cunard ships will salute each other with booming horns.

Thousands of people came out to view the massive 2-year-old Queen Mary 2, or QM2, after it arrived in Los Angeles on Wednesday for its first West Coast stop. Several hundred people were waiting in the dark along the Main Channel when the ship arrived at 4:45 a.m., said Los Angeles port spokeswoman Theresa Adams-Lopez. By 4:30 p.m., she said, 12,000 cars had been counted carrying onlookers hoping to catch a glimpse of the massive vessel.

“This makes the [old] Queen Mary look like a peanut,” said Dell Potenza, 58, of Huntington Beach, who inspected the ship from a distance Wednesday afternoon.

The ship is so big that it had to back into its terminal because it could not fit under the Vincent Thomas Bridge. It spent the day docked double-wide, in Berths 91 and 92, and attracting so much attention that it caused traffic jams both on and around the bridge all day.

But it is today’s meeting of the two Queen Marys that ocean liner aficionados have been waiting for.

Some dismiss the event as blatant commercialism, benefiting Cunard and the financially beleaguered old Queen Mary in Long Beach. But boat lovers see it as historically significant.

The old ship was among the grandest of its time; the new ship, loaded with every lavish modern amenity, is the world’s largest and most expensive ocean liner.

The meeting brings into sharp relief the contrast between two eras: the heady years of the last century when opulent ocean liners ruled the Atlantic, and the efficient and plugged-in early 21st century, when hardly any American takes a ship to Europe, but quick cruises to the Caribbean or Mexico are popular.

Passengers aboard the first Queen viewed the ocean from windows and cabin portholes -- if they were lucky enough to have cabins that had windows -- or from the decks outside.

Most of those aboard the QM2 can relax outdoors in private, on the balconies connected to 80% of the staterooms and cabins. The balconies give the boat, viewed from the side, a little of the look of a massive waterfront hotel or condominium complex.

On the first Queen, passengers could send radiograms ashore in emergencies but remained for days on end largely isolated from the rest of the world. The ship published a daily newspaper to keep passengers vaguely abreast of world affairs. But the new ship offers constant updates from such cable news stations as CNN, viewable on the televisions in every cabin.

Those on the QM2 receive temporary ship e-mail addresses and can surf the Internet in their cabins, at 13 WiFi hotspots scattered around the boat and in an Internet cafe called ConneXions. Anyone can reach them any time, even their faraway bosses at work onshore.

“For goodness sake. That’s sad,” Gray said.

Passengers on the old Queen Mary kept in shape with frequent “constitutionals” on the wide teak decks, where they could inspect and greet fellow passengers and breathe in the sea air. The bathtubs on the old boat came with four spigots: fresh and salt water, hot and cold.

QM2 passengers enjoy ultramodern gyms and a Canyon Ranch spa, as well as countless opportunities to relax in style in such venues as a wine bar, a champagne bar and a casino. They can even go shopping in an onboard Hermes boutique.

But even with its 21st century trappings, the QM2 takes pride in its old-world stylishness. On Wednesday, a string quartet played Handel’s “Water Music” as passengers came aboard. The inside also retains some of the aura of an old-time liner, with thick red carpeting, chandeliers, sweeping staircases and Art Deco metalwork.

And for all its high-tech extras, the new ship cruises at 28.5 knots, exactly the same speed of the old ship in the days when it used to steam across the Atlantic.

The meeting of the two Queens seems out of character for Los Angeles, where most residents have never seen the city’s port, much less set sail from it on an ocean voyage. New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg welcomed the QM2 when it first docked there in April 2004; Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had no plans to greet it in Los Angeles.

Circumstance brought the two proud British-built Queens together at a sun-struck Pacific port complex best known for its container ships, Mexico-bound cruise ships and ferries to Catalina.

The city of Long Beach purchased the old Queen Mary in 1967. It’s been in Long Beach ever since. The QM2, making its Los Angeles debut at the end of a South American cruise from New York, leaves today for a short cruise to Mexico, followed by an 11-day hop over to Hawaii.

Both ships face significant challenges.

The old Queen Mary is in financial straits, its operating company owned by a business that filed for bankruptcy last March and owes the city millions in back rent. The hotel and museum remain open as usual, but no one can predict who will run the ship -- or even if it can keep operating at all.

The QM2 is now part of Carnival Cruise Lines, which bought the Cunard Line in 1998 in a union akin to Ford buying Jaguar. It’s one of only two ships still operated by the Cunard subsidiary, and it’s the only ocean liner still doing trans-Atlantic trips, down from 12 liners in 1957, when four or five boats sailed out of New York alone each week.

The QM2’s voyage to Los Angeles was marred by propeller damage that forced the cancellation of several stops, leading to angry passengers’ demands for refunds and a rush of news stories describing a “mutiny” aboard. Some ship loyalists blame the brouhaha on the Internet. Similar problems are not uncommon on the high seas, they say, but the well-connected QM2 passengers could e-mail home to complain.

Old-time ocean liner passengers say canceled stops are nothing compared with the old Queen Mary’s bumpy past. Built without modern stabilizers, it became known as a “holy roller” because of its sometimes violent rolling and pitching in stormy seas.

Gray remembers how the Queen Mary’s crew maintained its calm demeanor even when the ship encountered a hurricane one day before arriving in New York.

She and her husband found the dining room three-quarters empty that day. But the waiters flipped up little sidebars built onto their table to prevent dishes from sliding. One waiter even poured a pitcher of water right on the white damask tablecloth to try to keep the dishes in place.

The practice of dousing tablecloths, experts say, has been discontinued.

Bruce Vancil, 48, of Mission Viejo is the local chapter president of the Steamship Historical Society and can recite from memory the owners of many old ocean liners, the ports they sailed to, even when they were sent to the scrap yards. Still, for all his nostalgia, Vancil, who is scheduled to leave for Mexico on the QM2 today, welcomes its modern touches.

The casual-dress cafe with its big Vegas-style buffet “is required by modern customers,” he said.

“People don’t want to dress up, they don’t want to wait for service, they just want to grab a sandwich and just go.”

Internet access is required by today’s travelers, who insist on “connectivity,” he said.

And the balconies? Everyone wants them. They want the privacy to relax in a bathrobe, sipping wine with a “significant other,” he said.

“These are just pressures of the modern marketplace,” he said.

For some boat lovers like Vancil, the old and new ships remain ever connected. No one feels this more than Commodore Ronald W. Warwick, captain of the QM2, the man who today will oversee its journey to meet the old ship.

It seems fitting that Warwick’s father, Commodore W.E. Warwick, was captain of the old Queen Mary, and that both father and son at different times commanded the Queen Elizabeth 2.

The small bridge of the old ship featured polished brass telegraphs and steering wheel, Warwick said. The QM2 bridge that he commands today is all modern control systems, computer and radar displays.

“The only brass to be seen,” Warwick said, “is a ship’s bell that was once in the engine room of the old Queen Elizabeth.”

Warwick has visited the Queen Mary in Long Beach several times and will return to stay next month; and his own son stayed there on his honeymoon.

“A few years ago, I was presented with a piece of old carpet from the Captains Cabin which my father would have walked over,” Warwick wrote in a ship-to-shore e-mail Tuesday as the boat plowed through the waves up the coast of Mexico. “The carpet is framed and hangs in my cabin here on the QM2.”

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Meeting of the queens

Queen Mary 2 was docked at the Port of Los Angeles this week, directly west of the vintage Queen Mary in Long Beach. It was the first time the two elegant ocean liners were in the same area. Here’s a look at the two ships:

Queen Mary

1,019 feet

Capacity: 2,139 passengers

Number of decks: 12

Gross tonnage: 81,237 tons

Propulsion: Steam turbines

Horsepower: 160,000

Cruising speed: 28.5 knots (34 mph)

Maiden voyage: May 27-June 1, 1936, from Southampton, England, to New York

Final cruise: Oct. 31-Dec. 9, 1967, from Southampton to Long Beach

Sample voyage: Minimum round-trip ocean fare per person for New York/England Atlantic crossing, summer 1936: first-class cabin $536, second class $276, third class $167.50

Typical stateroom: First class, two twin beds, sitting area, private bath, portholes; third class, bunkbeds, sink, bath down the hall

Menu selection: July 12, 1936: duckling, guinea chicken, quail, jumbo squab, cauliflower hollandaise, Prince of Wales pudding, chocolate eclairs, French pastry, fried Camembert

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Queen Mary 2

1,132 feet

Capacity: 2,620 passengers

Number of decks: 17

Gross tonnage: 151,400 tons

Propulsion: Diesel-electric / gas turbines

Horsepower: 157,000

Cruising speed: 28.5 knots (34 mph)

Maiden voyage: Jan. 12, 2004, from Southampton, England, to Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

Sample voyage: 36-day South American voyage from Los Angeles, per person double occupancy fares from $7,749 to $79,349

Typical stateroom: Interactive televisions, walk-in closets, direct-dial phones, individual thermostats, full baths with tubs and/or showers

Menu selection: Feb. 22, 2006, Britannia English restaurant: prosciutto with arugula coulis, shrimp thermador, oxtail consomme, lobster risotto, Oriental glazed Alaskan salmon, gingered greens and citrus soy emulsion, slow-roasted pork, caramelized creme brulee, cappuccino souffle

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Sources: Cunard, Long Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau, Queen Mary. Graphics reporting by Julie Sheer