The Local • Vol 8 issue 25 • december 4, 2008-December 17, 2008
Far flung correspondent
The Queen Elizabeth 2 DeanTresner The Local • Milan, Italy During the mid-sixties, I was a young kid enthralled with the rockets that were going to the moon. It was a time of wonder, anything seemed possible. As focused as we all were on the Mercury and then Apollo space ships, another conveyance was being built outside of the public spotlight in Clydebank, Scotland. And it is arguably the most beautiful ship ever built by the hands of man, and while she never travelled to the moon, at just under six million miles sailed, she has far outdone those space ships that now sit in museums. But now it is her turn. I am speaking of the Queen Elizabeth II. Airplane pilots are well aware of the fact that the better an airplane looks, the better it flies. It is an elegant convergence of aesthetic and functional value. And it is apparently also true of ships. Approaching her from a tender, it would not be an overstatement to say that her lines are breathtaking. She is painted in gun-metal gray with a crisp white superstructure and the trademark Cunard orange and black funnel. I have never seen any man-made thing so obviously well suited to its purpose. If ever a ship could convey confidence, this is it. The QE2 had quietly plied her trade as the last transatlantic liner for almost forty years and 806 crossings, until the Queen Mary II came along in 2003. (While the QM2 may resemble a large Las Vegas hotel in all other respects, she is nonetheless a liner.) Perhaps I
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should explain that a liner is different from a cruise ship in, well, her lines. The major difference being that a liner has a rounded hull while a cruise ship has a flat bottom. And while the flat bottom does offer much better fuel economy in places like the Caribbean, it isn’t much good in the rough seas of the north Atlantic. To give you an example, the QE2 does the New York to London trip in six days, while the Queen Victoria–which has a cruise ship hull–subjects her passengers to eight days of Dramamine induced hell. But what has distinguished the QE2 in my mind is the people. As you know from living in a small town, there is a certain dynamic that happens: You have to get along with people, whether you like them or not. In a big city, your successes or mistakes don’t matter so much, but in a small town, you have to deal with them. Now imagine a town of almost three thousand inhabitants that is less than the size of a couple of football fields. Everyone gets to know everything about everyone else pretty quickly. The ship becomes a kind of social pressure cooker. Much of that is good; you can really get to know people when they are only a few feet away. But, inevitably, there is also a dark side. I have heard that aircraft carriers have their bad neighborhoods–places you would be well advised to avoid. On the QE2 that place is the laundry room. By far the most dangerous place on the ship, it is run by gangs of old women
wielding walking aids. Besides the usual sources of contention that plague any launderette, it features those upright washer/drier things like the one in your apartment closet. The problem here is that some people feel that if you are using any part of one, you are using the whole thing, and some people don’t. You may open a drier’s door to find a single hot and staticky pair of granny knickers and your natural inclination would be to take them out and put your stuff in. You do so at your own peril. When I was on the world cruise, two passengers were kicked off the ship for fighting. It happened in the laundry room. There is another weird thing that happens when you travel on a ship like this. Time sort of stops–or at least loses its meaning. After a day or two, you no longer seem to be able to recall what day of the week it is even though it says so in
the top left corner of the daily program. (You really only look there to find out the evening’s dress code.) If for some reason you become curious as to the date, the best thing to do is ask a passing officer, they generally know. On the world cruise I once overheard one such conversation: “Excuse me sir, what is the date today?” “It’s the thirteenth mam.” “Of April?” Speaking of time distortions on the QE2, I must say I’m experiencing one now in a big way. This afternoon we pulled into Dubai. This was the ships final port of call. Tomorrow she will begin her conversion to a floating hotel, like the Queen Mary in Long Beach. I’m sitting in the bar at the moment surrounded by well dressed people chatting and laughing. In the ballroom gentlemen hosts are swinging widows around to big band tunes. The ship is filled with bonhomie. My heart tells me that it is always as it has been, and it really feels as if it always will be. But in my mind I know that tomorrow morning, we will all disembark for the last time and time will take its normal course again. And then we will start missing her.
Because they don't teach the truth about the world, schools have to rely on beating students over the head with propaganda about democracy. - Noam Chomsky