: A champagne toast to the queen!

[Doc Vernon]

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Wed Jul 6th Brooklyn: Hail to the Queen! Yes, I just landed last Friday after an 8-night crossing on the Queen Mary 2, but we were "summoned" to lunch by the Queen, by Cunard. Some 400 came to pay homage (press, travel agents, suppliers, port officials, investors in the parent Carnival Corporation, etc) – and there were guided tours, a Champagne welcome and a three-course luncheon in the grand Britannia Dining Room. Handshaking, chatter, picture-taking and – yes – everyone seemed pleased. Mickey Arison, chairman of mighty Carnival Corp, was aboard as well and would be crossing to Southampton (later that afternoon and then to Holland to dedicate a Carnival-built maritime training school). Actually, it would be his first crossing on a Cunarder since he was five, in 1954, when the Arison family sailed for New York on the Mauretania. Father Ted later founded Carnival Cruise Lines (1971) and the rest, as they say, is history. As we waved good-bye in the sizzling mid-afternoon summer heat, the Queen Mary 2 was gleaming, glowing, true maritime royalty.




Photo: The 1132-ft long Queen Mary 2 in the huge graving dock at Hamburg in early June and while undergoing her three-week, $125 million facelift -- her "re-mastering" as Cunard dubbed it.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi Vernon.
$125 Million spent in three weeks, I'm flying over for a job there.
Cheers Des

[Captain Kong]

It is very sad that the name of CUNARD now have their Queen built in froggy france and the Refits in Germany and sailing under a Foreign Flag of Convenience.

Samuel Cunard and all the men who died on their ships killed by the germans will be spinning in their graves.
sad times.
Brian.

[Robert T. Bush]

Orange Blossom Toast to Queen Juliana of The Netherlands.

While a passenger on the old Nieuw Holland from Singapore to Sydney via Indonesian ports we toasted the Queen with orange juice and champagne.

This voyage was by far the best I have had on a passenger ship, thanks to the Master, an old salt with many interesting tales, the Dutch officers who spoke English with an Aussie accent, the Asian crew, and the fellow passengers, nearly all Aussies.

I was enrolled in the Bokma Club, chaired by the Master, that met before dinner. Bokma is a genever gin similar to Bolls. The food was excellent. The old ship was scrapped a few years later and RIL is no more. Too bad.