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Title: Queen Elizabeth 2: Cunard's sea-going pleasure city Pages: 36 - 37  
Author: Editorial Text: Queen Elizabeth 2: Cunard's sea-going pleasure city. Recent troubles have made many people forget that the Queen Elizabeth a ship that nearly did riot happen. When the directors of the Cunard Steamship Co began, in the early 1950s, to think about a replacement for the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth they had a completely different vessel in mind: another giant 80,000-ton liner geared for Atlantic passenger ferry work. But just before the designs for the then Q3 were put out to tender, the company reconsidered the whole concept. What had to be decided was no longer how to build the ship' but what sort of people, find what kind of voyages, to build her for. The advent of the jet was to mean that ships were no longer essential as Atlantic ferries (five years from now it will probably not be possible to cross the Attantic in the winter on a passenger ship at all). The new Currier had therefore to be designed: as a cruise ship as well as an Atlantic passenger liner. Even as a liner her chief characteristic had to be not so much of a transporter as of a sea-going hotel: travelling in it would the holiday. And because asks cruiser she would have to go through Panama and Suez Canals, and berth in ports round the world, 16,000 tons had to be lopped off the ship's size. Yet even now, constructed as she is with all these modifications, the new ship remains in a very real way the project of Sir John Brocklebank, without whose enterprise another great Cunarder might ever have been built. QE2's total cost to date is £30 million. In the original threeway deal in 1964, when John Brown's (now pert of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders group) wer'e given the building contract, the Government agreed to lend Cunard £17 million. In 1967, on the eve of her launching by the Queen, this loan was raised by a further £6 4 million and, equally important to Cunard, the character of the loan was Changed. Because repayment of the~ original loan was over 10 years at 42 per cent interest and was only to be available from 1969, Cunard had had to raise a bridging loan from a consortium of banks which in turn requested mortgages on Cunard's cargo ships. By the terms of the 1967 loan Cunard was able to cancel these arrangements and: was therefore in a stronger position to rationalise its cargo operations, and, as a spokesman put it, "to relieve the company it. of strain on its cash resources nephew QE2 into service." Under its new chairman, Sir Basil Smallpiece, Cunard has become principally a seafreight-carrying company. This has been brought about partly through developing new interests like Atlantic Container Lines and its slice of the Associated Container Consortiurn, partly by a drastic cut-back in the passenger fleet. it was therefore logical that, with the new financial agreement, a separate subsidiary cube set up to run the passenger fleet, including QE2. Even so, it will be difficult for the QE2 to make a profit. At a cost of about £15,000 a bed she is much more expensive than a top-class hotel. And she must compete not only with other cruise ships but also with hotel resorts. Cunard has fully researched the leisure market and done everything possible to make a vessel of this kind a success. Although it could be a winner, it nevertheless demands tough selling: Sir Basil Smallpiece has pointed out that reaching its particular market in a country as vast as the US presents formidable problems. This has required expert salesmanship. The advertising has been handled on this side of the Atlantic by the KMP Partnership and in North America by Daniel & Charles inc. Between them they have produced some of the lushest advertisements and brochures ever used for a passenger ship. With phrases such as "the most exciting"thing to be launched since- Apollo 1'' images of pop groups and discotheques, sunsets and golden haze velvety photographs of trumpeters, of islands and parties, of sailing boats and sun-tanned girls on sandy beaches ("See the Caribbean from one hotel"), they have done a brilliant jobs Crossing the Atlantic by ship, passengers either stay, so to speak, in the.US until they reach the shores of Europe, or they step into Europe the moment they go up the gangplank in New-York -which depends very much on the liner's country of origin, While in Britain KMP have concentrated on the comfort of QE2, in the US Daniel & Charles have stressed the concept to which the interior designs naturally lend themselves, that QE2 is a floating Swinging London, a Hilton a la King's Road offering five extra days in London before you even get there. It will therefore be interesting to see whether London design is such an international style that, should Swinging London go out of fashion, QE2 could become, without undue cost, a float away slice of, say, New York. The advertisers' key slogans, "Ships have been boring long enough" and "The ultimate weapon against boredom at sea," produced an uproar in shipping circles when they first appeared in the supplements, not only from companies like P & O but also the French Line whose France will pair with the QE2 or' the Atlantic schedule. While Cunard are obviously right to stress the pleasures of QE2, knocking other ships in this way has probably raised previously nonexistent doubts in the minds of potential cruise customers which could affect the whole industry. In the long term it would be in the interests of everybody concerned to stress that cruising is always enjoyable, leaving it to individual companies to prove that in their ships it is best. Out of the total cost of £30 million for the et~tire ship, £3 million was spent on the design of the interior. The decision to go for a dual-purpose ship led to another decision which reversed the thinking behind the Q3: the abolition of classes. This has given the designers greater freedom and more opportunities than is normally the case with liners. Although there are only two classes of cabin, first and tourist, within each category there is a voice range of sizes, layouts and: rooms convertible into suites. In the same way, because there does not have to be a rigidly separate set of ^pub?'i c rooms for each class, there can be much more variety from the shopping arcade to the smart boutique, from the cafe to the more expensive restaurant grill. In other words the designers have been able to make:the QE2 more than a hotel. They have made it into a small City with its West End and its Chelsea, its Knightsbridge and its Oxford Street; with its penthouses, family flats, flatlets and single rooms. Among other facilities there are altogether 10 lounges, three restaurants, two Iibraries, 11 bars, two night clubs, a cinema (which is also theatre, church and conference hall), two shopping areas, an art gallery, and four swimming pools. Although Dennis Lennon , design coordinator of the interiors, has welded everything together by his handling of the corridors, promenades, staircases and main doors, the ship does not have one single -. distinctive style. Including Lennon, ten designers with their consultants and assistants - about 80 designers in all worked on the interiors. Ther city sense is therefore heightened by the different character of each area. Sir Hugh Casson has rightly obseved, "the difference between, say, the Queen room - a Miami-like confection of white mushroom-shaped columns picking their elegant way across the white floor between indoor plants and flame coloured sofas - and, say, the sobriety of a forward lounge called The Lookout is not merely contrast- it is one of opposing attitudes to design": which, of course, makes a city, and is essentially what makes QE2 such an exciting ship. In order that all this may work smoothly and efficiently the staff, under the operations manager, Brian Cocup, were given intensive briefing courses at Renfrew last October on the ship's machinery, electrical system, navigation and communications systems. The manager of the hotel department and his deputy were put through concentrated landbased hotel courses, and even the ship's master, Captain William Eldon Warwick, went on a special general management course. Re-structuring of the crew and of staff systems has done everything possible to ensure that communication, not only down but also up and across, will function with maximum efficiency. The crew quarters, with interiors by Jo Pattrick, are of a standard unique in the merchant navy. Now that the QE2 is ready for her maiden voyage, there she is, a liner yet not quite a liner' a cruise ship yet a cut above a cruise ship, a Queen but also a bird. Having cut the QE2 down to size (a decision which shouId do more than anything else to ensure her future) Cunard has also keen brave enough to see that her interior, too, reflects; the new persona of the Atlantic cruiser. |
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