QE2 sold as $100m floating Dubai hotel

The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | June 18, 2007 | David Millward

[Stoat]

QE2 sold as $100m floating Dubai hotel

By David Millward, Transport Correspondent
 

Last Updated: 3:54pm BST 18/06/2007

 

 

 

• Profile: The world's most famous cruise liner
• Have you travelled on the QE2? Was it worth the money?
• Where is she now? QE2 webcam

  After nearly four decades as the world’s most celebrated ocean-going liner, the QE2 is to become a floating hotel off the coast of Dubai.

  
  The QE2 on a previous visit to Dubai in 1997. The liner will become a luxury floating hotel
  
   

  The veteran of 25 world cruises and more than 800 transatlantic crossings will undertake its final commercial voyage from Southampton to Dubai in November next year.

  Cunard will then hand the liner over to its new owners, Istithmar, the Dubai Government’s investment arm, in a £50.5 million deal that demonstrates the Gulf emirate’s continued commitment to investment in its tourist industry.

  The QE2 will be then berthed off Dubai’s futuristic Palm Jumeirah development, the world’s largest man-made island on which many celebrities have bought property.

  The liner will undergo a substantial refit, before being tethered to a specially constructed pier where, apart from serving as a luxury hotel, it will be used as a shopping and entertainment destination.

  It will provide much needed hotel rooms at an emirate where, despite a frantic building programme, tourist accommodation is at a premium.

  The refurbishment programme will aim to recreate the ship’s original interior décor and fittings. The resort will also feature a museum dedicated to the history of the QE2, which has carried 2.5 million passengers since its maiden voyage in 1969.

  Its fate echoes that of another iconic ship, the Queen Mary 2, which became a floating hotel off Long Beach, California when it went out of service in 1967 after 31 years afloat.

  The QE2’s sale comes at a time when the cruise industry is flourishing because of an increasing number of retired people with a substantial disposable income.

  More than 1.2 million Britons a year go on cruises and it is estimated that the industry is growing at around 12 per cent a year.

  Even though the QE2 is still the fastest cruise liner in the world, the ship faces competition from newer craft.

  “In ocean going ship terms, she has had a very long life," said Carol Marlow, Cunard’s president and managing director. "It is certainly the longest serving-liner we have ever had, it has outlasted other transatlantic vessels.

  “She is still doing very well in terms of bookings and technologically it is maintaining very well.

  “But because of her age, we would eventually have to find her a new home. The offer from Dubai means that it will be possible to preserve both the ship and the heritage."

  However many will mourn the demise of the liner which not only has carried generations both around the world and across the Atlantic, but also saw service in the Falklands campaign.

  She was requisitioned and used as a troop ship, setting sail for the south Atlantic on May 12, before returning to Southampton on June 11.

  In Dubai, the prospect of providing a new home for the QE2 was greeted with enthusiasm as the resort tries to establish itself as a"global tourist destination."

  Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, chairman of the Government-owned Dubai World, the developers of the Palm Jumeirah, described the ship as"one of the wonders of the maritime world."

  It would, he claimed, have a new home at"the newest wonder of the world."

[Stoat]

The world's most famous cruise liner Uk News News Telegraph

The world's most famous cruise liner

By Laura Clout
 

Last Updated: 11:19am BST 18/06/2007

• Built at the John Brown Shipyard on the Clyde in Scotland, the QE2 came into service in 1969 and is the longest-serving ship in Cunard’s 168-year history.

  It was not until the Queen officially launched the ship in September 1967 that anyone knew what the vessel would be called. Until then, she had been assigned the somewhat unglamorous title of "Job number 736".

  The ship’s first captain was Bill Warwick, who took her on sea trials before her official maiden voyage to Las Palmas on April 22, 1969.

  She remained the Cunard’s flagship until she was replaced by the 150,000-tonne Queen Mary 2 (QM2) in 2004, although the QE2 has carried on cruising.

  Since 1969, the QE2 has undertaken 25 world cruises, has crossed the Atlantic more than 800 times and has carried more than 2.5 million passengers.

  In 1996 during her 20th world cruise, the ship sailed her 4 millionth mile, equivalent to 185 times round the world.

  In 1982, the vessel was requisitioned for the Falklands War as a troop ship.

  She set sail on May 12 that year and arrived safely back in Southampton on June 11, with many of the survivors of the conflict on board.

  The QM2 took over the traditional transatlantic route in 2005, but the QE2 still undertakes an annual world cruise and regular trips to the Mediterranean.

  There has been further speculation over the ship’s future since the announcement that a new Cunard liner, the MS Queen Victoria, would set sail later this year.

  Both the QE2 and QM2 are successors to two famous Cunard vessels - the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth.

  Launched in 1936, the Queen Mary ceased service in 1967 and is now a floating hotel and museum at Long Beach, California.

  The 84,000-tonne Queen Elizabeth was in service from 1940 to 1968 and caught fire and was scrapped in Hong Kong harbour in 1975.

[Stoat]

Huge crowds lined the shores of Sydney Harbour in February this year for an historic reunion between the Queen Mary II (back left) and Queen Elizabeth II (front left) cruise liners
 

A flotilla of yachts crowded the harbour and onlookers were treated to a fireworks display as the giant Cunard ships greeted each other with blasts of their horns.

The £400 million QM2 sailed into the harbour shortly before dawn as part of a round the world cruise

As high as a 23-storey building, she was too tall to sail under the Harbour Bridge and too long to berth at the normal cruise ship terminal at Circular Quay, in the city centre.

Instead the liner, on her maiden visit to Australia, docked at the Royal Australian Navy’s Garden Island naval base
 

A few hours later her sister ship, the QE2, was also welcomed by large crowds as she sailed into the harbour

It was a sight not seen in Sydney since the two ships’ predecessors - the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth - converged on the harbour as troop carriers in 1941 to take Australian soldiers to North Africa and the Middle East

They were nicknamed "grey ghosts" and their arrivals and departures were closely guarded secrets, with stiff penalties for anyone caught photographing them

But there was no such secrecy this time around. After less than 24 hours in port, the 150,000-tonne QM2 departed Sydney for Hong Kong while the QE2 will leave on Thursday for Brisbane

[Abathar]

*sigh*

Sorry but this is very sad. She is just too fine a vessel to have speakers blaring 5 times a day from her so everyone's butts can go in the air on her at the same time....

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Here's a graphic comparing the QM2 to the Titanic -- the Titanic is the smaller one -- (I originally saw this at the Titanic exhibit at the museum here in Victoria, BC):

[Osage Orange]

Very nice pics.........

Thanks-

[britemp]

I watched the QE2 sail past my garden last Friday evening around 7:30 immediately followed by a huge modern ocean liner, Navigator of Seas (IIRC). The older liners are so much more beautiful than the newer floating hotel designs. Will be sad to no longer see her cruise past while I’m tending the barbecue or sipping a Pimms.

[mtbopfuyn]

First it was US ports and now it’s England’s QE2. Speaking from under my foil hat, but Dubai certainly is sticking it’s nose into Western shipping interests lately.

[ThisLittleLightofMine]

Dubai certainly is of interest.

[subterfuge]

Symbolic of the takeover of the west by muslims. At least this is what I think THEY think.

[Moose4]

To me, the QE2 is the most beautiful liner ever. The modern Carnival-style cruise ships (and the QM2) look way too top-heavy and blocky, but the QE2 has wonderful, very sleek lines, like the ocean liners from their heyday in the 1940s and ‘50s. She looks fast even at the dock.

}:-)4

[Sunshine Sister]

I kind of wonder about reconciling western culture with Muslim sensibilities. I would be hard pressed to spend a whole lot of money on accommodations if I couldn't’t have a glass of wine with my meal.

[Anitius Severinus Boethius]

Get on Google earth and look up Dubai. That is one wealthy country to be building the “palm tree islands”, not to mention the islands that look like the globe. It’s insane what they are doing over there.

[GreenLanternCorps]

She won't be a "ship" much longer, like her predecessor RMS Queen Mary, she will be permenantly docked. It is a much better fate that which befell RMS Queen Elizabeth which was being refitted for crusing as Seawise University and burned and sank in Hong Kong harbor. Or indeed SS United States which is mothballed in Philadelphia.

Besides, there is very little US or British flagged shipping anymore. However the "fleets" of Panama, Liberia, and The Bahamas are huge.

[Cicero]

Pity. We took my family over to England for a year on the QE2 in 1974-75, along with a year’s worth of baggage and our VW Bus in the hold. That’s one thing you couldn’t do on an airliner.

[Stoat]

Thank you very much for providing the graphic which shows such an excellent perspective. She is truly a magnificent feat of maritime engineering

[Stoat]

Very nice pics.........

Thanks-

You're quite welcome.  I'm delighted that you've enjoyed them.  :-)

Very nice pics.........

Thanks-

[Stoat]

Pity.

Indeed.  This story brings me (and many others here, as I can see) great sadness.

We took my family over to England for a year on the QE2 in 1974-75, along with a year’s worth of baggage and our VW Bus in the hold. That’s one thing you couldn’t do on an airliner.

What wonderful memories that you and yours can retell for generations.

[britemp]

Couldn’t agree more.

[ßuddaßudd]

I can safely say I water skied the wake of the QE2 as she cruised through the Panama Canal somewhere around 1978. Mighty big wake!

[Kieri]

What wonderful pictures - thank you. My grandfather came home on the QM from WWII during her “Grey Ghost” years. He said she’d been stripped down to bones.