Posted on 08/14/2007 3:05:35 PM PDT by doctor noe
The link, title and content do not match. Please provide a working link to the actual article.
Thank you. That was my mistake and because there was no title, I missed the article in red print on the home page.
There is ongoing discussion about the possibility of turning the QM into a Vegas-style casino. Not sure that will happen since there are many variables and obstacles. As long as it would be upscale, it just might be a good idea.
Just as well when they hit bad weather...
I live in Long Beach, and I have a friend who works on the Queen Mary, and that ship is in bad, bad shape. In some spots, the only thing keeping the water out are layers and layers of marine paint. When an elevator or escalator breaks, they just put up a velvet rope, and it just rots there.
If someone wanted to build a casino there, all they would have to do would be to completely tear it apart and start over again, because it is a death trap. Just a big rusting piece of junk. I’m sorry to say that because I have fond memories of walking the decks when I was a boy— but that was decades ago! Sitting in salt water for years is not an easy thing to brush off. Especially when you’re bankrupt
The QM has been operated for a number of years as, IIRC, a tourist attraction of variegated format; then a hotel, semi-successfully; but it always seems to go back into bankruptcy every few years. You’d think it would be more than adaptable to a number of “amusement” applications, but for whatever reason it never makes it for long. It may have something to do with cruises aboard almost-equivalent-luxury ships being fairly common (and cheap) and the idea that the restaurant spaces aboard the ship are probably quite obsolete and can’t be economically made to conform to current fire codes, or the hallways are too narrow for current codes, or maybe, even just sitting at the parking spot Long Beach has for it (it’s not a “dock”, it’s a sort of lagoon surrounded by rip-rap boulders) it leaks enough oil so that constant cleanup is required....I frankly don’t know. But nobody (even Disney for several years) has been able to make it economically viable.
I’m sure you’re right wrt the general maintenance level and structural condition. I’d have to bet that another big stumbling block is simply the cost of guest insurance: how many things like rails and pipes and rivet heads and davits there are to trip and fall over or crunch your head on. A ship operating at sea falls under a completely different set of laws than a land based hotel, and the insurers probably jacked the rates to the moon since it doesn’t fall into any convenient category. And even when the thing was going pretty well, I don’t think it consistently attracted too many patrons. Sadly, it’s most likley destined for the scrapper before too long.
I bet it was. The QM carried over 15,000 troops at a time, at a cruising speed of 28.5 knots. Pretty impressive.
I stayed on the hotel Queen Mary several times while on business trips. It was like going back in time - glad I had the experience.
MSTS troop ships did half that speed.
Just tow the great lady Queen Mary out to sea and give her a decent burial. Like the USS Maine and HMS Invincible.
That would be a more dignified ending than the scrapyard.
Titanic and her sister Britannic met a tragic end. Their sister Olympic survived only to be broken up for scrap during the Great Depression.
BTW, the great liner SS United States, once America’s pride, lies rusting and derelict in Newport News, VA. She also deserves a merciful burial at sea.
Hear, hear!
Last thing I'd want to see is her getting cut up, melted down, rolled, and drop-hammered into a lot full of Priuses.
No; she's berthed Pier 92 in Philadelphia ^. Can be seen from I-95, and is in piss-poor shape. There are some folks trying to save her, but it will take a lot of money and time.
I made 6 crossings of the Pacific as a youngster in the 1950s but on nothing as nice as the SS United States. My crossings were on the curious and little know US Army’s navy, called Military Sea Transportation Service. Military dependents were in staterooms in the middle and troops were on the fantail and bow sections. Seattle to Yokohama was 14 days at sea.
Re: SS United States
Last time I read about her was in the Washington Times in 1983, she was then in Virginia ports somewhere. Even then she was described as a rustbucket constantly changing hands.
Too bad for a once-great lady. But I have read for years that the maximum serviceable age for twentieth-century ocean liners is about thirty years. I know, my wife and I spent our honeymoon that same year on a lovely liner that was a contemporary of the tragic Andrea Doria, and bore an uncanny resemblance. But at least we felt like we were on board a real ship, and not just a floating casino.
And, off in the distance from Nassau, Bahamas, we saw the SS Norway, formerly the SS France. Google that ship’s ignominious fate.
In 1965 or so my family transited from Germany, Bremerhaven? to NYC it toook a loooog time over 2 weeks IIRC
as far as I could find out a few years back the ship we were on, the USS Darby is still swinging around on a hook in the reserve fleet scheduled for scrapping.
r
From my Dad's memoirs of WWII
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