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A Queen Arrives, and Even in Jaded New York, Jaws Drop
April 23, 2004
By JAMES BARRON , New York Times.
Robert D. Jones looked straight ahead as if it were just another morning on just another ship, as if that bridge up ahead were just another bridge.
But the bridge was one of the world's longest suspension spans, and a few miles beyond was one of the world's most famous statues, and a few miles beyond that a narrow pier where a brass band would be playing and a mayor would be waiting and people would be straining for a glimpse of the knifelike bow, the too-tall funnel, the 17 decks. The sun was coming up on a hazy harbor, and Captain Jones was guiding the world's longest ocean liner - the Queen Mary 2 - through some of the world's busiest shipping lanes.
"Trying to find the middle of the bridge," Captain Jones said by way of explanation, as the necklace of the Verrazano-Narrows soared higher and higher above the thick plate glass he was looking through. "I have to be careful. T here are too many people watching." A lot of people were watching, from apartment-house rooftops in Brooklyn, from parking lots and bicycle paths along the Hudson River in Manhattan, from helicopters that swooped low as television camera operators zoomed in on the 1,132-foot-long ship. Leading the way under the bridge and past the Statue of Liberty was a procession of tugboats, police vessels and Coast Guard boats that were dwarfed by the black-and-white leviathan.
"It's almost floating in the air," said Adina Rafeld, who watched in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, as the Queen Mary 2 passed the waterfront park just north of the Verrazano.
Standing on the ship's bridge with a walkie-talkie in one hand and a pair of binoculars within reach of the other was Captain Jones. He is not the captain of the Queen Mary 2, but the harbor pilot who guided it on the last few miles of its maiden voyage to New York. (A docking pilot from a tugboat company took over a few minutes before the ship turned into its berth at the Passenger Ship Terminal on the West Side of Manhattan.)
As things turned out, the Queen Mary 2's first trip into New York Harbor was Captain Jones's last. After 45 years as a harbor pilot, bringing ships up channels that lead from the ocean, Captain Jones, 69, will retire today. But not before he takes the Queen Mary 2 out this morning for an overnight invitational cruise, out of the harbor he brought it into yesterday, the harbor where his father and great-grandfather were pilots before him, the harbor where he has climbed onto "probably over 8,000 ships," the harbor where he has had only one close call boarding moving ships on rope ladders. That happened several years ago with a t anker in rough water. He grabbed for the gunwales. The crew grabbed for his arms, and eventually pulled him in.
Nothing like that happened yesterday. The passage through New York Harbor brought a smooth ending to a six-day maiden cruise from England that began with rough seas. The trip was also slowed by gale-force winds in the North Atlantic and waves that splashed high on a ship that is taller, wider and longer than any other passenger vessel in history. But the $800 million Queen Mary 2 made up the time it had lost, and shortly after 8 a.m., seamen were tying up the ship at the terminal and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was welcoming the passengers and crew.
"Pretty magnificent, huh?" the mayor said. Turning to the captain, Commodore Peter W. Warwick, the m ayor said that if the ship were turned on its end, it would be the second-tallest structure on the New York skyline (taller than the Chrysler Building but shorter than the Empire State Building). "But, commodore," the mayor said, "we don't ask you to do that maneuver. Please keep it right the way it is."
The mayor joked that he had worried that the captain would call from under the Verrazano "and ask us to raise the bridge a little bit." If the Queen Mary 2 were to sail under the Verrazano at high tide, the clearance would be only 13 feet.
"But fortunately you managed to sweep through," the mayor said, "and that was just one of those sights that you'll see in the picture books, 10, 20, 30 years from now. People will look back and say, 'you remember that wonderful day?': the beginning of a colorful tradition."
The ship's arrival had steamship buffs longing for the days when crossing the Atlantic took days, not hours, and when the ships were as stylish as the passengers. But to New Yorkers who watched the Queen Mary amble toward its berth - its speed for most of the way through the harbor was a fraction of its 30-knot maximum - the ship was so out of proportion with everyday reality that it defied the brain's perspective-calculation system.
"Every two minutes it gets closer and you realize how big it is," said Tom Greeley, who was snapping photographs in B attery Park.
Andri Neethling, a chef who lives in Tudor City, had a three-word exclamation when the Queen Mary 2 came into view: "Ah, so beautiful." He will get a closer look at the ship in July: He said he had bought a ticket for a cruise to England.
And so for a couple of hours in the morning, New Yorkers crowded against railings, binoculars hanging around their necks, cameras in their hands, hands curled around their coffee cups, and watched for a ship on its first trip through these waters. They oohed and aahed when the faint outline of something rectilinear became discernible. They watched as its illuminated name, far above the water line, glowed.
Nancy Duval waved a tiny American flag as the ship passed her. She said she was not waving at anyone in particular, and did not know anyone onboard. "No," she said. "I wish. I just had to greet her. She's beautiful."
The Queen Mary measures 236 feet from keel to funnel. That w ould be tall anywhere, but in New York harbor, it is about as close to the maximum as can be. Once it was tied up, the stern stuck more than 100 feet beyond the pier in the Hudson River, where police boats were on patrol.
Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly had said on Tuesday that the police were planning a number of special security measures for the ship's arrival, not because of any specific threat, but because of the all attention the vessel was getting. The police and the Coast Guard will provide security as well for the Queen Mary 2's future visits, said the Police Department's chief spokesman, Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne. But he said the arrangements "will be not as intense and not as visible" as they were yesterday.
Through it all, Captain Jones never touched the throttles, never turned the wheel. But his was the last word for the crew on where to steer the ship, how fast it could go and where the trouble spots lay in the harbor's complicated underwater geography. He long ago memorized where the navigational buoys are - knowledge that helps when, as was the case yesterday, he cannot see them for the early-morning fog.
So he knew when and where, off Brooklyn, the ship had to make two crucial turns on its way to Manhattan.
"We were flying along at 18 knots," he said (to landlubbers, about 20 miles an hour). "I said to the captain, 'How'll she do?' The captain said, 'Fine. She's a lot like the QE2.' I didn't want to hear that. On the QE2, you had to use a lot of rudder. She felt like she was extremely heavy. But this thing pranced around. Just magnificent."
Soon another captain was calling the Queen Mary 2 on the radio: "Let's hear what the lungs sound like on that ship."
Captain Jones turned to Commodore Warwick: "Let's blow a salute."
The first officer, Othello Ghoshroy, said, "Whistle, sir?" Commodore Warwick nodded, and soon four long blasts s ounded. The carpeted floor on the bridge shook each time, as it did later, when Captain Jones asked for another salute as the Queen Mary 2 passed the site of the World Trade Center.
And then, after handing off to the docking pilot and watching the nautical ballet at the pier, Captain Jones disembarked. No ladders this time, he said - he went out the way the passengers did - and retirement was only a day away.
"You're only as good as your last job," he said, "and this was pretty good."
Winnie Hu, Andy Newman and Susan Saulny contributed reporting for this article.
wcyclops @ aol.com wrote: For a great article from the New York Times. See
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/23/nyregion/23queen.html?th
By JAMES BARRON , New York Times.
Robert D. Jones looked straight ahead as if it were just another morning on just another ship, as if that bridge up ahead were just another bridge.
But the bridge was one of the world's longest suspension spans, and a few miles beyond was one of the world's most famous statues, and a few miles beyond that a narrow pier where a brass band would be playing and a mayor would be waiting and people would be straining for a glimpse of the knifelike bow, the too-tall funnel, the 17 decks. The sun was coming up on a hazy harbor, and Captain Jones was guiding the world's longest ocean liner - the Queen Mary 2 - through some of the world's busiest shipping lanes.
"Trying to find the middle of the bridge," Captain Jones said by way of explanation, as the necklace of the Verrazano-Narrows soared higher and higher above the thick plate glass he was looking through. "I have to be careful. T here are too many people watching." A lot of people were watching, from apartment-house rooftops in Brooklyn, from parking lots and bicycle paths along the Hudson River in Manhattan, from helicopters that swooped low as television camera operators zoomed in on the 1,132-foot-long ship. Leading the way under the bridge and past the Statue of Liberty was a procession of tugboats, police vessels and Coast Guard boats that were dwarfed by the black-and-white leviathan.
"It's almost floating in the air," said Adina Rafeld, who watched in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, as the Queen Mary 2 passed the waterfront park just north of the Verrazano.
Standing on the ship's bridge with a walkie-talkie in one hand and a pair of binoculars within reach of the other was Captain Jones. He is not the captain of the Queen Mary 2, but the harbor pilot who guided it on the last few miles of its maiden voyage to New York. (A docking pilot from a tugboat company took over a few minutes before the ship turned into its berth at the Passenger Ship Terminal on the West Side of Manhattan.)
As things turned out, the Queen Mary 2's first trip into New York Harbor was Captain Jones's last. After 45 years as a harbor pilot, bringing ships up channels that lead from the ocean, Captain Jones, 69, will retire today. But not before he takes the Queen Mary 2 out this morning for an overnight invitational cruise, out of the harbor he brought it into yesterday, the harbor where his father and great-grandfather were pilots before him, the harbor where he has climbed onto "probably over 8,000 ships," the harbor where he has had only one close call boarding moving ships on rope ladders. That happened several years ago with a t anker in rough water. He grabbed for the gunwales. The crew grabbed for his arms, and eventually pulled him in.
Nothing like that happened yesterday. The passage through New York Harbor brought a smooth ending to a six-day maiden cruise from England that began with rough seas. The trip was also slowed by gale-force winds in the North Atlantic and waves that splashed high on a ship that is taller, wider and longer than any other passenger vessel in history. But the $800 million Queen Mary 2 made up the time it had lost, and shortly after 8 a.m., seamen were tying up the ship at the terminal and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg was welcoming the passengers and crew.
"Pretty magnificent, huh?" the mayor said. Turning to the captain, Commodore Peter W. Warwick, the m ayor said that if the ship were turned on its end, it would be the second-tallest structure on the New York skyline (taller than the Chrysler Building but shorter than the Empire State Building). "But, commodore," the mayor said, "we don't ask you to do that maneuver. Please keep it right the way it is."
The mayor joked that he had worried that the captain would call from under the Verrazano "and ask us to raise the bridge a little bit." If the Queen Mary 2 were to sail under the Verrazano at high tide, the clearance would be only 13 feet.
"But fortunately you managed to sweep through," the mayor said, "and that was just one of those sights that you'll see in the picture books, 10, 20, 30 years from now. People will look back and say, 'you remember that wonderful day?': the beginning of a colorful tradition."
The ship's arrival had steamship buffs longing for the days when crossing the Atlantic took days, not hours, and when the ships were as stylish as the passengers. But to New Yorkers who watched the Queen Mary amble toward its berth - its speed for most of the way through the harbor was a fraction of its 30-knot maximum - the ship was so out of proportion with everyday reality that it defied the brain's perspective-calculation system.
"Every two minutes it gets closer and you realize how big it is," said Tom Greeley, who was snapping photographs in B attery Park.
Andri Neethling, a chef who lives in Tudor City, had a three-word exclamation when the Queen Mary 2 came into view: "Ah, so beautiful." He will get a closer look at the ship in July: He said he had bought a ticket for a cruise to England.
And so for a couple of hours in the morning, New Yorkers crowded against railings, binoculars hanging around their necks, cameras in their hands, hands curled around their coffee cups, and watched for a ship on its first trip through these waters. They oohed and aahed when the faint outline of something rectilinear became discernible. They watched as its illuminated name, far above the water line, glowed.
Nancy Duval waved a tiny American flag as the ship passed her. She said she was not waving at anyone in particular, and did not know anyone onboard. "No," she said. "I wish. I just had to greet her. She's beautiful."
The Queen Mary measures 236 feet from keel to funnel. That w ould be tall anywhere, but in New York harbor, it is about as close to the maximum as can be. Once it was tied up, the stern stuck more than 100 feet beyond the pier in the Hudson River, where police boats were on patrol.
Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly had said on Tuesday that the police were planning a number of special security measures for the ship's arrival, not because of any specific threat, but because of the all attention the vessel was getting. The police and the Coast Guard will provide security as well for the Queen Mary 2's future visits, said the Police Department's chief spokesman, Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne. But he said the arrangements "will be not as intense and not as visible" as they were yesterday.
Through it all, Captain Jones never touched the throttles, never turned the wheel. But his was the last word for the crew on where to steer the ship, how fast it could go and where the trouble spots lay in the harbor's complicated underwater geography. He long ago memorized where the navigational buoys are - knowledge that helps when, as was the case yesterday, he cannot see them for the early-morning fog.
So he knew when and where, off Brooklyn, the ship had to make two crucial turns on its way to Manhattan.
"We were flying along at 18 knots," he said (to landlubbers, about 20 miles an hour). "I said to the captain, 'How'll she do?' The captain said, 'Fine. She's a lot like the QE2.' I didn't want to hear that. On the QE2, you had to use a lot of rudder. She felt like she was extremely heavy. But this thing pranced around. Just magnificent."
Soon another captain was calling the Queen Mary 2 on the radio: "Let's hear what the lungs sound like on that ship."
Captain Jones turned to Commodore Warwick: "Let's blow a salute."
The first officer, Othello Ghoshroy, said, "Whistle, sir?" Commodore Warwick nodded, and soon four long blasts s ounded. The carpeted floor on the bridge shook each time, as it did later, when Captain Jones asked for another salute as the Queen Mary 2 passed the site of the World Trade Center.
And then, after handing off to the docking pilot and watching the nautical ballet at the pier, Captain Jones disembarked. No ladders this time, he said - he went out the way the passengers did - and retirement was only a day away.
"You're only as good as your last job," he said, "and this was pretty good."
Winnie Hu, Andy Newman and Susan Saulny contributed reporting for this article.
wcyclops @ aol.com wrote: For a great article from the New York Times. See
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/23/nyregion/23queen.html?th
Queen Mary 2 arrives in New York
Largest ocean liner creates a stir
ELIZABETH SANGER , Newsday
NEW YORK - The Queen Mary 2 arrived Thursday, and New York was barely big enough to hold her.
Billed as the world's biggest ocean liner, the 1,132-foot QM2 emerged from the fog, squeezed under the Verrazano Bridge and came into New York harbor Thursday morning. It was greeted by fireboats that saluted with water sprays, an escort of police boats, helicopters buzzing overhead and tugboats on standby, in case they were needed. They weren't.
That old expression - "It's like trying to turn around the Queen Mary" - no longer holds. While it's 100 feet longer than the original ship, this one turns on a dime, thanks to three thrusters. In no time flat the ship turned 90 degrees, going from a horizontal position between two piers into a vertical one ready to head into the berth, all with the ease of a kid twirling a toy boat in a bathtub. It's steered by a joystick that can move the four-city-block-long vessel sideways or at an angle.
The marching band of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy stood at the tip of Pier 92 to greet the newest royal member of the Cunard fleet as it came into port, playing to both sides of the Atlantic with "God Save the Queen" and "New York, New York."
Queen Mary 2 is nothing if not punctual. At 7:57 a.m., six days after it left Southampton, England, it was alongside the pier, right on schedule, having made up for time lost at sea amid two massive storms.
After the ship docked, Mayor Michael Bloomberg welcomed the vessel and Cunard officials to New York, which will be QM2's home port in the United States.
Those among the passengers and crew said Thursday that they had to spend much of the voyage inside after being warned to stay off the decks because of heavy winds, by one account up to 70 knots, and many were seasick.
"Everyone acted like they were drunk, staggering down the halls," said Carolyn Bordelon, an accountant from Houston. "But if I had the money I'd take it again."
Some ocean-liner fanatics like Christopher Dougherty, national director of the Steamship Historical Society of America, booked his passage before the boat was even built.
"It's keeping ocean liner travel alive," he said, and the QM2 mixes the ultimate in technology with the history of its grand predecessors.
Many raved about the voyage, thrilled they were part of a select group that had experienced a historic adventure.
"People didn't hesitate to put on tuxedos even with the waves all around them," said Ellie Gottwald, an actress from Los Angeles who went with her husband to celebrate her 40th birthday. "But I felt bad for the servers."
June and Leslie Jones of Dorset, England, are staying in New York until Sunday and then hopping back on for the return voyage home.
"The entertainment was out of this world," June said, "equal to any Broadway or West End show."
Myla Edwards of Louisville, Ky., who was traveling with her daughter-in-law, said the amenities couldn't compare to those on the sister ship QE2 because of the sheer number of passengers. With 2,600 guests and 150 seats in the planetarium, she had to go early to get in. She also was miffed that only higher-paying customers got their pictures taken with the captain.
"I felt like I was a second-class citizen," Edwards, 58, said. "Overall it was lovely, but I like the QE2 better."
On the last day of the trip, Allen and Barbara Raymond of Westport, Conn., were still getting lost, having ended up on the wrong side of the ship, headed the wrong way, after breakfast, trying to locate their stateroom.
"We never found our way around," she said, despite the maps Cunard hands out.
From:- http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/8498248.htm
ELIZABETH SANGER , Newsday
NEW YORK - The Queen Mary 2 arrived Thursday, and New York was barely big enough to hold her.
Billed as the world's biggest ocean liner, the 1,132-foot QM2 emerged from the fog, squeezed under the Verrazano Bridge and came into New York harbor Thursday morning. It was greeted by fireboats that saluted with water sprays, an escort of police boats, helicopters buzzing overhead and tugboats on standby, in case they were needed. They weren't.
That old expression - "It's like trying to turn around the Queen Mary" - no longer holds. While it's 100 feet longer than the original ship, this one turns on a dime, thanks to three thrusters. In no time flat the ship turned 90 degrees, going from a horizontal position between two piers into a vertical one ready to head into the berth, all with the ease of a kid twirling a toy boat in a bathtub. It's steered by a joystick that can move the four-city-block-long vessel sideways or at an angle.
The marching band of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy stood at the tip of Pier 92 to greet the newest royal member of the Cunard fleet as it came into port, playing to both sides of the Atlantic with "God Save the Queen" and "New York, New York."
Queen Mary 2 is nothing if not punctual. At 7:57 a.m., six days after it left Southampton, England, it was alongside the pier, right on schedule, having made up for time lost at sea amid two massive storms.
After the ship docked, Mayor Michael Bloomberg welcomed the vessel and Cunard officials to New York, which will be QM2's home port in the United States.
Those among the passengers and crew said Thursday that they had to spend much of the voyage inside after being warned to stay off the decks because of heavy winds, by one account up to 70 knots, and many were seasick.
"Everyone acted like they were drunk, staggering down the halls," said Carolyn Bordelon, an accountant from Houston. "But if I had the money I'd take it again."
Some ocean-liner fanatics like Christopher Dougherty, national director of the Steamship Historical Society of America, booked his passage before the boat was even built.
"It's keeping ocean liner travel alive," he said, and the QM2 mixes the ultimate in technology with the history of its grand predecessors.
Many raved about the voyage, thrilled they were part of a select group that had experienced a historic adventure.
"People didn't hesitate to put on tuxedos even with the waves all around them," said Ellie Gottwald, an actress from Los Angeles who went with her husband to celebrate her 40th birthday. "But I felt bad for the servers."
June and Leslie Jones of Dorset, England, are staying in New York until Sunday and then hopping back on for the return voyage home.
"The entertainment was out of this world," June said, "equal to any Broadway or West End show."
Myla Edwards of Louisville, Ky., who was traveling with her daughter-in-law, said the amenities couldn't compare to those on the sister ship QE2 because of the sheer number of passengers. With 2,600 guests and 150 seats in the planetarium, she had to go early to get in. She also was miffed that only higher-paying customers got their pictures taken with the captain.
"I felt like I was a second-class citizen," Edwards, 58, said. "Overall it was lovely, but I like the QE2 better."
On the last day of the trip, Allen and Barbara Raymond of Westport, Conn., were still getting lost, having ended up on the wrong side of the ship, headed the wrong way, after breakfast, trying to locate their stateroom.
"We never found our way around," she said, despite the maps Cunard hands out.
From:- http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/8498248.htm
NYC christened by Queen Mary 2
NEW YORK (AP) — The world's largest passenger liner, the Queen Mary 2, arrived in New York on Thursday, steaming up the Hudson River and docking for the first time against the backdrop of a hazy Manhattan skyline.
Great article from USA Today at:-
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-04-22-qm2_x.htm
Great article from USA Today at:-
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-04-22-qm2_x.htm