T

HEY stopped on the highway to see her, making Cape Town’s traffic even worse than it usually is, if such a thing were possible. People were moaning about it in the office. “It’s the ship,” they said.

The ship was the Queen Elizabeth, the Cunard line’s 90 000 ton, redfunnelled, art deco, very British giant, which had docked in Cape Town for a two-day visit — enough time for her passengers to see the city, to take the cable car up the mountain and tour the vineyards and make the pilgrimage to Robben Island.

The arrival of Cunard’s third “Queen”, with her black sides and red funnel (the traditional company colours known as “flags”) lent a touch of glamour to E Berth.

While the passengers were ashore, there was time for the press to tour the ship and have lunch in the Britannia restaurant. I wore a jacket and a Cunard-funnel-red tie — something about this ship and the company that built it made me think it would be a sartorial blunder not to. This, after all, is a shipping company whose payoff line is “Advancing civilisation since 1840”.

Walking up sweeping staircases of the Grand Lobby — dominated by a two-deck-high, art deco-inspired artwork of the first Queen Elizabeth setting sail some time in the golden age of sea travel — is a reminder that the company has heritage other cruise lines can only fantasise about. This ship is a Cunard Queen and not an overblown cruise ship with “stylish notes”.

From the paintings and murals to the wood-panelled lounges to the quiet hush and unobtrusive service in its restaurants, the Queen Elizabeth honours the ships that sailed the world under the Cunard flag. Peek into one of the vast Queens Grill suites — 198m² of private space with your own whirlpool bath in the marbled bathroom — and you will know she continues a tradition of luxury ocean-going ships.

This Queen is the third Cunarder to carry the name Elizabeth. The first, RMS Queen Elizabeth (the RMS stands for Royal Mail Ship, a coveted contract from a time when the post meant so much more than bank statements and deliveries from Amazon), launched in September 1938 at Clydebank in Scotland shortly before the outbreak of WW2.

She was almost the same size as the current Queen Elizabeth — 84 000 tons of British steel, 314m long and carrying 2 283 passengers and 1 000 crew, a giant for her time.

The threat of German U-boats prevented her sailing to Southampton to be fitted out. Only when she reached