Sunday Times

Sink or swim

The QE2’s fresh start as a floating hotel is a rare success story, writes Paul Ash

-

Most of the time it goes badly for those grand old passenger liners when they are bought by dreamyeyed investors wanting to cash in on good pedigree and unbeatable nostalgia. Cunard’s first Queen Elizabeth — sold to an entreprene­ur, who planned to use her as a floating hotel and university — burned and capsized in Hong Kong harbour. Her Cunard sister, the original Queen Mary — now bereft of her engines but apparently full of ghosts — ekes out a living as a tourist attraction in Long Beach, California.

Meanwhile, in Philadelph­ia, the SS United States — still the holder of the Blue Riband trophy for the fastest transatlan­tic crossing by ocean liner (three days, 10 hours, 40 minutes at an average speed of 65.91 km/h, done on her maiden voyage in July 1952) is a rotting and increasing­ly unloved eyesore on the city’s skyline.

Her company sister, the SS America, broke away from her tugs while being towed to Asia — to be converted into a hotel — and beached herself on Fuertevent­ura in the Canary Islands, where she certainly became a tourist attraction but not in the way her last owners intended.

THE STARS CAME OUT

Of all the great ships, the SS France — built in the late ’50s, even as air travel throttled the transatlan­tic ocean trade — should have ended her days like the QE2.

The France was the spirit and culture of her home country, baked into a 315m-long vessel with the exquisite lines of a Thoroughbr­ed horse. Her interiors reflected the dreams of a fast-reviving postwar France. She was stuffed with art, including — briefly — the Mona Lisa, which she carried from France to New York for exhibition.

Her passengers included Audrey Hepburn, the Beatles, Salvador Dali, Cary Grant, Tennessee Williams and Andy

Warhol.

New York food critic Craig Claiborne called the ship’s Grille Room the “best French restaurant in the world”, and there was even a gourmet menu for passengers’ pets.

As a mark of the transatlan­tic ties for which she was built, the dog kennels had an exercise run fitted with both a Parisian milestone and a New York City fire hydrant.

THE PIER OF THE FORGOTTEN

But in 1974, as the global oil crisis hit, the French government, balking at funding the SS France’s expensive habits, announced that she would be withdrawn from the Atlantic run and sold. After a three-week mutiny by her crew, the ship was towed to the “quai de l’oubli” — the pier of the forgotten — in the estuary at Le Havre.

She did get a second life as the cruise ship SS Norway for Norwegian Cruise Lines, which spent $18m refitting her for service in the Caribbean. But by the turn of the century, she had been outclassed — if not in style, then in economics — by newer, bigger, uglier ships. A boiler explosion in 2003 that killed eight of her crew was the final blow.

After much legal wrangling, the SS Blue Lady, neé SS France, was towed into the filthy shallows for scrapping at Alang in

India in 2007.

In little more than a year, she was cut to pieces and, literally, disappeare­d off the face of the Earth. ●

L

 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from South Africa