Dear Captain McNaught,
I was a passenger aboard one of your very first voyages in command of the QE2. I was crossing westboung ex-Southampton 26MAY03, arriving NY 1st June 2003. I had a personal vehicle on board (an M-reg Volvo 850 Estate), and a dozen pieces of hold baggage, which in Southampton had been removed ostensibly for security reasons from the vehicle and placed in the hold baggage room (against my preference that it all be together). Mid-voyage I bumped into you on deck, and asked you if I could have all my hold baggage put back into the vehicle so that on arrival the vehicle could just conveniently be driven off (per my original plan) in one easy neat operation with all baggage aboard. You said politely but firmly no, citing security reasons. The irony was that, in Southampton when they removed all the baggage from the vehicle they evidently could not lift the ten-ton exercise bike so they left that in the vehicle (the fly wheel of which could easily have been stuffed with C4 explosive). So, I ended up having to decant all that hold baggage, pay a porter to move it in the lift downstairs in New York, and then re-pack everything in a rush. When they opened the stern hatches, there was my vehicle -- covered in black garbage bags! (The garbage bags in the 70s I used to watch staff throwing off the stern in the middle of the night, leaving a wake of garbage bags in the cean as far as the eye could see. My question: Was your real reason for saying no the eminently practical problem of getting to the vehicle under all that garbage, or was/is there a real security policy impediment? If the latter how do you explain the exercise bike? In the end that inconvenience cost me a computer (broken by stevedores as they slung it and other hold baggage down the belts). Just wondering. No hard feelings. Wish you the very best in your new position.
