In a history of 120 years of crusing, did QE2 play a significant role?

[Rob Lightbody]

Ships Monthly this month has a huge feature about 120 years of cruising.

Its a great read, however QE2 barely gets a mention.

Is that fair?

To my mind, she had a huge role to play.  Wasn't she the first liner to be built with cruising capability designed in?  Wasn't she the only large ship designed for cruising to run through the 70s?  Didn't they say during that time that she'd be the last really large cruise ship?

Interested in your thoughts.

[Peter Mugridge]

It'd certainly agree it's not fair.

QE2 has a big part in that history - to omit her is to write an incomplete history.

[Ben Zabulis]

She certainly made an impact on those of us who grew up in the 60s and 70s, an era of amazing engineering achievement from Concorde to the Apollo space missions - QE2, to us young'uns, was the seaborn equivalent ! I wonder also if QE2 was the liner that helped promote the transition from sea travel as a purposeful journey, a means of actually getting somewhere, to 'cruising' as a holiday format. Then again, maybe our preference for QE2 is simply a generational thing.

[Barumfox]

I have read the article and QE2 should have had a bigger reference - she was not ground breaking in being designed for a dual purpose ocean liner / cruise ship role (the Empress of Britain between the wars and the Rotterdam of 1959 preceded her in this) but she was the most high profile and successful in being able to maintain both roles for 35 years before the successor she inspired, QM2, took over the Atlantic crossings in 2004. Of course QE2 also holds the record for most miles sailed and was the largest passenger ship in service between 1974 and 1980.

Rotterdam switched to permanent cruising a lot earlier in her career and should also have received more coverage in the article - which was actually very interesting and enlightening - was not aware of the ex-P&O Ceylon having a claim for the first 'world cruise' in 1882 - but demonstrated that not everything can be covered in such a wide topic in thirty pages.

Gary