Tuesday, July 15, 1997
Star Of The Sea

Karlin Lillington takes a small, tossing boat to the stately QE2 on its first visit to Dublin Bay

The grand old star of the cruise ship trade steamed into Dublin Bay yesterday, to prove that even if the facelifts can't quite resurrect her youthful splendour, the competition can't match her for sheer stage presence.

Sleekly dominating the horizon off Dun Laoghaire pier, the shimmering white QE2 with the Cunard trademark red sloping funnel is still a show-stopper and drew admiring crowds throughout the day.

And while boatloads of passengers, mostly of a certain age, were briskly ferried in to explore Dublin's exotic shores and perhaps splurge on a 99, a smaller group headed out towards the "queen".

When Berkeley Court Hotel general manager Tom O'Connor read several months ago that Cunard had added Dublin to the QE2's ports of call, he was on to the president of Cunard in his New York office right away to see if a special day out could be arranged.

As a result, a lazy July morning had metamorphosed into feeding a Berkeley Court breakfast for the Taoiseach and a crowd of ambassadors, officials, and well-heeled frequenters of Doyle Group hotels and then shuttling them all, sans Taoiseach, out to Dun Laoghaire pier, thence by tender to the QE2.

"When you're in the hotel business you're used to doing everything yourself. Now we've had to co-ordinate all these different people," O'Connor said as the coach wound its way through morning traffic. Nervous watch-checks and frequent calls on the ship-to-shore mobile punctuate his conversation. "Just finding out that the QE2 was actually there in the harbour this morning was a bonus."

To truly appreciate the cosmic insignificance of humankind, one simply needs to arrive at the QE2 by a small boat from across a large expanse of water. As the small vessel bucks and tosses in the swell, the QE2 stands in magnificent indifference to the sea. She does not move. You, very definitely, do. Some VIPs are perhaps beginning to regret the lavish breakfast.

As tour guide Len Eden of Cunard's sales and marketing division explains, the QE2 is the last of the great transatlantic cruise ships, the only one left capable of making the Southampton to New York crossing. At one time such ships were the only way to cross the Atlantic, and many a Hollywood film celebrated the glamour of upperdeck life or the horror of the immigrants' cramped journey in steerage.

"She's built to handle the weather," he says, noting that on a recent trip she encountered a 150-foot, mid-Atlantic wave - and ploughed straight through it. You also can't beat the view of Dublin from six storeys up at sea.

Children apparently are considered a rather exotic form of on-board life and are kept busy in a special, supervised, children's area, safely unseen and unheard. "Our passengers tend to be over 40, so they don't necessarily want little children running about," says Eden.

A cruise is a curious sort of holiday where the ports of call are merely an excuse for on-ship gambling, dancing, cinema-going, library-visiting and swimming in the on-deck pool. There's even a foredeck driving cage for the golf addict. But mainly, people seem to go on board to eat.

Passengers are classified, not by where their room is, but by what restaurant they're assigned to; and feeding the QE2 masses is a daily feat. Yesterday's dinner menu - the same fare is served in all restaurants - included four appetisers, three soups, an egg dish, a sorbet, seven entrées and eight desserts. On "lobster night", says Eden, the, shall we say, commonest of the restaurants, will serve up 1,000 lobsters.

After the QE2's much-publicised, disastrous relaunch two-and-a-half years ago, when workmen had not finished the extensive revamp when she returned to sea, everyone is curious to see the famed interior. The general verdict? At 30, she's a bit of a dowager. The interior decor is more matronly than magnificent, but then, she is a child of the 1960s, not the elegant 1930s. Still, the restaurants are nice.