Warner: Days of Future Past

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Two key anniversaries in 2013 show how wrong experts can be.















Competition for the dwindling market was fierce, and a ship's main draws – service and style – were often hurt by budget-cutting owners. Ocean liners began retiring or moving into cruising.

When Cunard's Queen Elizabeth 2 entered service in 1969, many believed she would be the last large ocean liner ever built. Her raked prow and long, thin lines showed her lineage as an ocean liner. But layout had been radically altered to include more balconies. Purists were aghast. When she wasn't making Atlantic crossings, she would operate as a cruise ship. Perhaps one day, that would be all she would do.

By the 1970s, Queen Elizabeth 2 was doing more cruises, and when she did make Atlantic crossings, she pretty much had the North Atlantic to herself. A National Geographic documentary wondered how such an anachronism could survive “in the age of Concorde.”

But SSTs weren't doing any better. Faced with technological challenges, design changes, environmental concerns and airlines suddenly balking at the price of operating SSTs, programs were hit hard. Fuel prices became a huge expense. Concorde made its first flight in March 1969, but it didn't enter airline service until January 1976.

The most dramatic part of a Concorde flight was the takeoff. The pilot lit the afterburners on the four Rolls-Royce/Snecma Olympus 593 engines, and each roared to life with 38,000 pounds of thrust. They pushed the plane down the runway at 250 mph – about 100 mph faster than a conventional jetliner takeoff. It was dramatic, but the definition of gas-guzzling.

Boeing shelved its SST program after only a mock-up was built. Concorde saw its order book shrink. Pan Am never did buy any Concordes. In the end 20 were sold, to the national airlines of the jet-building countries – British Airways and Air France.

It turned out bigger was better than faster. Boeing's 747 was part of a new wave of “jumbo jets” that could drive down the price of operating long-distance flights.

Meanwhile, coincidental timing hit the dwindling Atlantic crossing business. In 1997, the movie “Titanic” was released, using the 1912 disaster as a backdrop for a love story that class, time and even death couldn't extinguish. Though graphically showing the ship hitting an iceberg, slowly sinking, and more than 1,000 people drowning and freezing to death, it ignited an interest in the Atlantic crossing.

Cunard had struggled along for several years under British and Norwegian conglomerates. In 1998, it was sold to Carnival Corp. of Miami, which had been rapidly adding famous names (Holland America, Princess) to its roster of cruise lines.

While other companies might have run away from a disaster movie featuring their type of transport, Carnival embraced it, seeing “Titanic” as a marketing tool, especially for baby boomers and younger passengers who didn't usually choose Cunard.

The strategy worked, and Carnival's investment in the small line was soon without doubt. It committed $900 million to building Queen Mary 2, at the time the longest, widest and tallest passenger ship ever built.

While its egregiously large number of balconies marks her as a cruise ship, the massive raked prow (with its bulbous underwater nose) signals this is an ocean liner. On the maiden crossing, we were hit by heaving seas, and the QM2 cut through them like an ax head on kindling.

The success of Queen Mary 2 had some thinking a renaissance in ocean crossings might be at hand. Norwegian Cruise Lines briefly flirted with the idea of renovating the mothballed SS United States, but the plan never amounted to much. The “Big U” still sits, scruffy but speedy looking, at a wharf near downtown Philadelphia.

Once, only three airlines in the world had SSTs: British Airways, Air France and Aeroflot (flying Russian's Tu-144). Plagued with crashes and emergency landings, Aeroflot stopped carrying passengers in the early 1980s.

Concorde was kept for its prestige. In July 2000, an Air France Concorde flight bound for New York crashed on takeoff in Paris, killing 109 passengers and crew.

Then came 9/11 and the general downturn in travel, along with a decision by Airbus to end its maintenance program for the plane. Air France flew its last Concorde flight in May 2003. British Airways stopped Concorde service in October 2003.

The dream of the SST – or something like it – has also not completely faded.

There has been talk of a hypersonic aircraft, which would essentially skirt the edge of space to fly between New York and Tokyo in about an hour. But that technology is a decade or more away.

Boeing announced in 2000 that it was planning a Sonic Cruiser, a futuristic looking jet that would fly just under the speed of sound, negating many of the environmental concerns of Concorde. But with 9/11, the plan was shelved and Boeing moved ahead with its energy-saving 787.

Concorde taught the Europeans they needed to work together to compete. Airbus, which sold its first plane in 1974, is a European consortium that challenges and sometimes surpasses Boeing. It's double-deck A380 is the world's largest passenger airplane.

On the seas, Queen Mary 2 continue the great crossing tradition. Some Cunard veterans, including me, complain about the diminishing Britishness of the line and the lack of the strong roster of speakers and celebrities that used to be the standard on themed cruises. Cunard gave the storied name Queen Elizabeth to a standard-issue cruise ship.

But Queen Mary 2 puts Cunard in a class by itself as an ocean liner. And the line is unabashed about its influences.

I could sit in my cabin in the middle of the Atlantic and on my TV is a movie with an ocean liner sinking and the bulk of its passengers perishing. I doubt an airline would play “Flight.” Cunard's message: We are the successor to all the class and beauty you see in “Titanic,” but we have enough lifeboats, pumping mechanisms and other devices and protocols that make the trip perfectly safe.

Queen Mary 2 also doesn't have one thing that turned out to be a killer for Titanic and other ocean liners: an urge for speed and time.

Once ocean liners competed to see who was the fastest across the Atlantic.

But 61 years later, the SS United States still holds the record for fastest ocean liner in the world. At 150,000 tons, Queen Mary 2 is pushed along by engines generating 120,000 horsepower.

The SS United States, built in cooperation with the U.S. Navy for possible future use as a quick transport during wartime, had one-third that weight but more than twice the horsepower

Queen Mary 2 makes the crossing in six days, compared to the three of the SS United States.

Yes, it is still a crossing. But it has also become a cruise. Just one with only two ports – and a lot of history.

Contact the writer: or 714-796-7771

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