Three Cunard Queens together in Southampton

Courtesy of Southern Evening Echo here is a picture of the three ships (from left to right QE2, QM2 and QV).
Click here to see BBC vid ofThree ‘Queen’ liners in Southampton

This aerial vid of QE2, QV and QM2 all together in the New Docks in Southampton gives an idea of the scale of these things.

Semper’s Granddad had a job managing security in the docks after retiring from the police well over 50 years ago. One perk was that he would take my brother and I into the docks and sometimes even on to the great transatlantic liners of that time. I remember the awesome size of the “Queens” (Mary and Elizabeth) in particular. Great buildings of steel higher than any then on land nearby. And corridors the length of the ships which were not quite horizontal so that the carpeted floor curved up to meet the ceiling in the distance.

The cruise business has breathed new life into this tradition of monumental ship building. How odd that the business of travel (by air, now) has been so separated from the pleasure of it (by ocean liner). Somehow neither is the same as real “voyaging” I believe.