Liverpool to celebrate Queen’s berth day

Mersey plays host to the world’s biggest liner as the QM2 sails into her home port. Peter Elson reports
FOR decades, it was hoped that Cunard Line would bring its two great superliners Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth into their home port of Liverpool.
Instead, they stuck resolutely to Southampton as their UK base, the official reason being that the liners’ draft was too deep to cross the Mersey Bar.
It was only in 1990, long after these two great ships had left service, that their slightly smaller replacement, Queen Elizabeth 2, finally visited Cunard Line’s birthplace.
Now the biggest transatlantic liner of all time, Queen Mary 2 will finally achieve what the two original Queens failed to do: visit Liverpool.
QM2, which has replaced QE2 as Cunard flagship, will call at Liverpool during a round-Britain cruise a week tomorrow, on Tuesday, October 20.
The megaliner will officially celebrate her fifth anniversary while in Liverpool, although her maiden voyage was actually in January, 2004.
But then, as with Her Majesty the Queen, birthdays are movable Royal feasts.
With a gross tonnage of 148,528, she is considerably larger than the previous largest liner to visit Liverpool, Crown Princess, 116,000 gross tons.
It will be an astonishing sight to view this vast vessel of 16 decks, towering 200ft above the waterline, coming up the Crosby Channel and into the Mersey.
Under the command of Commodore Bernard Warner, she will dock at Liverpool Cruise Liner Terminal.
Commodore Ronald Warwick, who was aboard when QE2 inaugurated the terminal and was QM2’s first master, hails from a celebrated Merseyside maritime family.
From the QE2, he could see the Rock Ferry birthplace of his father, the legendary Capt Bil Warwick, the Royal Hotel, which his grandmother managed (she later ran the Lord Nelson Hotel, by Lime Street station).
Warwick senior and junior are the only father and son to have served as captains during the 165-year history of the Cunard Line.
Both had the further distinction of having commanded the company's former flagship, the QE2. Bil was her first captain and Ron took command in 1997.
Both men also trained at the Anglesey-based Merchant Navy training school, HMS Conway, as teenage cadets.
“I’m such a big fan of Liverpool and so very glad QM2 is going there at last. I’ve tremendous admiration for Samuel Cunard and his heritage here is fantastic,” says Commodore Warwick.
“He had the vision of the first transatlantic steamship service in 1840 with the Britannia from Coburg Dock, in Liverpool. Now, nearly 170 years later, the ultimate transatlantic liner belonging to the same company, wearing the same livery, will be in the same city.
“However, I wish Commodore Warner, who took over from me, all the best. The Mersey is not the most comfortable river to go in.
“I remember when Capt Robin Woodall, from Hoylake, brought QE2 in the first time he didn’t dare leave the ship as she was moving about so much at her anchorage.”
Source: liverpoolecho.co.uk