Send As SMS

CRUISE LINKS (with Gary Bembridge)

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Cunard to bid icon Warwick a fond farewell

 
Cunard to bid icon Warwick a fond farewell
By Michael Coleman 07/13/2006
email this storyEmail to a friendpost a commentPost a Commentprinter friendlyPrinter-friendly
Commodore Ronald Warwick, standing on the bridge of the Queen Mary 2, will host his final Cunard Line voyage later this month after 36 years of service.
In the year 1970, IBM introduced the floppy disc, Monday Night Football was born, The Beatles broke up, Kansas City won a Super Bowl and Brazil knocked off Italy for the World Cup.

1970 was a year full of promise, and a time when a young seaman joined the Cunard Line.

My, how times flies... even on the high seas!

Later this month, Commodore Ronald Warwick will retire from arguably the most famous cruise line in the world after 36 years of service. He will step down on July 31 after his final transatlantic crossing, from New York to Southampton.

The Commodore and his wife, Kim, will host a variety of functions onboard Queen Mary 2 during the six-day voyage, departing July 24. Special lunches will be held in the Commodore's honor in both New York and Southampton and passengers will take part in a "Commodore's Dinner" during the voyage, complete with a commemorative menu.

Captaining Cunard Queens is something of a Warwick family tradition. Commodore Warwick holds the unique distinction in Cunard Line's long history of notable captains by following in the footsteps of his late father, Commodore William Warwick, who sailed as Master of the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, was the first Master appointed to Queen Elizabeth 2 in 1968, and was also promoted to Commodore of the fleet in 1970.

Commodore Ronald Warwick joined Cunard Line as a Third Officer in 1970. Frequent Marco Island cruisers have no doubt shared a table with the bearded icon, much less an onboard photo opportunity, while plying the global seas in luxury.

He first sailed as Captain in 1986 onboard Cunard Princess and also sailed in command of the Cunard Countess and Cunard Crown Dynasty before his appointment as Master of Queen Elizabeth 2 in July of 1990. From April of 1996, he sailed permanently as Senior Master on board Queen Elizabeth 2 until his appointment as Master-designate of Queen Mary 2 in 2002. At the time it was the biggest (151,400 tons), longest (1,132 feet), tallest (236 feet), widest (135 feet) and most expensive passenger liner ($800 million) ever built.

In December of 2003, he was promoted to the rank of Commodore of the Cunard fleet.

In June of 2005, Commodore Warwick's service to the Merchant Navy was recognized. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth.

Commodore Warwick also holds the rank of Captain in the Royal Naval Reserve and is a Fellow of the Nautical Institute.

Cunard Line ships have crossed the Atlantic every year since 1840. Even onboard the Queen Mary 2 today, the past comes to life through the Maritime Quest exhibition, the first permanent exhibition on an ocean liner where deck upon deck and corridor upon corridor trace Cunard's proud history since its founding in 1839.

Cruise Guide columnist Michael Coleman, a former newspaper editor, was a public relations executive for major cruise lines in Fort Lauderdale and Los Angeles. He welcomes your feedback at cruiseguide@hotmail.com.

©Marco Island Sun Times 2006

Inbox full of spam? Get leading spam protection and 1GB storage with All New Yahoo! Mail.

posted by Gary B at 7/13/2006 07:30:47 AM  

Thursday, July 06, 2006

'I Dos' won't be don'ts aboard Queen Mary - Some couples fear ship won't be around for their weddings.

 
By Wendy Thomas Russell, Staff writer
LONG BEACH -- Some couples with nuptials planned aboard the Queen Mary are experiencing wedding-day jitters of a different sort: Wondering whether the venue will still be around when they take their vows.
 
Operators of the historic ship say the jitters are a result of recent media attention focused on the impending auction of Queen's Seaport Development Inc., which leases the city-owned ocean liner. And officials want to assure wedding parties that the auction is expected to have little or no effect on the attraction's day-to-day activities.
 
“It's just a change of operator,” says Howard Ehrenberg, who took over as trustee for the bankrupt QSDI in April. “We all know the ship is not going anywhere.”
 
Joseph Prevratil, the company's former CEO who still runs the nonprofit RMS Foundation, said special events account for 40 percent of QSDI's profits, so it's important that the confusion be cleared up quickly. He said any buyer would likely want a fluid transition, so that weddings, trade shows and the like would experience as few interruptions as possible.
 
“There would be no reason for (the ship) to close,” Prevratil said, “even temporarily.”
 
The Queen Mary's event staff began fielding calls from concerned individuals two weeks ago after Ehrenberg filed a status report with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Los Angeles that announced his decision to put QSDI up for an “auction-style sale.”
 
Any buyer, he said, would be expected to offer a sum large enough to pay off all of the estate's debts estimated at some $42 million. But, in the end, the buyer would simply own the lease to the ship and the land surrounding it; the city owns the ship and has no plans to move or sell it.
 
Ehrenberg also provided an update on his negotiations
<A TARGET="_blank" HREF="http://ad.doubleclick.net/click%3Bh=v6|341a|3|0|%2a|v%3B27901423%3B0-0%3B5%3B11628882%3B255-0|0%3B17254207|17272102|1%3B%3B%7Esscs%3D%3fhttp://www.la.com/blog/weblog.php"><IMG SRC="http://m1.2mdn.net/951574/300x250blogs.gif" BORDER=0></A>
with various creditors involved in legal disputes with QSDI, including the city of Long Beach, which claims to be owed at least $4 million in back rent. Despite the contentious nature of some of the disputes in the past, the trustee said he already had made great strides in moving most cases toward successful resolutions.
 
The one exception, he said, involved the Las Vegas-based Bandero a company that owns a 24 percent interest in QSDI and claims to own development rights to the land adjacent to the ship. He called that case “a mess.”
 
Ehrenberg said part of his job, as QSDI's interim CEO, is to help build the ship's revenue. That's one reason he became particularly concerned about the potential dip in event bookings caused by general confusion over the ship's future.
 
“It's hard to know the negative it has already caused,” Ehrenberg said.
It's not the first time that QSDI's behind-the-scenes legal problems have directly threatened the ship's business. When the company declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2005, it caused a flurry of angst among some marriage-bound couples who worried they would be left without an altar.
 
As it turned out, the ship stayed put, the altars remained, and dozens of weddings went off without a hitch.
Wendy Thomas Russell can be reached at wendy.russell@presstelegram.com or (562) 499-1272.

Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail . "The New Version is radically easier to use" – The Wall Street Journal

posted by Gary B at 7/06/2006 07:43:35 AM  

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Queen Victoria finally makes it into Cunard fleet

 
By BASIL DEAKIN
I DON’T know how things are managed in the hereafter, should such an ethereal region exist. But I like to think that in the past few weeks, the spirits of the gentlemen who managed the board of Cunard Steamship Company back in 1934 were chuckling and back-slapping. They may even have chortled, "And about time, too!" as they looked down on the keel of the new Cunard liner Queen Victoria being laid down at Fincantieri shipyard, near Venice, Italy.
 
They had tried to get an earlier Cunarder named Victoria. Work on Hull 534 stopped at John Brown’s shipyard at Clydebank, Scotland, in December 1931 because of the Great Depression. Three years later, work on the massive ship was restarted with financial aid from the British government. The story goes that the Cunard chairman asked King George V for permission to name the new vessel after "England’s most illustrious Queen," meaning Queen Victoria. The bluff, bearded sailor king replied, "My wife will be delighted!"
 
Thus, Hull 534 became RMS Queen Mary, arguably the 20th century’s most famous ocean liner. She was Atlantic Blue Riband speed record holder, wartime troop carrier par excellence, and a post-war war-bride transporter. Then, before the jet age killed regular transatlantic surface travel, with her 80,000-ton sister Queen Elizabeth, she plied the North Atlantic route profitably for two decades.
 
Our spectral pre-war Cunard executives may have been puzzled, of course, as to why a new Cunarder was being built in Italy, just as they may have expressed frustration that the Queen Mary 2 – at 150,000 tons, the world’s largest liner when built and now second largest – was the product of a French shipyard. Then again, these shadowy characters could be aware that the Cunard line, founded in the 1840s by Halifax-born Sir Samuel Cunard, has ceased to be a British mercantile entity.
 
The QE2 and the QM2 still fly the Red Duster and are registered at Southampton. Presumably the same will apply to the Queen Victoria, whose maiden voyage, from that port, is scheduled for December 2007. However, Cunard is now American owned, part of Carnival Cruise Lines. So is another great, historic, formerly British shipping line, P&O.
 
At least the old Queen Mary avoided the scrapyard or the dreadful fate of the Queen Elizabeth, which sank as a blazing hulk in Hong Kong harbour as she was being converted into a floating academy. George V’s consort’s maritime namesake has been a floating hotel and museum at Long Beach, Calif., since 1971. I recall visiting her there in 1980 and feeling a little sad that such an ocean monarch, although physically well-preserved, should spend her retirement regarded as an antique curiosity.
It’s interesting to note that both the Queen Elizabeth 2 and the QM2 – which has already visited Halifax and is scheduled to arrive on a "Labour Day getaway" from New York at the end of August 2007 – are classed as ocean liners, despite their cruising activities. Not so the Queen Victoria.
 
If keen ship-spotters note a similarity in the design and shape of the Queen Victoria to the large new Vista-class cruise ships of Holland America (yet another corporate structure within the Carnival behemoth), they will have hit the spot. Indeed, according to the Wikipedia website, the existing Victoria hull, now a-building, was at one time intended for a new P&O Vista-type ship, Arcadia.
 
Since, unlike both the QE2 and QM2, the Victoria will not be used for scheduled transatlantic crossings between Southampton and New York, her top speed will be 24 knots, still quite high for a cruise liner. In contrast, the QM2’s top speed exceeds 30 knots, as does that of the QE2.
 
Top speed of the old Queen Mary was 29 knots. It’s interesting to note that one of the conditions laid down in 1934 for British government financial backing of Cunard – another was merging with White Star, then also in dire financial straits – was that the Mary and her sister Elizabeth should be available as fast troop transports in the event of war. In that they excelled, their speed the guarantor of survival in a U-boat infested sea. Decades later, the Queen Elizabeth 2 did her war service when, in 1982, she (along with the then P&O flagship Canberra) was requisitioned by Margaret Thatcher’s government to take troops south 8,000 miles to the Falklands to dislodge invading Argentine forces from those South Atlantic islands.
 
Now, neither the QE2 nor the QM2 is British-owned, or requisitionable. And with quicker modes of strategic military travel available, the troop ship must be a thing of the past. As a former reluctant participant in this mode of transportation, I can’t say I’m sorry.
bdeakin

The all-new Yahoo! Mail goes wherever you go - free your email address from your Internet provider.

posted by Gary B at 7/05/2006 07:56:31 AM  

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Cunard's Commodore Warwick to Host Final Voyage After 36 Years of Service

 
Cunard's Commodore Warwick to Host Final Voyage After 36 Years of Service
Monday July 3, 8:00 am ET
 
VALENCIA, Calif., July 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Commodore Ronald Warwick OBE, LLD, FNI will retire on July 31, 2006 with 36 years of company service after hosting his final transatlantic crossing on the Cunard flagship, Queen Mary 2, from New York on July 24.
The Commodore and his wife, Kim, will host a variety of functions during the six-day voyage. Special lunches will be held in the Commodore's honour in both New York and Southampton and all passengers will take part in a 'Commodore's Dinner' during the voyage complete with commemorative menu.
Captaining Cunard Queens is something of a Warwick family tradition. Commodore Warwick holds the unique distinction in Cunard Line's long history of notable Captains by following in the footsteps of his late father, Commodore William Warwick CBE, who sailed as Master of the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, was the first Master appointed to Queen Elizabeth 2 in 1968, and was also promoted to Commodore of the fleet, in 1970.
Commodore Ronald Warwick joined Cunard Line as a Third Officer in 1970. He first sailed as Captain in 1986 on board Cunard Princess, and also sailed in command of the Cunard Countess and Cunard Crown Dynasty before his appointment as Master of Queen Elizabeth 2 in July 1990.
From April 1996 he sailed permanently as Senior Master on board Queen Elizabeth 2 until his appointment as Master-designate of Queen Mary 2 in 2002. In December 2003 he was promoted to the rank of Commodore of the Cunard Line fleet.
In June 2005 Commodore Ronald Warwick's service to the Merchant Navy was recognized by his being awarded the OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours for that year.
Commodore Warwick also holds the rank of Captain in the Royal Naval Reserve, and is a Fellow of the Nautical Institute.
Cunard Line has operated the most famous ocean liners in the world since 1840. Cunard vessels have a classic British heritage and include the legendary Queen Elizabeth 2 and Queen Mary 2. Queen Victoria joins the fleet in 2007.
Cunard Line is a proud member of World's Leading Cruise Lines. The exclusive alliance also includes Carnival Cruise Lines, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, Costa Cruises, Windstar Cruises and The Yachts of Seabourn. Sharing a passion to please each guest, and a commitment to quality and value, member lines appeal to a wide range of lifestyles and budgets. Together they offer exciting and enriching cruise vacations to the world's most desirable destinations.

 

To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre.

posted by Gary B at 7/04/2006 07:06:30 AM