Hotel at Sea

It is Europeans, for the most part, who have constructed these great ships, but without America they have no meaning. These ships are alive with the supreme ecstasy of the modern world, which is the voyage to America.

When Thomas Wolfe wrote those lines in 1935, the ocean liner was a way of life. Presidents and prime ministers, poets and kings, actors and novelists, rode the great ships between the Western continents. Rockefellers, Astors, and Vanderbilts wore white tie and tails to the captain's gala, nibbled caviar in the lounges and sipped champagne on the promenade decks, their long-gowned ladies at their sides. A maiden voyage was an epochal social event.

On last week's maiden transatlantic crossing of the Queen Elizabeth 2 (oneway fares: $490 to $3,000), the VIP list read like a page from the London telephone directory and the formal wear was mostly rented. Newspaper reporters divided their attention between F.D.R.'s youngest son John and a passenger notable chiefly for having made 22 previous crossings. Desperately, they wove vignettes from such unpromising material as the pet white mouse in a first-class stateroom, the ship's minor collision with a whale, and a vicar selling oak trees to reforest Sherwood Forest. With the weather still too cold to swim or sun, the passengers danced, drank, and rested. The most popular place on the ship was the cinema, which was packed to capacity for both afternoon and evening showings of first-run films.

Gone is the Old World elegance of the earlier Queens, with their majestic paneled sitting rooms, heavy leather-covered chairs and bronze statuary. It has been replaced by the chrome and Naugahyde of modern design, ranging in taste from contemporary elegance to Las Vegas gaudy. "Restaurants" have replaced dining rooms, and even that venerable man for all needs, the purser, has been redesignated the "hotel manager." Though the QE2 will maintain two classes (first and "standard") on her transatlantic runs, she will cruise the Caribbean as a classless society nine months of the year.

The crossing lacked the panache of the past, but it laid to rest doubts of the ship's seaworthiness (TIME, Jan. 10). The sleek vessel cut through choppy seas without so much as a tinkle of ice cubes in highball glasses. Computers charted a flawless course, and satellites monitored her position. "I'm sorry I have nothing dramatic to tell you," said the ship's master, Captain William Warwick, a former relief captain for both the Queen Mary and the first Queen Elizabeth. "But what's there to say when everything goes so well?"

Late Sweetheart. The ship's greatest test, public acceptance, is yet to come. The Cunard Line has gambled $71 million, loaned by the British government, on the concept of the ship as a floating resort hotel for young Americans willing to spend an average $72 a day for "the first vacation city that isn't tied down." "With this ship," says Cunard Chairman Sir Basil Smallpeice, "we are out of the transportation business and into the leisure business."

Though most were favorably impressed, there were almost as many opinions of the new ship as passengers (1,451 of a 2,000 capacity). The harsher criticisms came from those accustomed to the old Queens. More general complaints concerned the food (satisfactory to barely palatable), the service ("You're late, sweetheart," said a waiter to a lady sitting down to lunch, "so now you're gonna have to wait"), and the difficulty of finding one's way about the ship ("I feel like Ariadne in the labyrinth" said a London matron). Though food and service may improve as the crew settles into routine, the ship's eventual profitability remains a large question mark. "The trouble," said a steward, "is that Cunard hasn't made up their minds whether they want a ship or a bloody hotel."

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