The Last Days of the Liners Timeshift

MUSIC: TRUMPET SOLO

The Queen Mary is the oldest surviving Transatlantic liner,

one of the great ships that plied the ocean routes at high speed,

in old world luxury and in all weathers.

A little bit of England floating across the Atlantic.

She now rests in gentle retirement in the warm sunshine of Long Beach, California

as a hotel and tourist attraction.

The Queen Mary is a reminder of the post-war decades when national pride and prestige were at stake

as countries competed to build the most magnificent ships on the great ocean routes.

Come on in, come on in.

This was the social and shopping area for the first class passengers.

And only for... the first class passengers.

Before the jet age, liners carried passengers and goods en masse across the oceans from A to B.

They linked the world, essentially, and they made the modern world possible.

The Americans, with the steamship, United States had the fastest.

The Dutch had the elegant, Rotterdam,

the Italians the sleek Michelangelo

and the French had the France as their supreme symbol of national culture and cuisine.

Great ships that, like the Queen Mary, were envied, admired and even loved.

The coming of the jet liner and the '60s assault on class and privilege

should have swept this world away, but somehow it clung on.

Today, more people than ever travel on big ships, ships that have a modern take on glamour and romance.

The beauty of the ships is that they are technological masterpieces.

Each has a character and personality of their own

and they become much loved by the people who travel in them.

And one great liner still travels the North Atlantic.

Against the odds, the Queen Mary 2 carries on in the grand tradition of the long gone liners of old.

# Gonna take a sentimental journey Gonna... #

As peace dawned after the Second World War, Britain alone was ready

to reopen the great sea route between the old and new worlds,

firm in the belief that pre-war elegance and glamour

could be seamlessly welded to a post-war world.

MUSIC: FANFARE PLAYS

ARCHIVE: On July 29th, the Mary left Southampton on a two day trial in the Channel.

From Captain C G Illingworth downwards, to a crew of 1260,

everybody was busy getting used to their jobs on the reconverted liner.

BBC cameras on board recorded these typical scenes.

Soon, everything was going on much as it did in the pre-war days,

and as it will on many Atlantic crossing in the future.

At the end of the Second World War, Cunard's Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth practically had the

Atlantic to themselves,

they were the last of the large, prestigious liners

to have survived intact from the 1930s with their original owners.

With the Elizabeth and the Mary, the Cunard Line had both the largest and fastest liners afloat.

And with their associations with royalty, they were an ad-man's dream.

For a few short years, these ships maintained the illusion that Britain still ruled the waves.

The Queen Mary had a real aura,

there was a whole generation of people who absolutely adored her.

She had that glorious rich timber interior.

Slightly old-fashioned, when it was put in.

It appealed to the class of people she was built to attract.

I do have a strong affection for the Queen Mary, the first Queen Mary,

which of course is now in Long Beach

as a floating hotel, convention centre and all the rest of it.

And when you go there, you see this huge black hull

with literally millions of rivets.

She wasn't welded, she was riveted,

and these three, huge Cunard red funnels.

And, you go on board and it is like stepping back

into the 1930s and 1940s when she was in her heyday,

when she was the fastest passenger ship in the world.

Are we ready, guys? Very good, this way please.

This is the behind-the-scenes, yes.

If you get one of the original cabins if you stay at the hotel,

again you can imagine yourself in the 1930s.

The taps, tap for salt water as well as fresh water.

A myriad of taps on this huge bath, rather than just a shower.

It is a wonderful experience.

FLUSHING

Also, in the bathrooms at that time, the towel racks where electrically heated.

When you stepped out of the tub,

you would have a nice, warm towel to wrap yourself in.

During the war, the United States had to rely on the great Cunard

liners to move her army across the Atlantic for the D-Day landings.

Her war record is phenomenal.

In July of 1943,

she carried 16,683 human beings.

That still stands as the largest number of human beings ever

transported on one vessel in the history of the world.

In the growing chill of the Cold War, America wanted her own independent means of moving armies.

A ship that, like the two Queens could transport whole divisions,

so fast that no submarine could threaten her.

In 1952, she launched the largest American passenger ship ever built.

The SS United States.

A passenger liner that could be converted within 18 hours to work as a troopship.

Winston Churchill said that the Cunard Queens during the war

collectively shortened the war by nearly a year

because of their huge transport potential.

And certainly after the war, the Americans seized on this

and decided they had to have a ship of their own.

So funds were appropriated and directed to the United States Lines

to build a new troopship come liner which was the SS United States.

DANCE MUSIC PLAYS

In true American tradition, this baby was fast and a real gas guzzler.

On her maiden voyage, she smashed the Atlantic record known as the Blue Riband, taking 10 hours off

the Queen Mary's time and set a record for a passenger liner which remains unchallenged to this day.

The main attraction of the United States was her speed.

The accommodation was very modern, very tastefully decorated,

but in comparison to the Queens and

the other great ships of state, it was rather austere.

As a small boy, naval architect, Stephen Payne was captured on home

cine film when the mighty United States sailed into Southampton.

On sea trials, it's rumoured that that ship achieved some 45 knots.

When you are equate knots to mph, it is over 50 mph.

I always enjoy saying to my American friends that had that ship been sailing down

an American highway in the 1950s, she would've got a speeding ticket!

Designed for military action, she was fitted with aircraft-carrier engines and fire-resistant asbestos

to replace the opulent panelling of the Cunard Queens.

The only wood onboard the United States was said to be the piano and the butcher's block.

What the United States had in terms of speed,

I'm afraid she didn't match

the Queen Mary in terms of luxury.

BELL RINGS

Luxury was what the Queen Mary was about and in first class, it was about as good as it gets.

ARCHIVE: 150 chefs cooking for critical, hungry mouths.

Fare-paying passengers eating their money's worth all the way,

taking five days off and putting 14lbs on.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

Hope I see you in good health tonight and I hope good appetite?

I must congratulate you gentlemen on your choice of ladies.

REFINED LAUGHTER

ARCHIVE: Now, what is it like aboard?

Like the society she was built for, the Queen Mary is rigidly divided by class.

First class, cabin class and tourist.

Only money makes it possible to rise from one class to another.

That is the segregation gate, madam.

I don't think you can mix

Claridges and the Regent Palace can you really? I suppose you can...

But if you are in the Regent Palace, you are in the Regent Palace, if you are in Claridges, it's Claridges!

ARCHIVE: If you want to travel first class, you can have a small cabin with no porthole for £178.

But a suite for two people is over £1,000 one way!

If you don't feel up to the first class, there is the cabin class at the rear of the ship,

gently vibrating over the propeller shafts.

This costs £120 or so.

Squeezed up in the bows there is room for 560 tourist passengers.

# It was sad when the great ship went down to the bottom of the husbands and wives, children... #

ARCHIVE: There, you can get a cabin for just under £100,

but you'll will probably have to share for five days.

# Oh, it was sad, it was sad... #

RATTLING OF COCKTAIL MIXERS

Life in the first class can be a round of cocktail parties beginning with the captain's reception.

Good evening Mrs Keegan, welcome, nice to see you.

Captain Simmons, Mrs Keegan.

-How do you do?

-Good evening, sir. How do you do? Would you like to both come through...

I believe basically there are three different kinds of people, yes.

You take a menu to a first class passenger, he knows exactly what he wants. He can pick out...

things and doesn't require much explanation of the dishes.

But if you show it to a great majority of the tourist passengers,

you show them the menu and they say, what is this?

If it is in French, they don't understand the menu properly.

Which is quite in order, everybody is happy to serve them.

But you do find they are definitely different.

ARCHIVE: Up in the first class, you can eat when you like, what you like

and as much as you like.

-A Waldorf salad...

-And I'll have the artichokes.

-I think I'll have the ribs of beef.

-Ribs of beef.

Very well done, you know.

-Well done.

-Cremated?

-Yes.

You couldn't even fly across the Atlantic in those days, so you had the cream

of the world's traffic, if you like,

the European, American, the British traffic travelling.

You had all the government officials, actors, actresses, the chairmen of the big companies,

both American, European and even the Russians used to travel with us in the main suites.

I don't think you would have such a gathering anywhere in the world as you did in those days.

It used to be terribly chic and fun,

I am snobby enough to like it.

Everyone dressed for dinner.

Nowadays people come down in the most extraordinary clothes.

Every night looks like a fancy dress party and...

it used to be such fun. It was chic.

Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls,

enter!

You have just entered...

one of the most beautiful rooms

on board this ship.

She is three decks high.

This room was filled with overstuffed chairs and couches.

During the day, passengers would come into this room to socialise with other passengers

or just listen to music.

Now, at that time, dinner was never, ever served in this room,

but promptly at 4:00pm each day, tea was served.

After the tea was served, they would play games such as...bingo.

ARCHIVE: Eyes down, look in, think lucky, you'll be lucky.

The first lucky number, 2-0, 20.

Blind 60, 6-0, 60.

Two little ducks on the water, 22.

ALL: Quack, quack!

The '50s were golden years for the Cunard Line, as post-war austerity blossomed into post-war boom.

Soon, every nation desired a share of the prestige and the profits.

In the '50s, Manhattan became a parking lot for the finest liners the world had ever seen -

the national flag carriers, the ships of state.

So, there was enormous competition between the great lines

to see who could have the best ships and the ships that showed the better face of their countries of origin.

The SS Rotterdam was the first of a new breed of European ships to carry their nation's flag and pride.

The Holland America lines, succeeded not on speed or size,

but by designing a dual-purpose ship that was at least a decade ahead of its time.

The watchwords at the time were size and speed.

You were either the biggest or you were the fastest.

The Dutch said, no, that era is over

and what they planned was a smaller ship,

by today's standards a very small ship, although in her day she was in the top 10, but only just.

And she wasn't particularly fast, she was designed to do the trip from Rotterdam to New York,

I think in seven or eight days,

rather than the four and a half to five from Southampton that Cunard were doing.

The Dutch alone seemed to see the future.

A future where the liner crossing had less importance and the real profits lay in cruising.

With the Rotterdam, the Dutch had re-cast the role of the liner,

but everyone else continued playing yesterday's game.

The Italians dressed their national colours on the sleek Michelangelo and her companion, the Raffaello.

Bold and beautiful ships designed for a new Italian Renaissance.

The Italian line was very proud to represent the best of post-war Italian design.

The top architects were commissioned to design the ships -

and they had a wonderful mix of minimalism with Italian flamboyance.

But more than any other nation, it was de Gaulle's France

that wished to recreate the pre-war glory of its ocean liners.

All French hopes were placed in one showpiece ship called simply, the France.

The longest in the world by just four feet.

It was a ship for the rich and the fashionable in their bijou apartment suites.

2000 passengers pampered by over 1200 crew.

The French Line ships were legendary.

It was said more seagulls followed French Line ships than

of any other company, hoping to catch delectable bits of haute cuisine thrown out from the galley.

I think this was terrifically important to France,

the country itself, its culture, its design values,

its engineering, were there to be seen.

Very much, the France was very much

a national flag carrier in that truest sense of a ship of state.

She was very, very much a statement of France afloat.

Originally they were going to build two fairly modestly-sized liners,

but during the de Gaulle era,

there really was the need for some great nationalist, prestigious project.

And he chose the building of a great new liner

which became the SS France, which entered service in 1962.

FRENCH COMMENTARY

But even as these bold, new ships enjoyed their maiden voyages, dark clouds appeared overhead.

Jet aircraft started to cross the Atlantic non-stop in hours rather than days.

The jet age was a body blow for the Atlantic liner companies.

At first they didn't know how to respond.

They'd been coining money during the 1950s,

suddenly just over a decade later, passenger numbers were dropping off.

I think what's sometimes forgotten in those early days of airline travel, it was extremely expensive.

What happened was, the early airliners were taking out the first class passengers

and it was the first class passengers, essentially, who were paying the profits.

# Volare, oh, oh... #

Even in the late 1960s, Cunard were attempting to operate a year-round Transatlantic service.

And certainly in the latter years of their life, the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth,

sailing in the middle of winter would sail with more crew members than they had passengers on board.

Chic travel had moved to the skies.

A new term was coined, the jet set for a group of the rich

and famous who lived La Dolce Vita in New York, London, Paris or Rome.

The whole imagery of air travel began to dominate the culture.

So liners began to look increasingly dowdy, no matter how modern the ships themselves were.

That was a real problem. Suddenly, young boys wanted to be airline pilots

rather than work on ships, for example, because that whole culture was the fashionable thing.

Although the Transatlantic lines enjoy the prestige,

the other great sea routes were where most of the money was made.

The routes to Australia and New Zealand were popular, lucrative

and effectively out of reach of long-range jets for the next decade.

From the early '60s onwards, the premier ship on the six week route to Australia was P&O's Canberra.

The Peninsular and Orient Line had great success serving these long-distance passengers.

Longer routes such as the routes from the UK to South Africa

and the route down to Australia were still viable.

Now, these ships were still liners in the true sense,

but they were quite different from the Atlantic liners because they had to travel further distances

before refuelling and they also carried, invariably, a lot more cargo than the Transatlantic ships.

Liners went all over the world, just as airlines today.

And looking at this from a British perspective, throughout the whole period of the Empire,

the way civil servants and visitors and friends and families travelled around the world was by liner.

So whilst the Transatlantic routes had the prestige, it had the famous liners,

they were in the minority, most liners weren't on the transatlantic route.

Some of the most popular liners featured the lavender-coloured hulls and black and red funnels

of the Union Castle Line.

Ships that ran a scheduled service on the South Atlantic routes to South Africa.

Union Castle, it ran like clockwork, literally.

It was always said that when the Union Castle vessel blew her parting whistle at,

I think was a 4pm on a Thursday, Southampton could set their watch by it.

A purserette on the Edinburgh Castle during the '60s was Ann Haynes.

Welcome to my bureau, my little office of Union Castle treasures.

Pictures, various items of happiness and memorabilia in here.

And of course, one of my favourite items is...

my curtain.

A lovely gift from a friend in South Africa, but he and his wife only gave me the one curtain,

but isn't it lovely with all of the various Union Castle ships on it.

Another treasure I like...

is an advertising item from the 1960s.

If I want to say I'm leaving on the Edinburgh Castle on a particular Friday,

I can put the Edinburgh Castle against the day of the week for Southampton

and then discover where the rest of the fleet are.

It was an exciting adventure on a liner and we were on a voyage,

going from point A, to point B, C and D and back again.

The true liner voyage, I think.

The cargo was varied.

I've got records showing that things like heifers,

cows and horses and lots of animals were carried on deck.

Locomotives, railway locomotives were carried, all sorts of things.

Wool from South Africa came to the UK and one of the cargoes, of course,

was gold bullion which came from South Africa.

I didn't know about this for a long time,

just shows how secret it was. I didn't know about things like that.

I was told if I could lift one, I could have one.

You probably know how heavy they are, so of course I couldn't lift one.

A favourite ritual on the Union Castle Line was celebrating the crossing of the equator.

One of the ceremonies that took part on the Union Castle ships was crossing the line.

It was very much look forward to.

So there would be King Neptune, his queen who was usually a male,

with things in strategic places and weird and wonderful costumes.

There would be a policeman in a little tiny policeman's hat.

All the victims for the crossing of the line ceremonies were volunteers.

They knew they were going to get covered in revolting-looking things.

You have transgressed and upset the King!

King Neptune asked you to come here and account for your sins.

Put in a chair and put on a table, but everybody got a certificate

with their name on, signed by King Neptune and the date.

Lovely certificates.

Ann sailed her last voyage on the Edinburgh Castle in 1967.

For her, an era had passed.

The late '60s were also pivotal years in the lives of the transatlantic ships.

First the jumbo jet and then Concorde captured most of the passengers

who would have travelled by ship a decade earlier.

The final blow is the onset of the 747.

When flying becomes a mass market and pretty well everybody who could have afforded to cross the Atlantic

on a liner can afford to cross the Atlantic on an airliner.

And then the liner becomes an anachronism.

It is the end of that era.

No passenger line could escape the new economic reality.

Cunard had two ageing ships in the Queens, Mary and Elizabeth.

Ships designed in the '30s for a world now gone.

They were old-fashioned and expensive to run.

The much-loved Queen Mary bowed out in style in a long, valedictory voyage to her new home

in Long Beach, California.

The Queen Mary was out at sea for 31 years, she is here in Long Beach now for 42 years.

So, she has become

a part of Long Beach history longer than she was out at sea.

She is literally responsible for putting Long Beach on the map as a convention town.

If you say, Long Beach anywhere in the world, people say Queen Mary.

It you say Queen Mary anywhere in the world, people say Long Beach.

She has had good days and bad days, money has been spent to try and keep her up.

She is still a very, very fine representation of one of the old ships of state.

ARCHIVE: On the quayside, even an American-style celebration

is dwarfed by the huge bulk of the old lady herself.

The final commanding captain of the Queen Mary, Captain John Treasure Jones.

As the very last captain serving with Cunard of the Queen Mary you brought her here.

What sort of experience did you find that last voyage?

I found the last of voyage a thrilling experience in many ways.

Because I knew I was bringing the ship on an adventurous voyage,

if you like, round Cape Horn to a home where I felt she would be appreciated and

become the jewel of the port of Long Beach and the centre of the harbour.

So I didn't feel bad about it, in fact I was delighted to bring her here.

From time to time during rough weather,

the Queen Mary would rock and she would roll!

And she would rock and she would roll!

And if the passengers became seasick, looked a bit green

about the face, they could look into the peach plate mirrors,

see a healthy complexion

and hopefully feel just a wee bit better!

The Queen Elizabeth was always considered the Mary's dowdy sister.

She was the unsung partner in the famous double act.

Elizabeth was an altogether more modern ship than the Queen Mary.

She had benefited from at least a decade's design development.

On board, however,

there is a bit of a paradox because the Queen Elizabeth was

actually slightly more conservative in her design than the Queen Mary.

She didn't have the Queen Mary's...

cult following, to put it in a modern parlance.

She didn't quite hit it with the punters in the same way.

Compared with Queen Mary, she was less warm, less comforting.

The Queen Elizabeth, she was sold to a Chinese businessman, CY Tung.

He decided to buy the ship and rebuild her as a floating university.

His idea was to sail the ship on long cruises with passengers and students.

The ship was undergoing a huge rebuilding programme whilst anchoring at Hong Kong and towards the end

of that process in January 1972, the ship suddenly caught fire.

The final death throes of this once great ship were reported by Blue Peter's Valerie Singleton.

'Soon, the whole ship was alight and despite all the efforts of

'the Hong Kong Fire Brigade, it became obvious the liner was doomed.

'For five days and nights she blazed and television viewers

'all over the world were appalled by these pictures.'

She caught fire in several places at once, so it's assumed it was the work of arsonists.

And, as with the Normandy in New York during the war,

so much water was poured onto the ship to put out the fire that it made the ship unstable

and so she rolled over and sank and was subsequently scrapped.

It takes a long time to cut up and carry away 83,500 tons of ocean liner.

But every day she gets just a little bit smaller and soon even this rusting hulk will disappear.

It's rumoured the salvage is being sold across the border to mainland China.

It's odd to think that the imperial grandeur of RMS Queen Elizabeth

will end her days as scrap in communist China.

This is the Blue Peter annual from 1972, which I received as a youngster for Christmas that year.

If we open up, one of the articles here is about the Queen Elizabeth,

Queen of the seas.

And the very last paragraph reads,

"It was a sad moment for everybody who loves great ships.

"The Queen Elizabeth was the last of a great age,

a super liner and nothing like her will ever be built again".

It just so happened at the time we were learning to write letters of complaint at school

and my English teacher, Miss Bootle, she said the most important letter you can learn to write

is a letter of complaint.

So I wrote for my homework, a letter of complaint to Blue Peter saying when I grew up I wanted

to design and build a new ship that would rival Queen Elizabeth.

So, I sent it into Blue Peter and lo and behold I received, by return,

the blue Blue Peter badge.

I was rather upset that they didn't give me a gold badge, I must say, I was rather precocious.

Cunard had the confidence to commission a new ship

to replace the retired Queens, Mary and Elizabeth.

Like the Rotterdam, she would be dual purpose, a liner and a cruise ship.

I name this ship, Queen Elizabeth the Second.

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

The Queen Elizabeth 2, or QE2 as she is commonly known,

became the flagship of the Cunard line for nearly 40 years.

From 1969 to 2008, she was the most famous British liner of the modern age.

Sleek and spacious, she was built to take Cunard into a new era.

The big difference physically between the liner and

the cruise ship is that the line has to be significantly stronger

than the cruise ship, because it has to be able to be driven hard through bad weather.

The bow of a liner is much finer, much more like an arrow

and again it's to push its way through that rough weather.

All those things combined amount to about a 40% increase in the price of the ship.

So if you build a cruise ship and a liner of the same size, the liner would probably cost you about

40% more and that's a big premium to pay to call your ship a liner.

The QE2 really, in many ways was the bridge between Transatlantic

liners of the traditional kind and modern day cruise ships.

She was potentially able to operate as a two class ship,

equally as a one class ship.

She had all the facilities one would expect of a modern cruise ship.

She was like a modern hotel on board, her design was extremely progressive.

She was rather jet age and also in many ways, space age,

both in her external design and internal outfitting.

There were 50 luxury suites, and 300 deluxe cabins.

The QE2 was much more a floating hotel than a means of transport.

The new ship attracted a visit from Blue Peter.

PETER PURVES: 'After a fabulous lunch, I changed my clothes to go to the engine room

'as I thought it would be very dirty,

'but it looked more like Mission Control at Cape Kennedy than on board a liner.

'There were dials, meters, switches, knobs by the dozen, each one controlling or

'metering some part of the engine, so a constant check could be made by the control room's computer.'

'On the bridge I met the captain of the QE2.'

-Good afternoon, Captain Warwick, John Noakes of Blue Peter.

-How do you do?

The QE2 also had the unique distinction of being

the only Cunard liner to be captained by both father and son.

A huge great wheel, a relic from the past also.

The wheel was right on top of the rudder.

I first stepped aboard the QE2

to visit my father when it was at Kingston, Jamaica on a cruise.

This was the very first time I'd been aboard the ship

and I just couldn't believe what I saw, a fantastic modern ship and

it left me with the burning ambition to be captain of it one day.

And I achieved my goal in 1990 when I was appointed Relief Master.

But for the Dutch, the Americans and the French, the Atlantic game was up.

In 1969, the Rotterdam with her advanced design moved exclusively

into cruising and was a sought after ship for the next 30 years.

But there was no escape for the gas-guzzling United States,

brute economics sank her as a going concern.

Losing 3 million a year, she was taken away for a refit and never returned to passenger service.

The sudden loss of America's rocket ship left her devoted passengers high and dry.

There are always some people who would always go by ship.

I still get letters from people asking whether or not they can

travel as a passenger, even in these container ships we are operating.

They still want to run in a ship,

but as far as operating a passenger ship the size of the United States,

I rather doubt whether we could even assemble a crew.

The type of crew we had to operate that ship again, because

a lot of these people have retired,

a lot of them have died off and a lot of them have gone elsewhere.

I don't think she'll ever go to sea.

At one point she was towed across to Turkey to have her asbestos removed.

Of course, being an American ship

she was absolutely stuffed with asbestos for fireproofing reasons.

The job was done, but the owners couldn't pay,

so in lieu of money, they paid by allowing the scrappers to take her life boats away

which were made of aluminium and the davits.

So the remains of the United States, the gutted shell was towed back

across the Atlantic and she now lies as a hulk in Philadelphia.

Finally, even the world's longest ship, the France, the ultimate symbol of national pride would fall.

In 1974, with her 10 million subsidy removed by the French government,

her owners were forced to concede that her days on the Atlantic run over.

France was laid up in Le Havre, her home port for several years

before she was bought by Norwegian Caribbean Lines.

They had her rebuilt as the SS Norway.

She was a very successful cruise ship for many years in a modified

form and has only recently been finally retired and sent for scrap.

As the France, this ship was the last of the ocean greyhounds.

Built for speed and to dash across the North Atlantic in competition with other great liners.

But in these days of rising oil prices, it's a recipe for economic disaster.

Perhaps the most curious fate of all befell the France's predecessor, the Ile de France.

The Ile de France was a very significant ship

in that she was the first,

effectively the first passenger ship to introduce the new Art Deco style.

She continued in service until

the late 1950s when she was sold for scrap to Japanese firm in Osaka.

But, it was the early days of the disaster movies and before they scrapped her,

the Japanese hired her out to an American film studio who were making a film called, The Last Voyage.

ARCHIVE: 1500 carefree passengers, happily unaware of a note to the captain.

They sent the ship out to sea

and created various explosions inside and on the open decks,

sent the forward funnel crashing down onto the bridge.

All realistic and I think the film won Oscars for the special effects

because they weren't made up, they were actually real.

You could see this great ship being destroyed for the purposes of the film.

Hold it, the piano's gonna fall!

CRASHING

EXPLOSION AND SCREAMS

Help!

Poor Dorothy Malone, the star of the film, spends about three quarters of the film up to her neck in water.

It's very difficult to give a good acting performance under those circumstances, I should've thought.

TRAILER: Never before has the screen flamed with adventure and suspense so real.

Every dramatic moment was filmed at fever pitch, entirely aboard the world's most glamorous luxury liner.

Hurry it up, for God's sake!

I can't hold her out of the water much longer.

-The telephone cord!

-SHE SCREAMS

She was then partially sunk for the finale of the film.

The French were absolutely scandalised by the use of the Ile de France in this film,

and they ensured that all references to Ile de France were very carefully erased.

In fact in the film, the ship is given the name Claridon.

I think that she was so much a ship of the movie age,

so many famous film stars had travelled on her,

her decor was so much before the war,

so much Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers,

that maybe that was a suitable final role for this great ship,

a starring role in a big-budget movie.

Not all liners met such a dramatic end.

Most were adapted for the expanding cruising market.

In 1981, Robert Robinson took a slow boat to Madeira.

The ship was the former liner, the Canberra.

It was now supposedly a one class ship, but reminders of the old days weren't hard to find.

Where some passengers had every convenience, some had very few.

Did you know you were in for this? I mean you're four strangers.

Can you switch the radio off please?

You knew in for this kind of chummery?

It's economics.

A single cabin would have cost another £200 extra.

But I wanted the company.

I like the company and this is where you get it.

It was company I was after.

Perhaps this situation wasn't quite the company I was looking forward to.

Fairly early on in the cruise,

people tend to split into two fairly well demarcated groups.

The people in the cheaper cabins, the old Second Class,

tend to congregate at the Alice Springs at lunchtime.

The Alice Springs is the casual bar where people sit in shirtsleeves

and the old classic Blackpool in the braces syndrome.

# I want to play a little game with you

# A little game that should be made for two... #

There are the people who live up in the front end of the ship,

the old First Class, the days of the Raj still sort of lives on up there.

ROBERT ROBINSON: As it were at the top end, the Commodore hosts a cocktail party on his private deck.

I wouldn't hear a word against it.

I honestly wouldn't. It's straightforward and I don't think you'd get better value for money.

'While at the other end, it's pub night.'

-So the Irishman walks in...

-LAUGHTER

Big Paddy walks in, he says, "Paddy, there's a cabbage and potato a knife, which is the odd one out?"

Paddy says, "Jaysus, sir, I reckon it's the cabbage..."

At the Commodore's party, one of the guest remembers what cruising was like in the '20s.

They made their own amusements.

Appointed a sports committee when they had the first day out,

helped by the senior officers on board.

# Go Johnny, Go

Go, go, Johnny Johnny be good. #

The following year, the Falklands War created new roles for the QE2 and Canberra.

MILITARY PIPING MUSIC PLAYS

Like their predecessors in the Second World War, these welded

leviathans were the only realistic means of transporting an army over long distances in all seas at speed.

They are ready to fight if they have to, but we, in the government,

will do our very, very best to see that that is not necessary.

But if they have to, I know they'll equip themselves with honour.

How do you feel now as the ship is sailing away?

I think I'll be quite tearful in a few moments, actually.

-What about you?

-Just about the same, very tearful.

As long as they come back safely, that's the main thing.

It took the QE2 to just 16 days to reach the South Atlantic.

These grand ladies could lift up their skirts when they had to.

The QE2 was kept at arm's length from the Argentinians.

The Canberra was sent into San Carlos Water, in the thick of the action.

She received a heroine's welcome on the return to her home port of Southampton.

By the 1980s, the new cruise ships looked very different from the classic ocean liners of the past.

Whereas as traditional liners had their ladies' retiring rooms and

smoking rooms, and all kinds of spaces for sitting and relaxing,

the modern cruise ship is built around revenue-earning spaces like bars, casinos and shops.

The new purpose-built ships were designed in that way.

It was only in the 1970s when cruising came for the mass market.

That's when various new operators started, like Royal Caribbean Line,

Carnival Cruise Lines, Norwegian Cruise Line.

They brought in specialist ships that were very successful, high-density ships,

that really supported the mass market.

# The Love Boat... #

This new-world was soon attracting drama treatment in the hit television series The Love Boat.

Its glossy take on cruising helped to make floating holidays even more mainstream.

The Love Boat, with its mixture of romance and comedy,

changed middle-America's perception of what went on in cruise ships.

It generated a huge boom in affordable cruising in the USA.

The Love Boat herself was the Pacific Princess, operated by a British company, P&O.

Here they come, out of starting gate.

This hit the imagination of the American public, so that people

maybe in middle-America who had never dreamed, maybe never seen the sea,

suddenly realised that cruising was not for the toffs, it could be fun.

There was always a hint of romance, drama, whatever.

The Love Boat really put mass-market cruising on the map.

One can never underestimate the power of television.

Television was making cruising seem accessible.

Travel programmes were quick to democratise its packaged glamour.

'Parting can be such sweet sorrow, but not for long on a ship like this,

'where you'll soon find plenty of shallow water to drop anchor again.'

The last thing you need in this heat is more heat!

'Good job then there are so many pools like this on board.

'Naturally, a lot of activities are arranged around the pools.

'I found there was still enough space to enjoy your own privacy if you so desired.

'For those that have been before, what's the appeal of a cruising holiday?'

If you get on a beach and you get covered in sand, you get covered in

people, here, your room and shower are just a few yards away,

the bar stewards are passing by every couple of yards, every couple of minutes...

The pool is there to dive into.

It's very easy.

Thank you very much. They tend to do things in style on cruise ships.

This is not a meal, it's a drink - a blue Caribbean.

Normally, you'd have to carry around two wallet loads of money to pay for it.

Like everything else on board, you simply pay for it with a credit card.

Over the last four decades or so, the cruise market has changed very much.

Cruise ships have changed very much.

Most of them are much bigger now, they've much better facilities.

People now very often demand that they should have a balcony outside their cabin.

Also, cruising has become, in real terms, very much cheaper than it was.

How about coming into my room?

This is it. That's the shower room and toilet in there.

You get a fridge, two single beds, there's a television.

You get a telephone and you can actually phone home from the boat.

This particular room has a balcony, which of course costs extra.

It's independently air-conditioned and I'm sure as ship's cabins go, it's quite spacious.

If you have any ideas about bringing the sort of trunks that you see in the movies, well, I'd think twice.

The cruise ship was not a means to transport its passengers, it was now a destination in its own right.

A destination with no revenue stream untapped.

Drinks cost extra, and make Carnival money.

They've found a way to sell as many as possible.

My salary is very small, about 48 a month.

Then you get 15% of all your sales.

If you don't run, you don't make money.

That's the way it is.

Passenger numbers soared,

by the turn of the century, two important milestones had been passed.

Miami, with easy access to the Caribbean, became the largest passenger port in the world.

And for the first time, the largest passenger vessel afloat wasn't a liner, but a cruise ship.

Cruising is now very big business.

In the course of events, they've gobbled up

a lot of the smaller companies.

Well, I say smaller.

For example, Carnival has taken over Cunard.

One thinks of Cunard as being a big company, but in today's world it was a mere minnow.

More berths at sea at the moment, as we speak were people are sleeping on

cruise ships on the oceans than ever there were back in the liner era.

And in an ironic twist, an old enemy was now a new best friend.

It's strange to consider that the cruise industry today really

does rely on the aeroplane bringing in vast numbers of passengers

from all around the United States,

to the ports of Miami and Fort Lauderdale, New York, and the other areas.

Whereas jet airliners had been disastrous for the liner trades,

they were actually very advantageous for the cruise ship companies

because jet aircraft can fly passengers straight to

sunny departure ports like Miami in shiploads.

In 2008, the two great liners that had pioneered the transition

to cruise ships sailed to their final resting places.

First, the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands saw her most famous ship come home.

Against all expectations,

and much to my delight, the one ship that was saved from

the '60s era of transatlantic ships of course is the SS Rotterdam.

Back in her home port, the port of her birth, back in Rotterdam.

This ship was just too beautiful to see off to a scrap yard.

So, Rotterdam has finally, after many misadventures,

has finally found her way back to the port of Rotterdam.

There were amazing scenes on 4th August 2008.

I feel so lucky to have been there.

The port was heaving, immense numbers of people turned out!

A huge flotilla accompanied her in.

To be part of it was one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life.

The day that the Rotterdam came back

into our port was a celebration that gives you goose bumps.

It was as if a lost child was welcomed home again.

You can't describe that feeling, that one didn't think about,

but when one saw the emotions of the people here in Rotterdam.

So proud, and so tearful almost,

seeing her back into port, knowing she was going to stay this time.

400 work men are racing against time

to open the ship as a museum and hotel in the summer of 2009.

When restored, all the Rotterdam's period features including the famous Odyssey murals by the Dutch artist,

Nico Nagler, will help preserve the legend that is the Rotterdam for future generations.

Also in 2008, the QE2, once Cunard's flagship,

and for a decade part of the Carnival empire, bowed to the inevitable.

After nearly 40 years on the oceans of the world,

she was sent off in style to drop anchor in her new home of Dubai.

The idea is that her heritage, all the artefacts on board,

will be on display to show future generations just what a great ship the Queen Elizabeth 2 was.

But the story of the ocean liner is not quite over.

In 2004, a new queen was launched, the Queen Mary 2.

Once again, a Cunard ship is the largest, longest and fastest passenger ship afloat.

The dream of the small boy who wrote to Blue Peter...

My brief from my management was simple, I had to design a ship

that could be constructed in the modern era,

using modern materials and modern methods,

that would be able to do the Transatlantic route, and that would

make the same return on investment as if we'd spent the money on building cruise ships for cruise service.

The Queen Mary 2 is an attempt by Cunard to recapture

what they want to promote as being the golden age of liner travel.

Her hull is absolutely that of a liner.

The naval architect Stephen Payne, who designed it, is a very brilliant man.

In designing that vessel, he actually had to look back to ships from the 1960s, to find

the inspiration for a hull form that would be able to sail across the Atlantic quickly all year round.

Up top however, the QM2 is most definitely a cruise ship.

This is a ship that's a high-tech, super modern ship,

dressed in historic fancy clothes.

One of the things they're selling is the heritage.

Although there are now largely American-owned,

they still want to give a rather British atmosphere.

To think something as amazing as this was inspired by Blue Peter!

Steve, I see that you've got a nice nautical tie-pin.

I'd never be without it.

I've something even better than that which I hope you'll never be without.

-Wow!

-Yes, it's our highest accolade, a gold Blue Peter badge.

-I'm going to pin it on you.

-Wow, that's marvellous!

I bet you didn't think you'd get this as a young child.

-I certainly didn't.

-Congratulations.

-Thank you, very much indeed.

Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls.

Have a fantastic day on board the Queen Mary, and thank you

-for coming on board.

-APPLAUSE

# Gonna make a sentimental journey

# To renew old memories...

# Got my bag, got my reservation

# Spent each dime I could afford

# Like a child in wild anticipation

# I long to hear that "all aboard". #

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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