thanks for the link Dave!
right....3 smokestacks....or whatever those are called...
i remember the first sight of it when we got to the port in new york....so impressive.....breathtaking.....
i think the ship was completely refurbished and remodeled in the late 60's when they removed the locked gates (i know they removed them, i just don't know when)...
i sailed on her in 1963 (kind of giving away my age there i guess)....
back when the classes were classes and never the twain shall meet (a very strange experience for a 7 year old american....encountering british class consciousness...but as i said earlier, i had the run of the ship....and i really didn't understand the implications of those locked gates...)..
i remember swimming in the pool.....it wasn't on deck, rather somewhere inside the ship.....i remember the water moving from side to side, or rather i think it was from front to back....i'd swim towards one side, all the water would go back the other way, so i'd swim back (take that all with a grain of salt and a decades old memory)......i remember the man in charge of the pool.....he taught me to swim.....that's legendary in the family.....that i finally learned to swim on the QM (and i'm pretty sure it was a salt water pool)....
when i told my mother that they're building a QM 2 she was just as enthusiastic as i about sailing on her.....that trip was a standout in all our memories (after that one, all the trips back and forth to europe - and there were many, owing to my father's work - were in that little metal tube in the sky that so terrifies me)....
one big shock for me, i recently learned that cunard lines is owned by carnival cruise lines.....wow....that's sacreligious or something......but apparently they're they ones bringing it back to its old glory....of course, the snob that i am in my old age, i'll probably miss the locked gates.....(just kidding....mostly).....