The Queen Mary 2 and her sister ship the Queen Elizabeth are in town again. I took Trini to check them out last night since you only get to see them once in a blue moon and they’re definitely worth checking out. It also gave me the excuse to grab a chilli dog from Harry’s Cafe de Wheels near where the ship is docked . 
I was trying to think of the right title for this post to express the size of the ship but couldn’t, so here are the synonyms for gigantic, you pick one: Herculean, Moby, blimp, brobdingnagian, colossal, cyclopean, elephantine, enormous, gargantuan, giant, gross, huge, immense, jumbo, mammoth, massive, monster, monstrous, prodigious, stupendous, super-colossal, titan, tremendous, vast, and whopping.
If you were wondering about some of the ship’s statistics:
Length: 1,132 feet
Beam: 135 feet
Beam at Bridge Wings: 147.5 feet
Draft: 32 feet 10 inches
Height (Keel to Funnel): 236.2 feet
Gross Tonnage: Approximately 150,000 gross tons
Passengers: 2,620
Crew: 1,253
Top Speed: Approximately 30 knots (34.5 mph)
Power: 157,000 horsepower, environmentally friendly, gas turbine/diesel electric plant
Propulsion: Four pods of 21.5 MW each; 2 fixed and 2 azimuthing
Strength: Extra thick steel hull for strength and stability for Atlantic crossings
Stabilizers: Two sets
Cost: Estimated $800 million dollars
Since it is often difficult to picture the size of such a large vessel, here are some comparisons:
QM2 is five times longer than Cunard’s first ship, Britannia (230 ft.)
QM2 is 113 feet longer than the original Queen Mary
QM2 is more than twice as long as the Washington Monument is tall (550 ft.)
QM2 is 147 feet longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall (984 ft.)
QM2 is more than 3 ½ times as long as Westminster Tower (Big Ben) is high (310 ft.)
QM2 is only 117 feet shorter than the Empire State Building is tall (1248 ft.)
QM2 is more than three times as long as St. Paul’s Cathedral is tall (366 ft.)
QM2 is as long as 41 double-decker London buses (31 ½ ft. each)
QM2?s whistle is audible for 10 miles
Information sourced from Cunard’s Web site.
Photo from iPhone post-processed through a bunch of different apps.
