Does the Queen Elizabeth cruise liner live up to its luxe reputation?

30 April 2017 - 02:00 By Paul Ash
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The Queen Elizabeth heads to sea.
The Queen Elizabeth heads to sea.
Image: PAUL ASH

Paul Ash steps aboard to find out

They stopped on the highway to see her, making Cape Town's traffic even worse than it usually is, if such a thing were possible. People were moaning about it in the office. "It's the ship," they said.

The ship was the Queen Elizabeth, the Cunard line's 90,000-ton, red-funnelled, art deco, very British giant, which had docked in Cape Town for a two-day visit - enough time for her passengers to see the city, to take the cable car up the mountain and tour the vineyards and make the pilgrimage to Robben Island.

The arrival of Cunard's third "Queen", with her black sides and red funnel (the traditional company colours known as "flags"), lent a touch of glamour to E Berth.

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While the passengers were ashore, there was time for the press to tour the ship and have lunch in the Britannia restaurant. I wore a jacket and a Cunard-funnel-red tie - something about this ship and the company that built it made me think it would be a sartorial blunder not to. This, after all, is a shipping company whose payoff line is "Advancing civilisation since 1840".

Walking up sweeping staircases of the Grand Lobby - dominated by a two-deck-high, art deco-inspired artwork of the first Queen Elizabeth setting sail some time in the golden age of sea travel - is a reminder that the company has heritage other cruise lines can only fantasise about. This ship is a Cunard Queen and not an overblown cruise ship with "stylish notes".

From the paintings and murals to the wood-panelled lounges to the quiet hush and unobtrusive service in its restaurants, the Queen Elizabeth honours the ships that sailed the world under the Cunard flag. Peek into one of the vast Queens Grill suites - 198m² of private space with your own whirlpool bath in the marbled bathroom - and you will know she continues a tradition of luxury ocean-going ships.

This Queen is the third Cunarder to carry the name Elizabeth. The first, RMS Queen Elizabeth (the RMS stands for Royal Mail Ship, a coveted contract from a time when the post meant so much more than bank statements and deliveries from Amazon), launched in September 1938 at Clydebank in Scotland shortly before the outbreak of WW2.

She was almost the same size as the current Queen Elizabeth - 84,000 tons of British steel, 314m long and carrying 2,283 passengers and 1,000 crew, a giant for her time.

The threat of German U-boats prevented her sailing to Southampton to be fitted out. Only when she reached open water and a King's Messenger was hoisted on board from a Royal Navy destroyer, did her master discover that he was to make for New York at full speed.

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From there she sailed to Singapore - calling at Cape Town en route - for fitting out as a troopship. It would be many years before she felt the tread of feminine feet on her decks or heard the rustle of evening dresses in her saloons; for the next five years she carried soldiers. By the end of the war, she had carried 750,000 troops and sailed 800,000km.

She ended her days as a burning wreck in Hong Kong harbour after a plan to turn her into a floating university after her retirement from Cunard went up in smoke.

The next Elizabeth was the much-loved Queen Elizabeth 2 (known to all as the QE2), launched in 1969 even as the Jet Age and the advent of cheap air travel was sinking the passenger-ship business.

The QE2 was designed as a cruise ship too and she sailed the world in this role, pausing only briefly in 1982 to carry 3,000 British infantrymen to battle in the Falkland Islands. Now she is tethered to a dock in Dubai while ambitious ideas for her future come and go like the desert winds.

Her ship's bell, however, stands proudly in a glass case on the new Queen Elizabeth and this is the first thing I notice as we are ushered into a forward lounge to meet Captain Inger Klein Thorhauge. From the Faroe Islands, she is Cunard's first female ship's captain, a 20-year company veteran who began her career as a ship's stewardess. "I discovered I liked the travelling but not the cleaning up," she said.

She altered course, did some navigation training and worked her way up through the ranks until 2010, when the line tapped her for the command of the new Queen Victoria, the sister ship. "It was such an honour for me," she says. "The company has such proud history."

She is happy to be back in Cape Town. "I was up at 4am," she says and standing on the balcony, looking at the landscape. It was completely quiet. "Cape Town is magnificent."

The passengers seem to agree - most are off on shore excursions, leaving a few souls to enjoy lunch with Table Mountain as the backdrop.

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It also means that executive chef Mark Oldroyd - in his chef's whites and toque - is able to spare some time to show us the galley. Oldroyd is a Cunard man - 18 years with the company and fiercely proud of the line and its quintessential Britishness. A chance meeting with an old Cunard steward while working in a restaurant in North Yorkshire brought him to Cunard. "He had worked on the Franconia and the original Queen Mary, said it was a great job - you got to see the world and work with different nationalities," he says.

He followed his mother into the chef's business. "My father was a jockey," he says, patting his stomach. "I wish I had inherited his build - and his metabolism."

Oldroyd oversees 150 chefs working in two galleys, each making 900 meals per sitting. Most of the prep - vegetables, fish, butchery and baking - is done one deck down on A deck before being sent up to the bright, clean galleys for finishing. "That's the only way to get the food out in an efficient, timely manner," he says. They don't call the culinary teams Galley Brigades for nothing - seeing the galley in operation is like watching a military campaign unfolding.

It is our turn to enjoy the fruits of their labours. Seated at a table at the Britannia restaurant, with a view of the seals frolicking in the harbour and the mountain rearing up behind the city, we dine (for there can be no other word) on vegetable tart, a glorious baked sole and a vanilla chantilly cream.

We sip our wine and gaze at the view and I feel an inordinate sense of wellbeing settle on my heart.

Tie or not, they pretty much have to frogmarch me down the gangplank at the end of the day. It would have been so very nice to go to sea in that ship. Next time, then.

Voyaging on the Queen Elizabeth

The ship is currently heading home to Southampton on the last leg of her world cruise. For the rest of the year she will be sailing from Southampton on cruises to the Mediterranean and Baltic seas as well as voyaging around the British isles and into Norway's deep and lovely fjords. On January 7, 2018, she will begin the first leg of her next world cruise, starting with a 10-night westbound Transatlantic crossing to New York via Bermuda.

For more information on this and other voyages on this magnificent ship, contact Lifestyle Cruises on 086-111-3388.

Did you know?

On a 14-day voyage aboard Queen Elizabeth, passengers will consume:

• 70 tons of fruit and vegetables

• 18 tons of meat

• 20 tons of fish and seafood

• 4,666 dozen eggs

• 67,850 pints of milk

• 1,680 pizzas

• 4,000 pints of beer

• 530 bottles of Champagne

In case you had forgotten that this is a British ship, on the same cruise passengers will eat 11,200 scones and drink 70,000 cups of tea.

Ash visited the Queen Elizabeth courtesy of White Star Cruises and Lifestyle Cruises.

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