Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) is a retired British ocean liner. Built by John Brown & Company on the River Clyde in Scotland for the Cunard Line, the ship was operated as a transatlantic liner and cruise ship from 1969 to 2008. She was laid up until converted into a floating hotel in Dubai. Queen Elizabeth 2 plied the route from her home port of Southampton, United Kingdom, to New York, United States. She served as the flagship of the line from 1969 until she was succeeded by Queen Mary 2 in 2004. Queen Elizabeth 2 was designed in Cunard's offices in Liverpool and Southampton and built in Clydebank, Scotland. She was refitted with a modern diesel powerplant in 1986–87. Queen Elizabeth 2 retired from active Cunard service on 27 November 2008, and was acquired by the private equity arm of Dubai World, which planned to begin conversion of the vessel to a 500-room floating hotel moored at the Palm Jumeirah, Dubai. Due to the 2008 financial crisis, the ship was laid up at Dubai Drydocks and later Mina Rashid. Subsequent conversion plans were announced in 2012 and then again by the Oceanic Group in 2013, but both plans stalled. The restored QE2 opened to visitors on 18 April 2018 and today operates as a floating hotel in Dubai, managed since 2024 by French hotel chain Accor.
Development
By 1957, transatlantic sea travel was becoming displaced by air transit due to its speed and low relative cost, with passenger numbers split 50:50 between them. Simultaneously, the aging Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were becoming increasingly expensive to operate, and both internally and externally were relics of the pre-war era. Despite falling passenger revenues, Cunard did not want to give up its traditional role as a provider of a North Atlantic passenger service and Royal Mail carrier, and so decided to replace the obsolete Queens with a new generation liner. Designated Q3 during work-up, it was projected to measure 75,000 gross register tons, have berths for 2,270 passengers, and cost about £30 million. Work had proceeded as far as the preparation of submissions from six shipyards and applying for government financial assistance with the construction when misgivings among some executives and directors, coupled with a shareholder revolt, led to the benefits of the project being reappraised and ultimately cancelled on 19 October 1961. Cunard decided to continue with a replacement plan but with an altered operating regime and more flexible design. Realising the decline of transatlantic trade, it was visualised that the new Queen would be dual-purpose three-class ship offering First, Cabin and Tourist passage for eight months a year on the transatlantic route, then as a cruise ship in warmer climates and during the winter months. Compared with the older Queens, which had two engine rooms and four propellers, the newly designated Q4 would be much smaller, with one boiler room, one engine room, and two propellers, which, combined with automation, would allow a smaller engineering complement. Producing 110,000 shp, the new ship was to have the same 28.5 knots (52.8 km/h) service speed as her predecessors, while consuming half the fuel. A reduction to 520 tons per 24 hours was estimated to save Cunard £1 million annually. Able to transit both the Panama and Suez canals, her 7-foot (2.1 m) shallower draught of 32 feet (9.8 m) would allow her to enter more and smaller ports than the old ships.
Design
The interior and superstructure for Queen Elizabeth 2 was designed by James Gardner. The result was described by The Council of Industrial Design as that of a "very big yacht" and with a "look [that was] sleek, modern and purposeful".
Characteristics As built, Queen Elizabeth 2 had a gross tonnage of 65,863 GRT, was 963 ft (294 m) long, and had a top speed of 32.5 knots (60.2 km/h; 37.4 mph) with steam turbines; this was increased to 34 knots (63 km/h; 39 mph) when the vessel was re-engined with the diesel-electric powerplant. At the time of retirement, the ship had a gross tonnage of 70,327.
Hull The hull was of welded steel plate construction, which avoided the weight penalty of over ten million rivets and the overlapping of hull plating. also fitted was a bulbous bow.
Superstructure Like both Normandie and France, QE2 had a flared stem and clean forecastle. What was controversial at the time was that Cunard decided not to paint the funnel with the line's distinctive colour and pattern, something that had been done on all its merchant vessels since Cunard's first vessel, the RMS Britannia, sailed in 1840. Instead, the funnel was painted white and black, with the Cunard orange-red appearing only on the inside of the wind scoop. This practice ended in 1983 when QE2 returned from service in the Falklands War, and the funnel was repainted in traditional Cunard orange and black, with black horizontal bands, known as "hands". The original narrow funnel was rebuilt and widened during the 1986 re-engining in Bremerhaven, when the ship was converted from steam to diesel power to allow the new piping for the exhausts for the diesel engines. Large quantities of weight-saving aluminium were used in the framing and cladding of QE2's superstructure in place of steel. Reducing the draft of the ship lowered fuel consumption, but invited electrochemical corrosion where dissimilar metals are joined, prevented by using a jointing compound. The low melting point of aluminium caused concern when QE2 was serving as a troopship during the Falklands War, with some fearing that if the ship were struck by a missile her upper decks would collapse quickly due to fire. In 1972, the first penthouse suites were added in an aluminium structure on Signal Deck and Sports Deck (now "Sun Deck"), behind the ship's bridge, and in 1977 this structure was expanded to include more suites with balconies, making QE2 one of the first ships to offer private terraces to passengers since Normandie in the 1930s. Her balcony accommodation was expanded for the final time during the 1986/87 re-engining. QE2's final structural changes included the reworking of the aft decks during the 1994 refit, following the removal of the magrodome, and the addition of an undercover area on Sun Deck during the 2005 refit outfitted as the Funnel Bar.
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