BUITDING UPON TRADITIONBy Richord H. Wogner

Wiih the oddition of QUEEN VICTORIA io its fleel, Cunord Line seeks losolve o problem thot hos vexed the compony for neorly 40 yeors.

n l3 January 2008, Cunard Line will debut thelatest addition to its fleet in New York harborEscorting the new ship will be maritime

celebrities QUEEN ELIZABETH 2 and QUEENMARY 2. It will be the first time that three Cunard

Queen-class ships will have ever appeared together.The new ship is designed to build upon the company'straditions and complement Cunard's existing vesselsand, as such, seeks to answer the question of how toexpand in a coherent manner beyond the niche devel-oped and maintained by QE2 and more recently by

QM2 - - a question that has vexed the company sincethe early 1970s. The Log spoke with Carol Marlow,President and Managing Director of Cunard, about thenew ship, QUEEN VICTORIA, which is currentlyunder construction at the Fincantieri shiovard outsideofVenice, Italy.

DeJining the Challenge

unard is a company with a long and distin-guished history and, in order to understandwhat Cunard is doins now one has to look at

that history. In 1839, Canadian businessman SamuelCunard submitted the winning bid for a contract tocarry the mail from Britain to America. He thenformed the British and North American Royal MailSteam Packet Company, which despite its catchy namewas known almost from the beginning as the "CunardLine," reflecting its founder's dominant position in thefirm. Cunard then ordered four identical woodensteamships and the next year, the 207-foot long BRI-TANNIA embarked on her maiden voyage, arriving inBoston 12 days later.

BRITANNIA's feat was considered a marvel ofthe age and there were celebrations both when she leftLiverpool, England, and when she arrived in Boston.The primary cause for the celebration was that this wasthe beginning of regularly-scheduled transatlantic mailservice. However, BRITANNIA also carried passen-

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gers (63 on the maiden voyage) and thus Cunardbecame the first company to provide regularly-sched-uled transatlantic passenger service.

Over the course of the next century, the com-pany's focus shifted from the mails to providing pas-senger service and Cunard developed a reputation forelegance and good taste. lt became the line for theupper strata ofsociety. To illustrate, America's leadinglegal thinker and Boston Brahmin, Supreme CouftJustice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., traveled almostexclusively on Cunard ships ranging from the three-masted paddlewheel steamer PERSIA in 1866 to thefirst superliner LUSITANIA in l9l3 during his fre-quent trips to England to socialize with the British aris-tocracy.

At the same time its reputation for service wasgrowing, Cunard had built a string of increasingly larg-er ships that became household names, synonymouswith seaworthiness, technological sophistication, andelegance. This line reached its zenith with the 1,000-foot superliners QUEEN MARY (1936) and QUEENELIZABETH (1940). In the post-war period, theseships captured the public imagination as embodying theheight of ocean liner travel.

While Cunard made its reputation ferrying pas-sengers across the Atlantic, it was also a cruise line,taking people on leisurely vacations around the world.These early cruises were done primarily by ocean lin-ers in between transatlantic voyages. Latet the linesought to get a few more years of service out of linerssuch as the MAURETANIA that had become obsoleteon the Atlantic run by devoting them to cruises.However, in 1949, Cunard introduced the CARONIA,which was designed primarily for luxury cruising.This service proved so popular that Cunard soon con-verted and up-graded two of the smaller liners it hadused in providing transatlantic service betweenEngland and Canada into dedicated cruise ships, whichwere renamed CARMANIA and FRANCONIA.Cunard was at the top of the hill in the passenger ship

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business.Then came the passenger jet in the late 1950s

and everything started to go downhill. Within a decade,the transatlantic market had dried up to such an extentthat the two giant Queens were sailing nearly empty.Similarly, people no longer seemed interested inCARONIA's long leisurely cruises. The only brightspot was the Bermuda and Caribbean cruises providedon CARMANIA and FRANCONIA.

Cunard's first planned response was to replacethe two aging and high cost Queens with a modemized

Queen-class liner referred to as "Q3". However, thatplan was dropped in favor ofa dual purpose ship, capa-ble oftransatlantic crossings and cruising. "Q4" wouldincorporate the latest technology and both inside andoutside the ship would be a dazzling display of 1960s'design. Cunard desperately wanted to get away fromits "stuffy old" ocean liner image and appeal to theswinging youth movement. The finished product was

QUEEN ELIZABETH 2, with unprecedented curvinglines in her bow and superstructure, Naugahyde fumi-ture and space-age interior pillars. (Over the years, QE2has been refitted many times, each time taking on moreof the ocean liner traditions and style so that littleremains today of her 1960s counterculture roots).

In order to finance the building ofQE2, Cunardhad to sell almost all of its existing fleet. As a result,when QE2 came into service in 1969, the only othership in the fleet was FRANCONIA. While both shipswere popular, a major problem with having such asmall fleet is that all ofthe costs ofthe shoreside oper-ations (management, sales, tickets, logistics etc.) haveto be borne by a very small revenue-producing base.This puts upward pressure on prices and reduces theabiliry to respond to competition.

While there was a clear need to expand thefleet, Cunard had no resources to do so. As a result, itwas purchased by the British engineering firmTrafalgar House Ltd. in 1971. Trafalgar House was onthe way to becoming a conglomerate with extensiveholdings in the leisure industry. Amongst other things,it planned to use the Cunard name, which is much bet-ter known in Britain than in the U.S., in marketing aseries of properties including golf resods and confer-ence centers in Britain. It also provided the capitalneeded to expand the Cunard fleet.

Unfortunately, during the Trafalgar Houseyears, no one developed a coherent strategy for expand-ing the fleet. There was QE2 but the cost of buildinganother such ship was prohibitive and, in any event,there was always the question of whether there wasenough of a market to support one transatlantic linermuch less two. In contrast, new companies such as

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Passenger ships are no longer launched by sliding down theways. Instead, QUEEN VICTORIA wqs launched lqstJanuary by floating her out o;f the dty dock where she hadbeen constructed. (Photo courtesy Cunard).

Camival Cruise Line, Royal Caribbean and NorwegianCruise Line, were demonstrating that there was ademand for mass market cruising. This indicated toCunard management that, putting QE2 to one side, thefuture for the company lay in mass market cruising.

At about this time. there was a revolution inpassenger ship design that appeared to confirm thedirection management was embarking upon. Up untilthen, cruise ships looked like smaller versions of oceanliners, with long narrow bows and a low superstructure.Howeveq in the early 1970s, beginning with RoyalCaribbean's NORDIC PRINCE, cruise ships began tolook very different. Since they were intended for sailingin relatively clam waters such as the Caribbean they didnot need the attributes of a ship intended for crossinggrey water. The bows could be much shorter and blunterand the superstructure could be much higher so as tomaximize the passenger space. Thus, there became adistinction between ocean liners like QE2 and cruiseships. Although cruise ships have became more popular,ocean liners are still considered more prestigious.

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Cunard purchased two small cruise shipsdesigned for the mass market in 1971. A fire in 1914rendered one unfit for service and the other was sold in1976. They were replaced by two slightly larger mass-market ships, CUNARD COUNTESS and CUNARDPRINCESS, that achieved some popularity in Britainduring the 1980s doing Caribbean and Mediterraneancrulses.

By the 1980s, Cunard realized that there wassomething fundamentally schizophrenic about a linethat is renown for luxury service offering mass marketcruises. Therefore, the decision was made to targetthe upscale cruise business. Cunard did this by acquir-ing Norwegian-American Line in 1983, which gaveCunard the mid-sized cruise ships SAGAFJORD(1965) and VISTAFJORD (1973). Three years later,Cunard acquired Sea Goddess Cruises, which yieldedthe luxury yachts SEA GODDESS I and SEA GOD-DESS II. In 1994, Cunard acquired Royal Viking Lineand obtained the ROYAL VIKING SI-]N.

This string of acquisitions gave Cunard a size-able fleet. However, it was an incoherent polyglot.There was QE2, one ofthe largest ships in service at thetime, and the small Sea Goddess yachts. Cunard wasthe quintessential British line but three of its largerships were commanded by and run by Norwegians.And, there still were the two mass market cruise ships.Cunard was a company in search ofa direction.

At one point, the idea of building another shiplike QE2 was mooted and some plans for Q5 reported-ly were drawn. Howevet the cost and questions aboutthe size of the market remained. Little considerationseemingly was given to the fact that in addition totransatlantic service QE2 was providing popular occa-sional cruises, thus indicating that there might be a mar-ket for cruises done in the style of QE2.

In 1995, management once again looked at themass market and decided to increase its presence in thatmarket by entering into an arrangement to market andrun three ships owned by Crown Cruise Line. Again,the ships achieved some success with British touristsbut never caught on in America.

During the 1990s, Cunard's parent company,Trafalgar House, experienced some setbacks and wastaken over by the Norwegian Kvaerner Group in 1996.Although amongst its various activities was buildingcruise ships, Kvaerner had no interest in operating themand Cunard was put up for sale.

For two years, Cunard operated under a cloudof great uncertainty while a buyer was sought.Peninsular and Orient Lines ("P&O"), another Britishline with a long pedigree, was viewed as the most buyerbut it had no interest. Then. in 1998. CarnivalCorporation purchased a partial interest and the next

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Cunerd President and Managing Director Carol Marlow.(Photo: R. H. Wagner).

year became the sole owner for $500 million.Although the staid, old, British luxury line and

the cruise ship conglomerate that had grown in just afew years from an upstart, mass-market American cruiseline, appeared to be strange bedfellows, the acquisitionmade sense for two reasons. First, Camival's philoso-phy is to operate its acquisitions as separate brandsdesigned to appeal to different market segments andthus it was not buying Cunard to expand its originalmass market cruise operation. Rather, largely as a resultof the success of the movie Titanic, the public had arenewed interest in ocean liners and Camival saw a rel-atively untapped market there. Cunard would give it themost famous ocean liner still in service as well as a 150-year ocean liner heritage. Second, the major cruise lineswere beginning to realize that Europe was relativelyundeveloped as a cruise ship market. P&O along withits American subsidiary, Princess Cruises, was a majorplayer in the cruise industry and since it had a strongbrand image in Europe, particularly in Britain, it had aheadstart over Camival. The Cunard brand, widely-rec-ognized in Europe, would help Carnival compete in thatmarket.

Upon acquiring Cunard, Camival set about try-ing to make sense out ofthe Cunard fleet. QE2 wouldremain the centerpiece around which to rebuild the fleet.As an interim measure until some new ships could bebuilt, VISTAFJORD would be restyled like a Britishliner. She was repainted to look like QE2, commandedby officers from QE2 and given the traditional Cunardname CARONIA. The Sea Goddess yachts were trans-

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ferred to Carnival's Seabourn subsidiary, which special-ized in small-ship luxury cruising. The ROYALVIKING SUN was transferred first to Seabourn, whereshe was somewhat out of place, and then after a refit toCarnival's Holland America Line subsidiary where sheis now the PRINSENDAM. Carnival disposed of theremaining assets and marketing arrangements.

As a result of Carnival's makeover of the com-pany, Cunard emerged with a clear identity. This iden-tity was confirmed when Carnival built for Cunard thefirst true ocean liner constructed in 40 years, the giant

QUEEN MARY 2. When the relatively small and agingCARONIA exited the fleet. Cunard was able to assed itowned the most famous passenger ships in the world onwhich it provided sophisticated voyages in the traditionofthe great ocean liners ofthe past.

Developing a solution

till, Cunard's problems were not over yet. Asnoted earlier, a two ship fleet is not viable in thelong run. Indeed, considering QE2's age, Cunardthe prospect of becoming a one-ship line in the

not too distant future. Furthermore. even inside a con-glomerate, shareholders want to see a company's busi-ness grow. When Carnival acquired Cunard, the avenuefor growth was relatively clear. In addition to increas-ing capacity on the transatlantic service with a newocean lineq Cunard would provide upscale cruises inEurope in competition with P&O/Princess. The latterpart ofthe strategy could be done by building a series ofcruise ships similar to the ones used by HollandAmerica and other Carnival subsidiaries and runningthem in the Cunard tradition.

But, in November 2001, Royal Caribbeanannounced that it was going to merge withP&O/Princess. Such a combination ofthe number twoand number three corporations in the cruise industrywould topple Carnival from its place on top of theindustry. Accordingly, Camival made a successful pre-emotive offer for P&O/Princess and it came under theCarnival umbrella in 2003.

With the acquisition of P&O/Princess, therewas no longer a reason for Carnival to build Cunard intoa competitor for P&O/Plincess. lndeed, the questionnow became how to expand Cunard in a way that itwould be distinct from P&O/Princess.

Taking an off-the-shelf cruise ship design andpainting the ship in Cunard colors would not be ananswer. One of the things that distinguishes Cunardfrom other passenger ship lines is that its two ships arespecial, unique ships. They are ocean liners rather thancruise ships. An offlhe-shelf cruise ship would thus

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dilute the brand. Perhaps most impoftantly, it wouldmake Cunard too similar to its sister company P&O.Accordingly, Carnival announced that a cruise ship thatCarnival had ordered for Cunard before the mergerwould be going to P&O. (That ship subsequentlybecame the ARCADIA).

Building another giant ocean liner also did notmake sense. The cost ofbuilding an ocean liner such as

QM2 is approximately 25 percent more than building asimilar size modern cruise ship such as RoyalCaribbean's FREEDOM OF THE SEAS. At the sametime, there is more risk associated with building aunique ship; you do not know beforehand how well shewill operate or whether passengers will l ike the ship.Finally, Cunard did not see the need for another ship todo what QM2 does. "QUEEN MARY 2 is an ideal shipfor doing the transatlantic runs, the size, the way sheworks, is perfect. We felt we wanted to complement herby having another vessel that is Panamar, that can gothrough the [Panama] canal, and that can go into somesmaller ports. For us it makes sense to have a larger

[ship] and a couple of smaller and not to go any bigger.That was our rationale," explained Ms. Marlow

Cunard's solution to this dilemma was to takean existing cruise ship design and attempt to make itinto a special ship by (1) rnodifring her technologicallyand (2) imprinting her with the Cunard heritage andstyle. The new ship will be called QUEEN VICTORIAand will cost ! 300 million.

Not Just A Cruise Ship

n designing QUEEN VICTORIA, Cunard beganwith the design for the Vista-class cruise ships. Thisis a very popular cruise ship design that has been

used for ships in several Carnival subsidiaries includingthe ARCADIA discussed earlier. Holland America'sNOORDAM is the latest example of a Vista-class ship.(See The Log, Spring 2006 at 9).

Cunard then began to modifii the design. First,the ship will be longer than the existing Vista-classcruise ships giving her a leng1h of964.5 feet as opposedto NOORDAM's 935 feet and a gross tonnage of 90,000g.r . t . in contrast to NOORDAM's 82,3 18. Thisincreased size will make the ship more comparable insize to the giant ships, past and present, which peopleassociate with Cunard. In fact, QUEEN VICTORIAwill be the second largest Cunarder ever built, whichmeans that she will be bigger than QUEEN MARY,

QUEEN ELIZABETH and QE2. Only QM2 at151,000 g.r.t. will be larger.

The increased size will not be used primarily for

Contirured on page 29

faced

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CUNARDcontinued from psge 24

carrying more passengers - - there is less than a 100 pas-senger difference in the new ship's capacity versusNOORDAM's despite the difference in size (2,014 vs.1,918). Rathet the additional area will be used for morespacious and grander public rooms. "Part of the luxuryofthe Cunard experience is space. The space ratio is allpart of luxury."

In addition, QUEEN VICTORIA's longerlength should give her better seakeeping qualities than acruise ship. Because she will have the same beam asNOORDAM, her longer length will give her a sleeker,more elongated shape that should cut through the watermore efiiciently.

Inasmuch as Cunard envisions this ship as beingable to do a wide variety of cruises including those thatinvolve crossing rough waters, the design for the hull ofthe ship was analyzed to ensure that the steel structurecould meet the rigors ofseas such as the North Atlantic.Critical areas were identified and strengthening hasbeen added to the steel and bulkheads to meet the pre-dicted stress levels. In addition, the thickness of thesteel in the bow was increased to meet the poundingexperienced by the fore end of a ship in extreme seas.

Unlike NOORDAM, QUEEN VICTORIA willbe powered exclusively by six diesel engines. NOOR-DAM and the other Holland America Vista-class shipshave a gas turbine engine as a secondary power plant totheir five diesel engines. However, gas turbines are veryexpensive to operate and Cunard decided that they wereunnecessary for this ship. Although QUEEN VICTO-RIA will be larger, she will be somewhat more powerfuland slightly faster than NOORDAM.

There will also be some largely cosmetic differ-ences in the appearance of the ship. QUEEN VICTO-RIA will have a single funnel as opposed toNOORDAM's two small funnels. The new ship will nothave the mid-ship exterior glass elevators that NOOR-DAM has but will have a dining area that will be slight-ly cantilevered and curve out over each side ofthe shipffom the top deck.

Thus, while QUEEN VICTORIA may havesprung fiom a cruise ship design, there have been sig-nificant modifications so that she cannot be called just acruise ship. Whether she can be called a true ocean lineris a closer question. While she is designed to crossrough seas, with a24 knot maximum speed, she will beno transatlantic greyhound ofthe likes ofthe UNITEDSTATES (40 plus knots) or even the current Cunard fleet- - QE2 (33 knots) and QM2 (30 knots). Howevet thevast majority of ocean liners never came near achievingsuch speeds. "Cunard has built more ocean liners than

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everybody else and every time we build one it is slight-ly different. When QE2 was built, [people said]: 'What

is this ship? Is it a cruise ship, is it an ocean liner? Whatis it?' There is always a little bit of a'what is happeningnext.' Cunard continues to evolve. She will look like anocean liner and as far as our guests are concemed, she isan ocean liner, as far as I am concemed."

The technological differences between QUEENVICTORIA and modern cruises ships are, however, sec-ondary. "She is all about style," says Marlow. "Thisship is going to be along the lines ofa traditional Cunardocean liner with the grandeur, the elegance, and thewhole feel I think will be very different."

To begin, Cunard has taken a number of thepublic rooms including the library, the shopping arcadeand the grand ballroom and made them more than onedeck high. "lncluded within the interior are some dou-ble and triple height spaces, many more than you nor-mally have in a P&O cruise ship," Marlow notes. "Thedifference in the height of the rooms really changes thefeel."

But, the fact that these rooms will be severaldecks high does not by itselfserve to give them an oceanliner feel. Many modem cruise ships such as RoyalCaribbean's Voyager-class ships have large multi-deckareas which, while impressive, do not, and are not,intended to give the impression of an ocean liner. (SeeThe Log, Spring 2007 at p. l5). Realizing this, Cunardis decorating the shopping arcade with wrought iron sothat it will be reminiscent ofthe Burlington Arcade andthe Queen's Arcade in London, placing rich, wood pan-eling and stained-glass ceilings in the multi-story libraryas in a London gentleman's club, and using QueenVictoria's seaside mansion, Osbourne House, as theinspiration for decorating the grand ballroom. Thisharkening back to the luxury ofthe past will be a themethroughout the ship.

QUEEN VICTOzuA, however, will not be anocean liner pastiche. The passengers who traveled on theocean liners during the "Golden Age of Ocean Travel"had to make numerous compromises due to the limits ofthe available technology that today's travelers would nottolerate. Thus, what Cunard is doing is taking contem-porary technology and overlaying it with the style oftheocean liner era.

To illustrate, at the front of the ship, there willbe a three-deck high theater. It will have a stage as largeand as well-equipped as a Broadway theater. That initself is nothing new; NOORDAM and the other Vistashave such theaters. However, Cunard is not decoratingthe room in contemporary-style but rather seeking toinvoke the feel ofa grand West End theater from the tumof the last century. Amongst other things, there will be

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private boxes. "What we thought we would do is puttogether a little theater experience for those that wouldwish to pre-reserve one of the boxes. That wouldinvolve one of our members of staff coming to therestaurant to pick-up our guests, lead them along to theprivate lounge where they could sit and enjoy an afterdinner coffee and then we would present them withsome champagne, some wonderful chocolates that theycould take with them to their box to watch the show intheir own private room."

Along the same lines, on the top deck will be anarea near the pool that will be decorated like the con-servatory in an English aristocrat's country house. Thedifference will be that this room will have a retractableroof that will open to the skies during warm weather.In short, "[i]t is a different feel. When you look at theplans of the ship now compared to ARCADIA, whichwas going to be QUEEN VICTORIA, they are quite dif-ferent. "

The ocean liner tradition is not merely a matterof decoration, it is also a matter of the style of lifeonboard - the sophistication, the quality of service, theformality, the grandeur. "That will be very much alongthe lines of QE2 and QUEEN MARY 2, that Cunardfeel, the White Star service, white-glove service, verymuch along the same style. That is what Cunard isfamed for and that's \rr'hat we want to continue - - not acruise ship feel."

This means that rather than enteftaining thepassengers with games designed around who falls in thepool first, there will be presentations by the RoyalAcademy of Dramatic Arts ("RADA"), lectures by pro-fessors from various universities and exhibits aboutCunard's history in a seagoing museum. "What we'veseen with our research over recent years is [that peoplewho travel on Cunard ships are] looking for authentici-ty and a bit of history and heritage in what they do ontheir holidays. They are looking for leaming and under-standing, which we offer in Cunard. One thing aboutCunard that is very unique is that it is so international interms of its guests. And yet, even though those guestsare from all over the world, they have a like-mindednessabout them that helps them enjoy our lecture series, ourRADA workshops, our book club, our library and allthose good things. With the history the heritage and thetradition, we are attracting a certain sort ofperson wher-ever they are from. It is up to us to make sure that wemake that very clear. lt attracts people that like that sortof feel."

Along the same lines, while QUEEN VICTO-RIA will have a nightclub and a variety of bars to suitdifferent tastes, evenings will not be tee shirts andshorts. "We'll look to what our guests want but we will

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A LEGENDARY NAME

The new QUEEN VICTOzuA will be the firstCunard ship to bear that name but it is a name with along history at Cunard. According to Cunard legend, inthe 1930s when Cunard was building the first of itsQueen-class ships, it was decided to name the new shipQUEEN VICTOzuA. All Cunard ships until that timehad had names ending in this revolutionarynew ship would be worthy of bearing the name ofBritain's most famous monarch. However, Cunard feltthat it needed royal consent to use the name and soobtained an audience with King George V grandson ofQueen Victoria. Reportedly, at the critical point, theCunard representative said: "We would like yourmajesty's permission to name the ship after Britain'sgreatest queen." The King promptly replied: "My wifewill be delighted!" Since it would not have been prop-er to correct the royal misunderstanding, the ship wascalled QUEEN MARY.

make sure that we have those Cunard signatures of thebig band balls and the 20s and 30s music, which is theGolden Age of Travel."

The reason Cunard emphasizes tradition isstraightforward. "The research that we've done showsthat people think of cruises on cruise lines as holidays.When they come on Cunard, they think of it more as anevent, it is more than a holiday, it is something to betreasured and anticipated. So, we want to make surethat we hold onto that difference. "

In late June it was announced thqt QUEEN ELIZABETH 2,seen here v)ith Log editor Richard Wagner, has been soldfor$100 million to Dubei World where she will be a floatinghotel/resort. The ship will leave passenger service inNovember 2008.

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