Betty Gray still has the old steamer trunk with its faded "Cunard" sticker that she took on board the Queen Mary in 1956. Somewhere, she still has the $315 bill for that six-day, one-way trip from Southampton to New York. She says she can remember as if it were last night dancing the fox trot with her husband to big band music in the ship salon.
Onboard the old ship, which is now a hotel and museum in Long Beach Harbor, Lovetta Kramer, its unofficial historian, has been rummaging through dusty file cabinets for bygone first-class menus listing such entrees as fried calf brains, and for faded photographs of Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy relaxing in deck chairs.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Monday February 27, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 40 words Type of Material: Correction
Queen Mary -- An article in Thursday's California section stated that two Cunard Line ocean liners, the Queen Mary and the Queen Mary 2, were British-built. The Queen Mary 2 was constructed at Chantiers de l'Atlantique, a shipyard in France.
Today, at San Pedro Bay, Gray and Kramer will join other former Queen Mary passengers and fans to witness the 70-year-old ship they love as it meets its namesake, the sleek Queen Mary 2. At high noon, the two Cunard ships will salute each other with booming horns.
Thousands of people came out to view the massive 2-year-old Queen Mary 2, or QM2, after it arrived in Los Angeles on Wednesday for its first West Coast stop. Several hundred people were waiting in the dark along the Main Channel when the ship arrived at 4:45 a.m., said Los Angeles port spokeswoman Theresa Adams-Lopez. By 4:30 p.m., she said, 12,000 cars had been counted carrying onlookers hoping to catch a glimpse of the massive vessel.
"This makes the [old] Queen Mary look like a peanut," said Dell Potenza, 58, of Huntington Beach, who inspected the ship from a distance Wednesday afternoon.
The ship is so big that it had to back into its terminal because it could not fit under the Vincent Thomas Bridge. It spent the day docked double-wide, in Berths 91 and 92, and attracting so much attention that it caused traffic jams both on and around the bridge all day.
But it is today's meeting of the two Queen Marys that ocean liner aficionados have been waiting for.
Some dismiss the event as blatant commercialism, benefiting Cunard and the financially beleaguered old Queen Mary in Long Beach. But boat lovers see it as historically significant.
The old ship was among the grandest of its time; the new ship, loaded with every lavish modern amenity, is the world's largest and most expensive ocean liner.
The meeting brings into sharp relief the contrast between two eras: the heady years of the last century when opulent ocean liners ruled the Atlantic, and the efficient and plugged-in early 21st century, when hardly any American takes a ship to Europe, but quick cruises to the Caribbean or Mexico are popular.
Passengers aboard the first Queen viewed the ocean from windows and cabin portholes -- if they were lucky enough to have cabins that had windows -- or from the decks outside.
Most of those aboard the QM2 can relax outdoors in private, on the balconies connected to 80% of the staterooms and cabins. The balconies give the boat, viewed from the side, a little of the look of a massive waterfront hotel or condominium complex.
On the first Queen, passengers could send radiograms ashore in emergencies but remained for days on end largely isolated from the rest of the world. The ship published a daily newspaper to keep passengers vaguely abreast of world affairs. But the new ship offers constant updates from such cable news stations as CNN, viewable on the televisions in every cabin.
Those on the QM2 receive temporary ship e-mail addresses and can surf the Internet in their cabins, at 13 WiFi hotspots scattered around the boat and in an Internet cafe called ConneXions. Anyone can reach them any time, even their faraway bosses at work onshore.
"For goodness sake. That's sad," Gray said.
Passengers on the old Queen Mary kept in shape with frequent "constitutionals" on the wide teak decks, where they could inspect and greet fellow passengers and breathe in the sea air. The bathtubs on the old boat came with four spigots: fresh and salt water, hot and cold.
QM2 passengers enjoy ultramodern gyms and a Canyon Ranch spa, as well as countless opportunities to relax in style in such venues as a wine bar, a champagne bar and a casino. They can even go shopping in an onboard Hermes boutique.
But even with its 21st century trappings, the QM2 takes pride in its old-world stylishness. On Wednesday, a string quartet played Handel's "Water Music" as passengers came aboard. The inside also retains some of the aura of an old-time liner, with thick red carpeting, chandeliers, sweeping staircases and Art Deco metalwork.
And for all its high-tech extras, the new ship cruises at 28.5 knots, exactly the same speed of the old ship in the days when it used to steam across the Atlantic.
The meeting of the two Queens seems out of character for Los Angeles, where most residents have never seen the city's port, much less set sail from it on an ocean voyage. New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg welcomed the QM2 when it first docked there in April 2004; Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had no plans to greet it in Los Angeles.
