Long Beach Celebrates "A Royal Rendezvous"

(Long Beach, CA—February 23, 2006) At Noon today, Long Beach received a royal visitor, the Queen Mary 2, here to greet the city’s own royal resident, the R.M.S. Queen Mary. The Queen Mary 2, currently the largest, fastest and most elegant ship on the seas, sailed into the Port of Long Beach for “A Royal Rendezvous” with her royal elder relative. The Queen Mary, permanently berthed in Long Beach, was the largest, fastest and most elegant ship when she first sailed in 1936.

Two of the world’s greatest ships—from past and present—met for the first time and exchanged a ceremonial greeting. The Queen Mary 2 entered Long Beach Harbor through the outer breakwater by way of Queen’s Gate, named for the Queen Mary when she arrived in Long Beach on her “Last Great Cruise on December 9, 1967. Waiting in Queensway Bay to provide the QM2 with a royal escort was a flotilla of 800 smaller boats, tall ships, sailboats, yachts and pleasure craft of all types. The giant ocean liner’s official escort included a U.S. Coast Guard cutter, and Long Beach fireboat sending cascading fountains of water a hundred feet into the air.

Overhead, a veritable “aerial flotilla” of 14 media helicopters and 3 blimps added the excitement of their presence to the occasion, dipping and circling with cameras clicking and video tape rolling. All along the Long Beach shoreline and waterfront, thousands of spectators waved and shouted their welcome to this newest monarch of the seas. It looked like a lot of people were playing hooky from work and school and many were taking extended lunch hours. The view of the two ships was excellent from the mole surrounding the Downtown Marina, just south of Shoreline Village. The Long Beach Area Convention & Visitors Bureau passed out commemorative flags donated for the occasion by Cunard.

In the downtown, every building that had a view of Queensway Bay served as impromptu grandstands, with people crowding onto rooftops, balconies and office windows. In dozens, workers held “Rendezvous lunch parties.”

Perhaps the most nostalgic of all the parties took place on the stern decks of the R.M.S. Queen Mary herself. Hundreds of well wishers listened to Scottish bagpipers and big band music as they marveled at the approach of the Queen Mary 2.

Atop the roof of the downtown Hyatt Regency Hotel, dozens of TV news crews, reporters and travel journalists got a bird’s eye view of the Rendezvous. Also present on the Hyatt rooftop was Captain David Christie, Cunard Vice President—Marine, who said a few words about the Queen Mary 2, and Joseph Prevratil, President & CEO of the RMS Queen Mary Foundation, who spoke about the Queen Mary.

At 12:30 p.m. the Queen Mary 2 sounded three long blasts on her whistle, a solemn ceremonial salute to the Queen Mary and her many glorious years as a trans-Atlantic liner. The whistle the QM2 used is actually one of the Queen Mary’s original 3 whistles. It was placed on permanent loan to Cunard and placed aboard QM2 as an ongoing homage to the original Queen Mary. As the last blast from the QM2 faded, the Queen Mary returned the honor by saluting her protégé with three long, sonorous blasts of her own.

As the whistles were sounding an squadron of five sky typing airplanes, flying at 10,000 feet, printed out an aerial message in 1,200 foot letters (each letter taller than the Empire State Building), stretching nearly three miles across the sky. The message said, “HAIL TO THE QUEENS.” Leading the sky typing squadron was Greg Stinis. In 1967, Stinis was the sky writer who slowly and laboriously, one letter at a time, wrote “Hail to the Queen,” as the Queen Mary arrived in Long Beach.

As the whistle blasts ended, three parachutists exited their jump plane at 6,000, all leaving curving smoke trails in the sky. One jumper had red, white and blue streamers, one unfurled an American flag and the third towed an British Union Jack. All three parachutists made perfect stand up landings at the Queen Mary Event Park near the bow of the ship.

Then the Queen Mary 2 began an amazing pirouette, turning 360 degrees within her own length, and showing off every angle of the great ship to the amazed spectators. Finally, as 1:30 p.m. approached, the Queen Mary 2 slowly began to move away toward Queen’s Gate to continue her 3-day cruise to Mexico.

This was a one-of-a-kind event, “A Royal Rendezvous” between two great ships, one a ship with a glorious past and the other a ship with a wondrous future, meeting for the first time to bridge the decades of ocean travel.

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