Word: cunarders
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...considerably more difficult to hijack than a 100-ton jet. On the other hand, a 963-ft. ocean liner contains more hiding places for anyone who wants to stow a bomb aboard. Last week the British liner Queen Elizabeth 2 was in mid-ocean when an extortionist telephoned Cunard Lines and demanded a queen's ransom of $350,000. Six bombs were hidden aboard the Queen and ready to detonate, the caller warned. They had been placed there by an ex-convict and a terminal cancer victim who were fatalistically prepared to be blown sky-high along with...
...Cunard was "99½% sure" that the call was a hoax, Chairman Victor Matthews reported later. Nevertheless the company procured the cash in Manhattan and waited for a second call, which never came. Meanwhile, at an R.A.F. base in Wiltshire, England, a four-man bomb-disposal team climbed aboard a long-range Hercules transport and strapped on parachutes. When the plane made its rendezvous with the liner 1,400 miles west of England in the Atlantic, the men plummeted through the clouds and rain to land close beside a waiting launch...
Named after Britain's Queen Mother, the Cunard Line's 83,000-ton Queen Elizabeth was the world's largest and most luxurious passenger liner when she was christened in 1938. The Elizabeth was designed as part of a transatlantic team with the Queen Mary, but her maiden voyage to New York was delayed by the outbreak of World War II. The Elizabeth performed heroically as a troopship, carrying as many as 15,000 jampacked G.I.s on a single voyage. After the war, the elegantly refurbished liner became the last word in gracious living afloat, traveling...
...like banana peels? The Sway of the Grand Saloon is huge, solid, stately, absurdly lavish, its noble dust jacket encrusted with gilt. Its whorled endpapers are the work of Niebelungian trolls who never see the sun. Its paper, far from being recycled, might be made by the supplier of Cunard table linen...
Brinnin's crossing sometimes seems too leisurely. But with his last paragraph, the author succeeds finally in pinning the romance of it all to the page. The Cunard Line's Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth are to be sold and turned into dockside catchpennies. But for one last time, on the Great Circle route between Liverpool and New York, they approach each other and pass in the night. A few middle-aged ship lovers on the Elizabeth think sentimental thoughts as they watch the Mary rush by, while necking teen-agers snicker. "As the darkness closes over...