THE Q4 UN-NAMED NEW CUNARDER WILL HAVE MANY NOVEL FEATURES

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31343, 13 April 1967, Page 12

THE Q4 UN-NAMED NEW CUNARDER WILL HAVE MANY NOVEL FEATURES

(Bu

JAMES MCDONALD,

, shipping correspondent 0/ the “Financial Times". London)

(Reprinted from the “Financial Times” by arrangement)

The Q 4 liner —with a final cost expected to be at least £3O million could heavily damage the Cunard passenger fleet if she proves unsuccessful.

To make sure that she does not the Cunard Line over the last year, has mounted a massive public relations exercise aimed at popularising the liner before she is launched in September this year—still about one-and-a-half years before the Q 4 comes into service. There has been a continuous campaign to keep the Q 4 in the news in recent months, culminating in the unveiling in London and in New York of models of the new liner.

“Extra-special” The background to this campaign is that the Q 4 must be represented as something extra-special in order to obtain a large share of the trans-Atlantic trade in competition with such modern rivals as the France. Also, in the world-wide cruise business in which the Q 4 will spend a large part of her time, the liner will have to compete with formidable competitors, including such P. and O. liners as the 45,000tons Canberra and modern Italian ships. The models of the ship displayed show clean and uncluttered lines and are undoubtedly attractive. The funnel, to a layman, is one of the easiest ways of identifying a liner to-day with hull forms and superstructures welded to hydrodynamic limits and the Q 4 funnel is certainly a departure from those which type other modern passenger liners.

But it is the amenities which sell a ship eventually —not the ship spotters—and Cunard has kept this factor well in mind in the designing of the vessel and in the sales approach. Dining In Daylight Cunard claims a number of "firsts” for the Q 4 in comparison with passenger liners of similar status. Possibly one leading sales line will be that all her restaurants are , high up in the ship’s super- ; structure and not—as is usual ! in big passenger liners—buried well down in the hull. No other liner afloat, it is , claimed, gives her passengers anything like the amount of daylight in which the Q4’s passengers will dine. This early decision by Cunard to place its restaurants above the . waterline was taken as a result of the lighter weight 1 of the aluminium super- ■ structure and the use of stabilisers, which have virtually abolished rolling. Cunard has found that the roughest weather makes practically no difference to the use of the "Queen” liners’ extra-charge verandah grills, compared with the restaurants sited well down inside the hull. Outside Cabins Any person who has travelled by sea knows how unpalatable it is to have an inside cabin with only artificial light and no access to daylight, or for that matter, moonlight Cunard claims, aa another “first,” that the Q 4 will have a remarkably high proportion of outside rooms. Passenger research by the company has indicated an overwhelming preference for rooms with daylight and four beds, as opposed to bunks. The Q 4 will ester for these not unnatural requirements. Seventy-five per cent of the passengers will be able to view the sea from their cabins. Moreover every passenger room will have a private toilet with bath or shower—again a claim by Cunard as a "first” for a ship of this size. The Q4—and this is a label which can be changed when the Queen launches the ship in September—is also claimed, and rightly, by Cunard to be the largest liner with the ability to sail round the world using the Panama and Suez Canals. This claim emphasises the ship’s cruising abilities and it is upon the success of cruising—rather than transAtlantic services—that the Q 4 depends. Ship Without Classes Certainly the Q 4 has not been designed as a purely trans-Atlantic vessel. She will have more open deck space than any other liner of this size and these open decks and lidos will be promoted intensively by Cunard on the fair-weather cruising side of the ship's activities. The Q 4 also will be virtually a ship without classes — another major departure by Cunard from the original concept of first, cabin and tourist classes In the vessel. She will

cruise as a one-class ship and, even on the Atlantic, will probably operate without fullydefined classes. For example, in what is normally described in a liner as first-class the ship will have one deck of public rooms reserved for passengers who pay a premium fare. Above five decks of passengers’ cabins and staterooms are three decks of public rooms. On long cruises, compared with the 2025 passengers who can be carried on the Atlantic ferry trade, the Q 4 will carry only 1400 passengers in outside rooms, all able to dine at a single sitting. One restaurant will take 816 passengers at one time and the other will take 500. There will also be a grillroom for premium-paying passengers. Travelling Hotel In fact, says Cunard, the Q 4 is a liner without gimmicks but tailored to meet the tastes of the sea and cruise travelling public of the 1970’5. The liner obviously has been designed as a travelling hotel and pleasure resort with two outdoor swimming pools and two indoor pools and an immense amount of sheltered open deck “pleasure” space for deck games, recreation or just “sunning.” The huge open but sheltered deck spaces alone classify the ship as a cruising liner rather than a traditional stuffy transatlantic ship. Decks descend in terraces towards the stern and Include the two outdoor pools as Udos. Within the ship a shopping centre with an arcade large enough to permit exhibitions to be staged is being provided.

When the Q 4 is commissioned at the end of 1968 most of her crew will be staffed by crew from the Queen Mary, which she will replace. Safe Ship Finally, apart from her Commercial attractions, the Q 4 will be, says Cunard, the safest, ship ever to sail. The ship’s structure is built from incombustible materials throughout and there is an elaborate automatic sprinkler system. In safety precautions she meets all existing national and international regulations and anticipates those likely in the future. In engineering terms the Q 4 will be the most powerful and at the same time, most economical passenger liner afloat. While she will be able to carry over 2000 passengers at the same speed—2B] knots —as the pre-war built Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, fuel consumption will be only about half that of the "Queen” liners. The ship will have, for example, only three boilers, compared with 12 in the Queen Elizabeth and 27 In the Queen Mary. Replacement Plan The background to the Q 4 is that, in the early 1950’5, Cunard realised the need to plan for a replacement to the ageing Queen Mary. The Government backed a plan for a Q 3 liner —similar in size to the 81,000-tons Queen Mary and of similar application. This plan was scrapped when Cunard realised that such a ship would be an anachronism. The Q 4 was the result and Cunard claims that it is the most carefully planned ship ever built.

The contract price of the Q 4, being built by John Brown at Clydebank, is £25,427,000 —subject to escalation to cover increases in wage rates and costs of materials. It is widely believed that the final price will be at least £3om. No Subsidy Cunard stress again that it was entirely responsible for meeting the cost of the ship and that there was no element of subsidy from any source to help cover the cost. “The Government, however, has agreed to make a loan of £17.6 million at an interest rate of 4] per cent, but this loan is fully repayable in equal half-yearly instalments over a period of ten years from the time the ship comes into service.

Introducing the model of the Q 4 at a Press conference in the Royal Festival Hall, Sir Basil Smallpeice, chairman of Cunard, stressed that the Q 4 was a commercial venture, made possible by the Government loan and the investment grant of £4 million. He believed Cunard could make the ship pay. “It won’t be easy and it will need a great deal of team effort all round.”