Room to Spare

The world’s tallest ocean liner 236 ft., Cunard Line’s new Queen Mary 2, sailed under the Askøy Bridge in Bergen, Norway, on July 17 during her first-ever “Northern Europe & Fjords” cruise, which ended today. While the ship’s chief officer, Paul White, climbed to the top of the funnel to be absolutely certain of the 9.8 ft. of clearance, there was no guesswork involved. In fact, the line had made a host of calculations and conducted model tests under the worst-case scenarios (high tide, hot weather) long before her January 2004 launch. Queen Mary 2 is also the largest (151,400 tons), longest (1,132 feet/345 meters), widest (135 feet/41 meters) and most expensive ($800 million) passenger ship ever built.