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Queen Mary 2 is the world's
tallest ocean liner (236 feet or 72 meters), and it had a few feet to
spare as it sailed under the Askøy Bridge for it's maiden call at
Bergen, Norway on July 17 during its first "Northern Europe & Fjords"
cruise.
The ship cleared the bridge by 9.8 feet (3 meters), but it wasn't left to chance. Cunard had made all the calculations and conducted tests with models under worst-case scenarios (high tide, hot weather), before ever scheduling the call. Actually these were done while the ship was still under construction. But seeing is believing, and at left the ship's chief officer, Paul White, climbed to the top of the funnel to measure as the ship passed safely under the bridge. As Cunard is so fond of saying: Queen Mary 2 is 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. |