Cunard liner Queen Mary 2 passing Calshot, 22nd April 2008.

At about this point she sounded her fog horn, it was an incredible and very deep noise, vibrating the air all around us.

I think the little boat closest to her is the Pilot boat. All ports have local "Pilots" - specialist navigators who know the local waters and whose job is to make sure that vessels entering and leaving the port do so safely. If they're on a vessel leaving port, once their job is finished they climb down into their little boat and go back for the next job.

From this angle it's possible to see that QM2 has a fine raked bow, then broadens quite quickly, her stern is rounded, quite bulbous.

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From Ship Technology
Built at the Chantiers de l'Atlantique yard for Cunard, the Queen Mary 2 is ... 345.03m long and has a beam of 45m at the bridge wings. Its draught is 9.95m and the height from keel to the funnel is 72m. The Gross Registered Tonnage is 150,000t.

944 of the ship's 1,310 staterooms have private balconies, and a further 66 have ocean views. The verandah cabins stretch over four and a half decks. There are also 300 inside cabins.

The vessel is powered by four Wärtsilä diesel engines, supplemented by two gas turbines. With a total output of 118MW, the power plant develops 157,000hp.

Propulsion is carried out by four 20MW MerMaid podded propulsion units, two fixed and two azimuthing through 360°. They incorporate an electric AC motor that directly drives a fixed-pitch propeller with highly skewed blades for low noise and vibration.

.....
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Colin Hunter has a picture of all three Queens on his blog today (29 April 2008)
http://chunter.shutterchance.com/archive.php
.

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