Why I Chose Ocean Travel Over Flying: To London and Back on the QM2
Why I went by sea (1) To get to the other side
In 2025, I was reeling from interstitial lung disease. My younger brother had died the year previously. I wanted to get back to England to see my sister and the rest of the family. A long flight at high altitude was not advisable.
Taking the one remaining ocean liner, the Queen Mary 2 was the only alternative. So in December 2025 I embarked on the week-long voyage from Brooklyn, New York to Southampton, England. I returned a month later in January 2026
Why I went by sea (2) To see the North Atlantic in mid Winter
If my primary motive was to get to the other side, a stong secondary one was the thought of seeing the North Atlantic in midwinter, provided I could do it in comfort.
What a history. Intrepid Vikings about whom we know little. Seamen from the Atlantic coast of Europe going for the summer cod fishing, salting and drying, many from the little town of Poole not thirty miles from where I grew up. Huddled landsmen fleeing poverty and hoping to have a patch of land of their own in the New World. The advent of the ocean liners. The rich of the Gilded Age, including those who perished on the Titanic. And British seamen keeping night watch, warming themselves with hot cocoa, as they watched for U-boats harrying the convoys with food that prevented starvation in Britain.
From the moment we left port to the moment you dock, the Atlantic remained a constant presence. The blues and greys of the ocean and sky changed from hour to hour. So did the texture of the solid-looking water and the clouds above. I could not stop taking photos. Once the swells reached 15 feet, a constant pattern of surges. If you ventured out on the wet promenade deck, the wind howled through the lifeboats hanging overhead.
A bit about the Queen Mary 2 and its identity problem
The QM2, launched in 2004, has a bit of an identify problem.
She was built as an ocean liner. That means she was built (1) for strength in high seas and (2) for speed in getting passengers to their destination.
For strength in high waves, her hull is higher than that of a cruise ship, her bow is longer, her draft is deeper, and her steel is twice as thick. In rough seas, her stabilizers spread out below the water line, ensuring as smooth a passage as possible. For comparison, she has three times the tonnage and is a hundred and fifty feet longer than the Titanic.
For speed, the QM2 depends on her shape and on the 2, 400 horsepower engines. That’s a lot of horsepower. The quip is that liners were built not for having a good time but for making good time. Their job was to get passengers and mail to their destination as quickly as possible.
Then came telephones and airplanes and the internet, so that by the time the QM2 was launched she was already a bit of a fossil. She still makes a round trip crossing 9 times a year between April and December.
If you enjoy fine technology, an ocean liner, and the QM2 is the only remaining one, is a much more appealing vessel than the modern boxy cruise ship. Friends in my generation remember taking one of several liners crossing back in the 60s and 70s. Not any more. Their place has been taken by the 2000 aircraft that cross daily.
But presumably because not enough passengers like me simply want to get where they are going, hints of cruising creep in. Instead of going at its full 35 mph, the QM2 plugs along at half that. This makes for a smoother passage. It also maximises the fuel efficiency of its two 400 hp engines. Thus the. voyage takes six or seven days instead of the four it could manage.
Carnival, which now owns the QM2, has tacked on cruises to the Norwegian coast, the Caribbean, or even round the world. Many crossings continue to Hamburg or Le Havre on the European side, or on to Florida, the Caribbean or even California on the US side. In the rough winter weather of late January, February and March, there are no Atlantic crossings.
The entertainment has been upped, so that it is much like that on a cruise ship, at least a cruise ship with older passengers.
Relieved to have a quality interior
The furnishings of the QM2 live up to its great ocean liner status. On the passenger decks, nothing is skimped. One fellow passenger said to the group at lunch, “What opulence.” True he had just come back from motor biking through Mauritania. Another, retired from the printing business, said sourly, “Corporate or legal atmosphere.”
I’d say an effort to replicate 1930s elegance. And I loved that everything was quality, not laminate, not plywood, not offend-nobody motel pictures.
Flowered designs are incised on the glass doors of the elevators, and these are surrounded by pressed metal murals of the five continents. Original artwork hangs on eight plus the landings, which like the stairs and passageways are covered with custom carpets.
The enormous formal dining room with its tables laid with white linen, heavy china, and cutlery is arranged around a dramatic circular staircase. The many smaller and more casual dining areas and bars were all very pleasant, relaxing places to spend a while.
The larger of the two theatres, which holds 1000, has traditional red velvet seats and a stage that moves in wonderful ways.
The spacious cabins (or staterooms as one is expected to call them) have ample closets, a queen size bed, sofa, coffee table, refrigerator, and desk, all in 1930s style blond wood.
My favorite spot was the library perched up on the 8th deck. Books well chosen to appeal to different tastes and in several different languages were arranged in glass fronted bookshelves. If you did not want to take them out to your cabin, you could settle in the comfortable armchairs overlooking the bow of the ship.
Getting to know my fellow passengers
Because I was on the QM2 to get to the other side and I had plenty of projects to get on with, meeting people was not top of my agenda. But with 2,500 passengers, meet and greets of every description organised daily, and the long five course sit down dinner every night, meeting people was inevitable.
Dinner was the main event of the day. As a solo passenger, I could choose to sit by myself or with 2 or 6 other people. I chose the six. Like the other five, I put on nice clothes every evening. Working through the four courses followed by petit fours and coffee took a couple of hours so there was plenty of time for conversation. I found it pleasant to gradually get to know my dinner group. They included:
A retired air force mechanic whose hobby was long endurance trips to (say) the Everest base camp;
An Irish ophthalmologist who had sailed the islands of the South Pacific with 3000 pairs of glasses for the patients he examined for free;
An older widower from Brooklyn with a NY sense of humor who was going back and forth just because;
A glamorous German special needs teacher in her 30s who loved travel as much as she hated flying;
A former “trolley-dolly” (her term) who loved sequinned sweaters and had stories to tell;
An American-Korean who was combining teaching in Korea with completing his Ph.D.
More broadly, we were mostly British and American, some Germans and French, a few Japanese and vanishingly small numbers of others. I thought in my early 80s I might be one of the oldest on board, but no way. Many were older than me, few were younger than their 50s, a surprising number had wheel chairs or walking aids.
In the two weeks I was at sea, I met only one person who was clearly very well-to-do. Unlike the passengers on cruise liners in the 1930s, we were not segregated by what we had paid, apart from some special dining places for those who paid (a lot) more.Most of us were middle class and white, older, and came from business or the professions. The few exceptions stood out. A young mother struggled with three children under ten. Two young women, English-Middle Eastern I’d guess, who wore real mink coats over their jogging suits.
Unlike the passengers on cruise liners in the 1930s, we were not segregated by what we had paid, apart from some special dining places for those who paid (a lot) more.
Why my fellow passengers had chosen the QM2
I heard lots of good reasons why passengers had chosen to travel by sea.
Because, like me, their health did not permit flying;
Because they were frightened to fly;
Because they were moving across the pond temporarily or permanently and there is no baggage limit (not household goods of course);
Because they wanted a quiet time offline to write or organize a project;
Because they had a dog. The dogs in the kennels are exercised daily;
Because they wanted to experience (safely) the North Atlantic in mid-winter (something I felt too);
Because, as an older Japanese lady told me, she and her husband could dance every night.
What we had to eat
The food was freshly prepared daily, not frozen and popped in the microwave. The kitchens were huge, well equipped, and spotless. Not surprisingly given the clientele, they turned out primarily the Anglo-French cuisine of traditional hotels and restaurants. Each meal included a bow to other tastes: jook on the menu for breakfast, a mild curry at dinner. The pastries and desserts were particularly good, lending themselves better than meat, fish and vegetables to large-scale preparation.
So even if not the very pinnacle of international restaurant standards, the meals were still very appetizing Particularly so if you consider that the kitchens were turning out 13,000 meals daily from 6 in the morning to midnight in the middle of the north Atlantic in mid-winter.
For breakfast I liked to get to the casual dining area on Deck 7 when it opened at 7 am. After collecting coffee, grapefruit, kippers and toast, I could be sure of a table to myself. I had a 180 degree view of the sky as it gradually changed from grey to tints of pink and yellow above the inky Atlantic
Entertainment morning, noon and night
On older ocean liners where passengers were left to their own devices. Historic photos showed those earlier aristocratic travellers betting on races between cut-out paper racehorses. They must have been bored rigid.
Now the QM2 emulates cruise ships with entertainment from day to night. It is focussed on the older passenger. Almost nothing caters to the under 30s. The glossy, color brochure placed on your bed every evening includes news (seas to expect, how much to change your watch, when the captain will be talking) and the sixty events for the next day, including meetups, classes, dancing, music, theatre, and talks. And there is a good sprinkling of what might be called high culture.
I enjoyed the talks by participants in the Cheltenham Literary Festival as well as chatting with others in the Women’s Institute meet up. I had other ways of occupying my time though.
Cunard makes much of their gala nights. I managed with a cocktail dress on the two gala nights (a long dress would have been too bulky for my self-imposed luggage limit)but many women were dressed to the hilt. The men wore dark suits or dinner jackets.
The excellent service from the staff
The 1500 staff, just about one for every two passengers, provided constant and attentive service. They came from an astonishing 54 different countries. The chef was Indonesian, the sommelier was Kenyan, the chief engineer was Croatian, the steward on my deck was Filipino on the way over Tanzanian on the way back.
The officers and administrators (doctors, safety officers, chefs, actors and musicians, for example) appeared to be long-term employees. The captain had formerly been a pilot for British Air. One of the actors explained to us that he was better paid than he would be in the London West End. He had accommodation and meals provided. He could practice his craft daily. When he tired of life at sea, his experience would make him highly employable in the West End.
The lower ranks were not as happy. Although they were provided with accommodation, food, and uniforms, the living conditions (two to a room) could be stressful and the hours were long. I had the impression that many left once their six-month contract was up.
It would be possible to say that we white passengers were recreating the colonial experience with a crew largely composed of people of color. And the Cunard story fed into that.
On the other hand, so far as I know no one was coerced to sign up, (if you leave out poverty or lack of opportunity in the home countries). All were free to walk away after their contracts ended.
Moreover, this was, for better or worse, part of a larger pattern of the wealthier countries of the world benefitting from the labor of the poorer countries.
I noted, for example, that the last thing you see sailing out of New York, apart from the Statue of Liberty, is an enormous Ikea. The first thing you see sailing into Southampton is an equally enormous Ikea. Ideal locations for stores crammed with goods manufactured in the poorer countries of the world..
How the cost of the trip compared favorably with the airlines
Round trip in an inside room with no sea view cost, when I last checked, $2,259.
Round trip in a room with a balcony with a sea view, cost $5,858. Both of these could be lowered if you were prepared to wait for last minute offers.
Round trip on United Basic Economy costs $822, while the cost shoots up to $2,323 for Premium Economy, and $4,508 for Business.
So if you have the time, a big if I know, the QM2 is good value. It includes meals, accommodation, and entertainment for 14 days. The only extras are drinks (about the same price as airport drinks) and wifi (I think about $20 a day). Many gratefully choose not to be connected for a few quiet days.
Being honest about the downsides
Getting to and from the dock in Brooklyn was expensive and unpleasant. There is no public transport from any of the NY airports. The terminal is an unheated shed with just two toilets. There are no nearby restaurants or hotels. Southampton is much better with a train less than a mile from the terminal with connections across Britain and lots of hotels in the vicinity.
That you had either to just go and come back or to stay a full month in England. That costs much more than the voyage unless you have relatives who can put you up for a month.
That there might have been an outbreak of disease. Lots to say about this but I have gone on long enough.
Why I would go by sea again: Time to reflect
Yes, I’d do it again. In a minute. I could fly now. And I have seen the Atlantic in mid-winter. But I realize in retrospect that I also loved the leisurely pace, the privacy, the time to anticipate my time in England, to reflect on it afterwards, and more generally to take stock of my life. Priceless.