Dawn on Tuesday last week found me bobbing around in a small sailing boat in Sydney Harbour, yards from the wash of two of the world’s greatest liners: Cunard’s ocean liner Queen Mary 2, and the company’s enormous new cruise ship, the Queen Elizabeth.
Dawn on Tuesday last week found me bobbing around in a small sailing boat in Sydney Harbour, yards from the wash of two of the world’s greatest liners: Cunard’s ocean liner Queen Mary 2, and the company’s enormous new cruise ship, the Queen Elizabeth. They were entering the harbour together, and we’d sailed under Sydney Harbour Bridge to watch what the local papers called the Royal Rendezvous.
The occasion, which I wanted to write about for the Times, was breathtaking. The Queen Mary 2 is the largest liner ever built; the Queen Elizabeth dwarfed the harbour buildings; and the combined manifest of the two vessels — some 6,000 tourists — looked set to take even worldly-wise Sydney by storm. I felt proud to see a bold ‘Southampton’ lettered beneath the names of both ships on the stern. The canvas arrayed before me on a grey and rainy dawn was rich in spectacle, symbolism and scale.
But it was a detail on that canvas that made as sharp and lasting impression on my mind as the two great ships themselves. Scores of pleasure boats, ferries, water-jetting fire-tugs and small craft had come out into the harbour to join the fun. Sweeping the scene, my eye lighted on a tiny detail: a vessel that seemed to have been photoshopped into the picture from another century.
And she had. The coal-fired steam-engined tug, Waratah, was launched in Sydney in 1902; nearly scrapped in 1968; then saved by the Sydney Heritage Fleet and completely and authentically restored.
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