THE QUEEN IS BACK

Last Aug. 7, just as my wife and I had finished unpacking after crossing the Atlantic in a gracious cabin aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2, we heard that the grand old lady had a surprise confrontation with an unchartered rock off Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. After spending five days in first-class luxury, I felt as if my aristocratic aunt had become involved in a street brawl with a scalper at Madison Square Garden.

During the time it took us to cross the Atlantic from Southampton, England, to New York, we fell in love with that floating palace of a ship, on which you are pampered from every possible direction, physically and mentally. Larger than the Titanic, built to pleasure cruise through hurricanes and typhoons, executing gourmet dinners that would make the most elegant restaurants blush, the QE2 seemed beyond little accidents such as rubbing shoulders with rocks and getting her hull punctured. From our point of view, the QE2 deserved to be floating in champagne.

And indeed, now she is again. Today, the Queen of the Oceans is scheduled to sail again, after 55 days in dry dock, getting her bottom lifted. She resumes her normal schedule on a cruise around the Iberian Peninsula, then crosses the Atlantic again beginning next Sunday. Her indomitable British spirit has inspired these drawings. The Queen is back. Long live the Queen!