I joined Queen Victoria in Hong Kong on the fifth leg of its round-the-world voyage, to Singapore; 396 passengers were making the full 15-week voyage.
We sailed in darkness and a deluge. The Hong Kong skyline off starboard was veiled in a tulle of rain and only the neon signs penetrated the gauze. For a moment they appeared detached, suspended in the gloom, then the mist cleared and it was as if the buildings of the city had crowded the shoreline to see us off.
Five days later I was in the theatre watching On the West Side, a song-and-dance show reminiscent of West Side Story. The theatre is emblematic of the ship, combining hugeness and heritage. It is cavernous - three decks high, with 830 seats, a royal circle, 16 boxes and barely a pillar in sight. It is also deeply traditional - all red plush and brocaded walls. There are times when the Royal Court outdazzles its shows.
You know this is a ship dressed in tradition and steeped in the ways of Cunard from the moment you board and see two bellboys in pillbox hats at the top of the gangway. It continues with spectacular rooms like the grand ballroom, with its two vast chandeliers, the 6000-book library, which extends through two decks, and in details such as the oil paintings of old Cunard liners on the staircases, and a small Cunard museum.
The US dollar is the on-board currency: Cunard is owned by the Carnival Corporation, based in the US. But the ship retains British genes, with touches of art deco and art nouveau, stained glass and hectares of wood panelling. Queen Victoria is very brown inside. If the future is rosy, the past, as far as Queen Vic's designers go, is umber. The wood in the pub is the colour of Guinness, which is served on draught. The funnel, of course, is Cunard's red and black.
It's surprising how evocative such emblems are to an Englishman with a post-war childhood. I travelled to the US on the original Queen Elizabeth liner as a schoolboy in 1960. I don't remember a lot about it, except that the ship creaked incessantly; it was said the time to worry was when it didn't creak.
I also recall the exchange between a dining-room steward and a passenger. "My soup is quite tasteless," she complained. "Oh, really, Mum," he replied. "Usually it tastes 'orrible."
President Josip Broz Tito of the former Yugoslavia was on board on his way to the UN General Assembly. He used to take his morning walk with two heavies on the promenade deck. And I had a girlfriend, an American travelling with her parents in first class.
There was an interconnecting door between the classes that was never locked. Our assignations, if you could call them that, were charged with a far greater frisson from that petty act of trespass than any spark of romance.
The class system is something else that Cunard has retained - although it doesn't call it that. Instead, passengers are categorised by their restaurants, presumably a more acceptable form of societal taxonomy.
So Queen Victoria is really two cruise ships in one. There is the two-sittings-for-dinner/bag-us-a-sunbed ship for the folk from the lower decks in the Britannia Restaurant, and an exclusive penthouse area for those paying top dollar for the most spacious staterooms. They number just over 300.
The two groups are divided not by locked doors but by a dedicated lift and a sign at the foot of a stairway reserving a top deck area for Grill Suite guests.
Here they are pretty much sequestered from the masses below, unless they want to swim, go ashore, play the casino or go to a show.
Although others have followed suit (MSC Cruises, for example, has the Yacht Club), Cunard is the only cruise line to segregate its passengers quite so strictly. Some may feel excluded, but those in the Princess and Queens Grill Suites get the best of two, normally incompatible, cruising worlds. They can persuade themselves they are sailing in a small, select ship, while having the daytime activities and nightlife of a 90,000 gross tonnage liner. That includes music from two dance bands and a string quartet, deck games, lectures, art and dance classes, bingo, quizzes, cabaret and classical concerts.
Everyone dining in the waiter-serviced restaurants is required to observe the etiquette of the ship's strict dress codes. Formal nights - of which there were four in the eight days I was on board - require black tie or dark suits for men; evening dresses for women.
For Cunard, a dinner jacket is a social flotation device, almost as indispensable as a lifejacket. Then there are "semi-formal" evenings, which means jacket and tie and cocktail dresses, and "elegant casual" when men don't need ties but are still expected to wear jackets.
Imagine the permutations on a four-month cruise. No wonder my wardrobe had 52 clothes hangers.
The writer travelled as a guest of Cunard.
- Telegraph Group Ltd
