Little & Large

No, not the popular 80s British comedy duo. I’m talking about ships.

To mark the 175th anniversary of the Cunard Shipping Line, that company took three of its biggest cruise liners to Liverpool’s River Mersey to celebrate. Since the ships in question were the Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Victoria and the Queen Mary 2 (recently in Cape Town), it was billed as the 3 Queens. By all accounts, it was a resounding success, with ships, flypasts and fireworks for the estimated million onlookers to see.

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If you want to find images of the event, Google is your friend. Or Flickr. And the whole thing was streamed live on Youtube. Look, you’re not short of options here.

But while people are celebrating and having a good time, normal life goes on. And if you’re the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company Limited Seacat, Manannan (seen by me here), normal life is getting people from the Isle of Man to Liverpool. And it’s probably quite annoying when you get there and someone has taken your parking space:

11162081_1015281998482036_255042973669970321_nHey – it’s ok. There’s precedent: previously in Liverpool, Manannan has had to sneak in behind the QM2 to dock at the landing stage.
But… scale!

20150525233254There she is, just off the stern of the QM2. And while we snigger at the tiny Manx ferry, it’s worth noting that it’s not actually that tiny: it’s 96m long, and carries 850 passengers and crew and 200 cars. Mind you, compare that with the QM2’s 345m length and 4,350 passenger and crew capacity, and yeah, ok.

Of course, it’s not a fair comparison – these vessels have different jobs and are each designed to fit their respective purposes. But the QM2 is awfully big, isn’t she?

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