>Can anyone tell me what would happen if a freak wave broke on QM2? Or what would happen if she got herself in some terrible weather?
It's an interesting question. You may have seen the photos of what happened to the Michelangelo when she was struck by a rogue wave early on in her career. If you haven't- two of them- one of the wave approaching and one of the immediate aftermath are available in Bill Miller's Italian Line history- basically, the forward part of her superstructure collapsed, or was pushed backwards, and the occupants of one of the first class cabins washed overboard and lost. One might then wonder what would happen to the new breed of balconied liners if it was broadsided by such a wave, or caught in a large storm. The Morro Castle, for instance, got caught in a September 1933 storm that managed to smash out enough portholes to flood everything below B deck to a depth of "shin deep" and give her a pronounced list to port, and you wonder what provisions have been made to strengthen the large expanses of glass that now make up the sides of passenger ships.
There was a disastrous crossing by the Rex in 1937, in which the passengers refused to obey the "stay put" orders as he ship rolled severely and the end result was that there were a surprising number of injuries among people who tried to negotiate staircases and failed, or got thrown into furniture or vice versa- and there was also a death. People often do not respect things like the weather until it is too late to alter the end results of their own carelessness, and we've spoken amongst ourselves about the first time one of the balconied ships gets caught up in a major storm and passengers decide to storm watch from their own terraces~ the option of locking the doors to the outside decks in the public areas is no longer an option, and one wonders what provisions are in place to protect deluxe cabin passengers from their own impulses in that case.
Having said that, we were aboard the QM2 in her first ever large storm and she did handle well. We did not have the ability to measure the waves, but the highest of them were, to judge by our video of the event, one deck higher than the upper level of the dining room. QM2 has a certain advantage in that most of her 'vulnerable' cabins are further above the waterline than the reach of all but Poseidon-caliber waves. She was considerably steadier in the weather than was the traditionally designed Norway ex France which handled worse in lesser seas, so from my POV she might be a bit stocky- even ungainly- looking, but is a safe bet to travel through a storm aboard.
>This Dubya-speak seems to be catching...
So, too, does gratuitous rudeness towards people for whom English may not be the primary language.
