page_title: Queen Mary 2
section_title: Exterior
hierarchical_section_title: Queen Mary 2 / Design and construction / Exterior
caption_attribution_description: Queen Mary 2
context_page_description: RMS Queen Mary 2 is a British transatlantic ocean liner. She has served as the flagship of Cunard Line since succeeding Queen Elizabeth 2 in 2004. As of 2017, Queen Mary 2 is the only purpose built passenger ship designed as an ocean liner, as opposed to a cruise ship.
  The ship was officially named Queen Mary 2 by Queen Elizabeth II in 2004 after the first RMS Queen Mary of 1936. Queen Mary had in turn been named after Mary of Teck, consort of King George V. With the retirement of Queen Elizabeth 2 in 2008, Queen Mary 2 is the only transatlantic ocean liner in regular service between Southampton, England, and New York City, United States. The ship is also used for cruising, including an annual world cruise.
  She was designed by a team of British naval architects led by Stephen Payne, and was constructed in France by Chantiers de l'Atlantique. At the time of her construction, Queen Mary 2 was the longest, at 1,131.99 ft, and largest, with a gross tonnage of 148,528 GT, passenger ship ever built. She no longer holds these records after the construction of Royal Caribbean International's 154,407 GT Freedom of the Seas in April 2006, but remains the largest ocean liner ever built.
context_section_description: Queen Mary 2's principal naval architect was Carnival's in-house designer, Stephen Payne. He intended many aspects of the ship's design to resemble notable aspects of former ocean liners, such as Queen Elizabeth 2 and the ship's predecessor Queen Mary. These include the three thick black lines  known as "hands that wrap around either edge of the ship's bridge screen, and at the stern end of the superstructure, which are to recall the appearance of the crossovers of the forward decks on the first Queen Mary.
  Queen Mary 2 has 14,164 square metres (152,460 sq ft) of exterior deck space, with wind screens to shield passengers in rough seas. The ship was originally constructed with five swimming pools. However, the shallow "Splash Pool" on Deck 13 was removed during the ship's 2016 refurbishment to make room for additional staterooms. Two of her remaining four swimming pools are outdoors. There are indoor pools on Deck 7, in the Canyon Ranch Spa Club, and on Deck 12. The Pavilion Pool on Deck 12 is covered with a retractable magrodome.
  In common with liners such as RMS Queen Mary, there is a continuous wrap-around promenade deck (Deck 7). This passes behind the bridge screen and allows passengers to circumnavigate the deck while protected from the winds; one circuit is  620 m (2,030 ft) long. The flanking promenades are created by the need to step the superstructure to allow space for lifeboats. By SOLAS standards, these should have been lower on the hull (15 m (49 ft) above the waterline), but for the sake of appearance as well as to avoid the danger of large waves damaging the boats, Payne convinced SOLAS officials to exempt Queen Mary 2 from this requirement, and the boats are 25 m (82 ft) above the waterline.
  Payne's original intention was for a stern profile with a spoon shape, similar to most previous liners, but the mounting of the propeller pods required a flat transom. The compromise was a Costanzi stern – a combination of the two, which provides the transom required for azimuthal pod propulsors and has better seaholding characteristics in a following swell. In common with many modern ships, Queen Mary 2 has a bulbous bow to reduce drag and thereby increase speed, range, and fuel efficiency.
  While of a design similar to that of Queen Elizabeth 2, Queen Mary 2's funnel has a slightly different shape, because a taller funnel would have made it impossible for the ship to pass under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City at high tide. The final design permits a minimum of 13 feet (4.0 m) of clearance under the bridge.
  As Queen Mary 2 is too large to dock in many ports, passengers are often ferried to and from the ship in tenders, which can also be used as lifeboats. These are stored at sea in davits alongside the lifeboats. To transport passengers ashore the tenders pull up to one of four loading stations, each of which has a large hull door that opens hydraulically to form a boarding platform, complete with railings and decking.
  Queen Mary 2 is a post-Panamax ship. As a result, she must circumnavigate South America to transit between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The decision not to constrain her width to transit the Panama Canal was taken as Queen Elizabeth 2 only transited once a year, during the world cruise. Cunard decided to pass up the convenience of the occasional passage in favour of a greater passenger capacity.
caption: Queen Mary 2 at Trondheim, 2007
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