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00:00In the days of the giant transatlantic liners,
00:04the world's oceans were considered a highway
00:06to be traversed as speedily as possible.
00:11But in January 1997, ocean travel entered a new era
00:16when Carnival Destiny sailed into Miami for the first time.
00:22Never before had a cruise ship surpassed in size
00:25the largest ocean liner ever built, the Queen Elizabeth.
00:29The central idea is the size of the ship,
00:32it's the scale of it.
00:34Everything that we have learned in the past
00:38on all the ships that we have done
00:40has been incorporated into this design.
00:47In the long and extraordinary history of the ocean liner,
00:50Destiny is the first passenger ship to exceed 100,000 tons.
00:56In doing so, she's pushed the limits of marine technology
00:59into a new realm, the realm of the floating city.
01:04What we're saying now is that these oceans
01:08can be used for development.
01:11And you'll find that after you use a ship, for example,
01:15as a floating city, there'll be multiple floating cities.
01:18This is the first step in what will be in a further evolution
01:22of the use of the seas by man-made objects.
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01:43Up until the middle of the 20th century,
01:45virtually the only way to travel between continents
01:46Up until the middle of the 20th century, virtually the only way to travel between continents was by ocean liner.
02:01For millions of travellers, wealthy and immigrant, the liners were a triumph of their time.
02:06Their enormous size, engineering sophistication and interior splendour stirred the imagination of people everywhere.
02:17These great liners are the biggest moving objects made by man.
02:23There's no thing in all history so big that is man-made which can move.
02:30In the quest for profits and prestige, speed was the dominant factor.
02:37In 1907, the British ships Lusitania and Mauritania were the largest and fastest liners in the world, crossing the North Atlantic in four and a half days.
02:49In the 1930s, a duel between the great French liner Normandy and Britain's Queen Mary reduced the North Atlantic Passage to less than four days.
02:59I remember as a boy, I was an American. The calendar, the jigsaw puzzle, the cookie box with pictures of the Queen Mary on it.
03:08She was a great national symbol, world symbol.
03:16The only real challenge to the ocean liner came from the airship.
03:20By 1936, Germany was operating two airships across the Atlantic to New York and Rio.
03:27But the dream of a worldwide service collapsed in May 1937 when the Hindenburg blew up on its approach to land at New Jersey.
03:39Following the Second World War, military advances in flight were converted into commercial possibilities.
03:52Most travellers, however, still preferred the comfort and safety of a ship to the perils of climate.
03:57In 1952, a remarkable new American liner, the SS United States, cut ten hours off the Queen Mary's blue ribbon record.
04:08But that same year, the de Havilland Comet ushered in a new era in travel, the Jet Age.
04:20In the coming decades, the giant ocean-going passenger liner, the great icon of industrial power and national prestige,
04:32would face the most dramatic struggle for survival in its long history.
04:36Well into the 1950s, Britain was still recovering from virtual bankruptcy following the Second World War.
04:55With half of her enormous fleet of liners and cargo ships destroyed in the conflict, shipyards were forced to scavenge for materials to rebuild the island nation's most important asset.
05:10At the same time, millions of Europeans, tired of post-war austerity, were flooding immigration officers looking for any country that would accept them.
05:28Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia were popular destinations.
05:33Desperate to increase its population, Australia actively encouraged British immigrants with a unique government-sponsored assisted passage scheme.
05:47A mere ten pound sterling bought a chance for a new life in a new country for anyone prepared to sail halfway round the world.
06:04You went really for weeks at a time.
06:11And not only weeks at a time, but through a vast change of climates from the cold of the Channel to the heat of the Red Sea and then back again to the cold of the passage south of Australia.
06:23The Atlantic has nothing to compare with this and no length of duration of stay on board.
06:33Ironically, many British immigrants couldn't be guaranteed passage on a British liner.
06:40Such was the sorry state of the nation's merchant fleet.
06:43But by the mid-1950s, British shipyards were back to their pre-war capacity.
06:57The oldest British line, P&O, and its subsidiary, the Orient Line, commissioned the building of the two largest passenger liners since the war.
07:09The 42,000 tonne Oriana was the fastest liner built for the Britain to Australia run.
07:23The voyage to Sydney, that really took less than a month, was cut to three weeks.
07:37For her 2,050 passengers, Oriana's decor was modern and bright.
07:44And she offered the latest in entertainment technology.
07:48You can take your choice for an evening's entertainment.
07:51The liner's lush plush cinema, or television in cosy viewing lounges, and in some of the cabins too.
07:58At Harland and Wolf's Belfast Yard, the grandsons of men who'd built the Titanic half a century before,
08:08were constructing a liner larger than Oriana.
08:10The 45,000 tonne Canberra had accommodation for more passengers than any other liner afloat,
08:23and gave P&O Orient the final link in its quest to encircle the world with passenger liners.
08:41For the British ship workers, Canberra and Oriana restored faith in the future.
08:51Faith that proved to be ill-founded.
08:56In 1958, international travel was revolutionised by the Boeing 707.
09:09The journey across the Atlantic Ocean could now be measured in hours, not days.
09:16An optimistic Cunard director suggested flying was a fad,
09:21and that there would always be passengers for great ships like the Queen's.
09:26But by the 1960s, sea travel not so much declined as collapsed.
09:3895% of transatlantic travellers were now crossing by jet.
09:43By the 60s, the two queens were ghost ships, really.
09:47They were carrying next to no passengers most of the time.
09:51And most people at that time said, well, that's the end of the liners.
09:57On May 11, 1960, the French Line launched the France,
10:03a ship its owners predicted would revitalise interest in ocean travel.
10:07The French government had also hoped the new national flagship would help rebuild the country's morale,
10:16following the recent loss of its African colony of Algeria.
10:19Madame de Gaulle performed the christening ceremony.
10:29At 1,035 feet in length, she was the longest ocean liner in the world,
10:34and possibly the most expensive propaganda exercise ever created in France.
10:39Unlike the exquisite French liners of the 1920s and 30s, the France's interiors were considered vulgar and tasteless.
10:58And, according to one critic, she was the greatest disappointment in the history of shipping.
11:07But in revenge, of course.
11:09Like all the French liners, it was reputed for his cuisine.
11:12And it's true that launching a dining, it was fantastic.
11:18I've kept a few menus myself.
11:19At the time of her maiden voyage from the Havre to New York, the jet had already proven itself unbeatable competition.
11:32At best, the France would cater to those who still yearned for a more leisurely and luxurious way to cross the ocean.
11:38But like all the other transatlantic liners of the 1960s, she was a financial disaster for her owners.
11:47It is amazing looking back that people were building ships well into the 60s for transatlantic service,
11:54when I guess the Boeing 707 was built in the middle 50s.
11:59So there was obviously not a great deal of foresight.
12:02In late October 1967, the people of Southampton said an emotional final farewell to the most formidable ship of the century.
12:24The Royal Pier was absolutely chock-a-block with people that day.
12:26She had this big, long, paying-off pennant, 310 foot.
12:30It was 10 foot for every year of service, that's what it was.
12:35You had the helicopter escort coming over the top, it was a great event.
12:42From the people of the land of her birth and from the Royal Navy came the final honour for the greatest merchant ship ever built.
12:49The Queen Mary had sailed from Britain, never again for return.
12:56The Queen Mary's final voyage was her longest in peacetime.
13:08She sailed around Cape Horn to her new home at Long Beach, California.
13:13On board, a farewell party for the 1,200 passengers.
13:17Overhead, a giant jet sweeps past in salute, a symbol of the future saying goodbye to the past.
13:22When we arrived at Long Beach, I remember going up on deck by dawn's early light and I was absolutely amazed at what I saw.
13:35Hundreds of little ships and bigger ships, all round us, hundreds.
13:44The old lady has been bought by Long Beach for more than a million pounds.
13:48The sum which in poverty-stricken Britain is not to be sneezed at.
13:51As the great ship makes her last landfall, a chapter of Atlantic history comes to an end.
14:01The Queen Mary, perhaps the most popular ocean liner of all time, was to be preserved as a hotel and museum.
14:17A more dramatic fate, however, was in store for her fleet mate, the Queen Elizabeth.
14:26The world's largest liner was retired in 1968, and later sold to interests in the Orient who planned to convert her into a floating university.
14:40In 1972, she was destroyed by fire, allegedly lit by a saboteur.
14:53The two most famous liners ever built, ships that had come to symbolise Britain's maritime power in war and peace, were no more.
15:01The great Cunard Queens were dead.
15:08Despite the collapse of the transatlantic liner trade, Cunard was unwilling to admit defeat to the jet.
15:26Confronting bankruptcy, and to the amazement of the sceptics, they built a new ship.
15:33A ship aimed at regaining the glory of Britain on the seas.
15:41In September 1967, tens of thousands of people gathered on the banks of the River Clyde,
15:47to witness Queen Elizabeth II give her name to the third largest ocean liner built in Britain.
15:52A launch is a peculiar thing, because you're working with people who've maybe launched 200 boats in their career.
16:01And it's still got this peculiar, odd kind of emotional feeling.
16:06And I think it's got to do with the fact that you've worked on it.
16:09And the fact that for four years, you have been building this structure and you've watched it grow.
16:13And it's absolutely stable, it does not move, it does not creak, it does nothing.
16:22And then, after the ceremony and a bottle of champagne smashed across the boughs, there's about four seconds when nothing happens.
16:29Absolutely nothing.
16:30And it's the most electrifying, tense atmosphere.
16:36And suddenly you just see this thing, weighing 40,000 tonnes, just moving.
16:42And away it goes, and it literally is a mountain moving.
16:46And it just turns into this great, awe-inspiring event.
16:59And it takes to the water, and it's light, and it's mobile.
17:02And suddenly it's got a life of its own.
17:04And, you know, that is what a birth is all about.
17:07Suddenly it works, it's real, it is alive, it has got dynamism.
17:11And we built that, you know.
17:20The Queen Elizabeth II, just before she sailed on her maiden Atlantic crossing.
17:25It was an occasion for streamers, balloons, and happy farewells.
17:33In May 1969, the QE II set out on her maiden voyage to New York.
17:38Unlike the ships of old, it wouldn't be a record-breaking crossing.
17:45The quest for speed was irrelevant in the jet age.
17:50Critics suggested she was sailing into an uncertain future.
17:55But rather than the last gasp of a dying mode of transport,
17:59Cunard saw the QE II as the next step in the evolution of ship design and usage.
18:04In the winter months, she was to be taken off the transatlantic service,
18:10to take short pleasure voyages to the tropics,
18:13and a three-month round-the-world voyage.
18:16Cunard was going cruising.
18:19Cruising is really shipboard for the fun of it.
18:27Cruising wasn't a new idea.
18:28For more than a hundred years, hard-pressed shipping lines saw cruisers
18:34as a way to keep their liners in service during lean times.
18:41Early cruisers were often for the more adventurous.
18:44As one advertisement called them,
18:46the educational and scientific-oriented travellers.
18:49The first great cruising boom came, ironically,
19:00during the great economic depression of the 1930s.
19:05Loss-making Atlantic liners headed for the more profitable waters of the Caribbean,
19:10filled to the brim with New York stenographers, bank clerks and honeymoons.
19:14Cheapest of all were the overnight booze cruisers to nowhere,
19:23offering open bars to thirsty Americans tired of alcohol prohibition.
19:27Those booze cruises, one-nighters led to three-nighters, led to five-nighters,
19:32led to seven-nighters and ten-nighters, and it just grew.
19:35So that was the beginning of cruising for the masses as we know it today.
19:39Here are the first pictures of a terrible tragedy of the sea,
19:47equalled only by those of the Titanic and Lusitania.
19:50It's dawn, and the ward liner Morrow Castle lies helpless in a storm-swept sea
19:55eight miles from the American coast.
19:57The loss of the cruise ship Morrow Castle to fire in September 1934 shook American opinion.
20:04The failure of fire-detecting equipment on what was supposedly one of the world's safest ships,
20:11forced changes to United States maritime laws.
20:17Thousands watched the tragedy from the New Jersey coast as survivors were washed ashore by the heavy seas.
20:23The loss of 130 people in the disaster seriously dampened America's interest in cruising.
20:34In the late 1940s, the appeal of cruising was restored by the Caronia, Cunard's first purpose-built cruise ship.
20:46Painted in four shades of green, she became known as the Green Goddess, offering Mediterranean and Scandinavian excursions,
20:55as well as round-the-world cruises in stunning luxury.
20:58She was so select that you couldn't buy a segment. On Caronia you bought the whole trip, or not at all.
21:13People used to, on the Caronia, sometimes bring paintings and furniture they'd cruise around the world to make the cabin their own.
21:19Throughout the 1950s and 60s, the P&O Orient Line ships surrendered the croquet court to the swimming pool.
21:36And shifted the image of cruising from luxury to the comforts of home and organised leisure.
22:00Cruising was no longer seen as a stop gap in lean times, but a means to make real money.
22:07Hawaii is the home of the hula dance, in which every movement means a powerful life.
22:13Cruise directors now attempted to choreograph every aspect of the adventure for their new breed of seagoers.
22:19People to whom the old, conservative standards of an ocean voyage were unknown or meaningless.
22:25As evening dress gave way to the sports shirt and bikini, the after dinner dance gave way to what author John Malcolm Rinnan described as a house party with its connotations of a sexual raffle.
22:41But somehow, out of the countless ways to describe cruising, the shipping lines decided on a single evocative word, romantic.
22:54I honestly think there is nothing like a walk around the open decks late at night with a full moon that just seems to hit the parts that other things don't seem to reach.
23:07And by golly, it happens all the time.
23:09There was one terribly sad story of a woman who invested all of her life savings in a round-the-world cruise on the Koronia in search of a man.
23:20Well, there were no men.
23:22There were a lot of widows, there were a lot of couples, but there were no bachelors looking to be swept off their feet.
23:28And she jumped over the side.
23:30As the QE2 prepared to set out on her inaugural cruise to the Caribbean, the romance of transatlantic travel was coming to an end.
23:53The world's fastest liner, the United States, would be decommissioned in the autumn of 1969.
24:04And within a few years, the world's longest passenger ship, La France, would also be in mothballs.
24:14The relationship between the ocean liner and New York was all but over.
24:18And cruising wasn't going to save it.
24:21Sailing from New York for two days before reaching the sun had always been impractical.
24:28Elsewhere, however, a new unlikely candidate was emerging to challenge New York as the world's busiest passenger port.
24:36I remember looking at brochures in the 60s for little old veteran relic cruise ships like the Evangeline and the Bahamas Star offering $59 cruises of the Bahamas.
24:46And I would say to ourselves, but who would sail from Miami? What a strange place to go from.
24:50Miami. A city where money and imagination fused to create a mecca for holidaymakers in the 1920s and 30s.
25:04The architecture of its beachside district was influenced by the floating temples of Art Deco, the ocean liner.
25:17In the late 1960s, Miami was the scene of a revolution in cruising.
25:21A revolution that would save the ocean liner from extinction.
25:24Only half a day's sailing to the sunny Caribbean, a new breed of shipping entrepreneurs began to capitalise on Miami's huge geographical advantage over New York.
25:36Today's leading cruise line, Carnival, had an inauspicious start in the early 1970s with Mardi Gras, formerly the Empress of Canada.
25:49After a long voyage, she ran aground.
25:51So the first year and a half or so, we had lost $8 million.
25:55It was positioned by the marketing people that were there at that time as the flagship of the Golden Fleet.
26:01It wasn't golden and there was no fleet and it was just a disaster.
26:08But by the mid-1970s, Carnival was making a profit and soon had three ships to its name, including the largest cruise ship sailing the Caribbean, the 38,000-ton Festival.
26:20But in the late 1970s, Carnival of Norwegian Cruise Lines stunned his Miami competitors when he purchased the derelict superliner, the France, and spent millions refurbishing her.
26:38When Kloster said, I'm going to buy the France, this superannuated French-lined vessel that had been lingering in layup at Le Havre for five years, I'm going to buy this ship and transform it into a cruise ship, people thought he was mad.
26:58Renamed the Norway, the largest passenger ship in the world would now be sailing from Miami, not from Le Havre, Southampton or New York.
27:08The time the Norway steamed into Miami in June of 1980, there were no ships approaching her.
27:15She was the first. She was a pioneer.
27:18And in a sense, the cruise industry owes him a debt for that kind of vision and enterprise.
27:29In the early 1980s, competition for the cruising dollar exploded, spawning the greatest output of new passenger ships since World War II.
27:38Carnival led the race with four specially built cruise liners, three of which, at 40,000 tons, were larger than the Lusitania.
27:50At the same time, Carnival made an all-out assault on the long-held American perception of cruising as the privilege of the wealthy and elderly.
28:00The passengers back in the average age, we say, Kiddingly was deceased.
28:12Cruising was for old people and their parents.
28:14And consciously, over the next three or four years at Carnival, one of the things that we did, we think, was a bit different, was to encourage people of all ages to come on board a cruise ship.
28:26So we purposely marketed to people under the age of death.
28:31In the morning, in the evening, ain't we got fun? Not much money, oh, but honey, ain't we got fun?
28:38They were looking for the lowest plankton in the food chain of the cruise ocean.
28:44They were going for anybody who would buy a ticket.
28:47Sunny weather, all together, we've got the fun.
28:52And they marketed cruises all over America in a way that had never been done before.
28:55And over the years, they have succeeded beyond anybody's wildest expectation.
29:12In the 1990s, Carnival introduced to its fleet an extraordinary superliner constructed in Finland.
29:25The 70,000-ton, 2,000-passenger Fantasy was larger than the Norway.
29:36What stunned the competition was that Fantasy was not a one-off, but the first of eight to be built from the same basic design.
29:46Never before in maritime history had a shipping line the confidence and financial means to create such a spectacular fleet.
29:55Designed by Miami ship architect Joe Farkas, the interiors of each ship in the series would be unique,
30:05but together offer a new philosophy of marine architecture that the traditionalists would hate and the cruising public love.
30:13What I'm trying to do is to take people out of their living rooms and put them into a very special environment.
30:26I don't want people to take the architecture for granted.
30:32I think that if you give people different feelings and details to look at,
30:37that they will be in a constant discovery process throughout the whole cruise.
30:41I think that's interesting, and I think when people are interested, that that helps them to have a good time.
30:46I call it entertainment architecture.
30:49The ship's six-story grand atriums were revolutionary and would influence cruise ship design forevermore.
31:03It's almost like putting yourself into a movie set where the passengers or our guests are the actors and the movie is a three, four, seven day cruise.
31:16The thing about Carnival that you sense when you get on board their ships, the thing that is almost palpable is their success.
31:27You cannot argue with it.
31:29They have now, I think, 30, 35 percent of the market, and that's a big chunk of business.
31:34Today, the busiest passenger port in the world is not New York, but Miami.
31:50And the jet airliner, once the enemy of the transatlantic liner, is now the cruise industry's greatest ally.
31:56The jetliners today bring the people to the ships, so they are a very important partner to the cruise industry.
32:04We work very closely together.
32:06Our company alone, just Carnival Cruise Lines, will do about $175 million of airline ticket purchases this year.
32:14Every weekend, up to 40,000 people pass through Miami, bound for the Caribbean, on one of a dozen or more cruise ships.
32:28And the competition for market share has seen Royal Caribbean lines match Carnival with its own fleet of superliners.
32:42In terms of economy of scale, it works to the cruise line's advantage to have larger ships.
32:49They're more economical to operate, they're more profitable.
32:53There was always a concern by cruise lines that perhaps our guests didn't want to be sharing their vacation with thousands of other people.
33:03I need a man with no shirt on, wearing a bra, lipstick, anything you can think of to make that man look good.
33:09Although we've found now that the response is that the ships are designed in such a way that the guests seem to quite enjoy being with many other people, even though there can be 2,000 or even more people together enjoying a cruise vacation.
33:23You're riding a little high there, aren't you?
33:26But very nice, the shoe sets everything off and matches the bra.
33:31They are what they should be, they're floating hotels.
33:34For the Midwestern couples that come on, and that's the bulk of your trade, you know, they're not all the sophisticates of New York or L.A., this is this most wonderful world.
33:43They're not interested in a ship rolling or motion at sea, they want to feel like they're in a floating resort.
33:53In the first decade of the 21st century, more than 50 million people are expected to cruise the Caribbean, making it the busiest and most profitable ocean destination on the planet.
34:06The problem with the Caribbean, it has attracted so many ships and such large ships that some islands are being overwhelmed.
34:19There are three, four, five ships every day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.
34:25What happens to an island like that?
34:38Well, it gets very jaded, the people get very inured to a lot of inquisitive, rude, noisy passengers coming ashore, demanding this, demanding that.
34:48And it is conceived by the port authorities and the governments of these islands that if we could only get cruise ships to come, all our problems will be solved.
34:59Well, it's solved for certain numbers of people, certain numbers of merchants and entrepreneurs, but not for general populace.
35:06These large ships going in there make a big contribution to these islands.
35:11At the same time, they do, I don't want to say cause problems, but on some of the smaller islands, you put one of these large ships here, it almost equals the size of the island.
35:21It's crowds, it's jams, it's all the things that the island should not really be.
35:26It should be more serene and more tranquil and more welcoming, but instead it's sort of mass downtown USA kind of thing.
35:36With most Caribbean ports close to saturation, some of the major cruise lines invested millions of dollars to secure their own piece of paradise.
35:49In the last 20 or so years, one of the big things in the Caribbean is to have a private island.
35:55They call it a private island, they lease the space from an island government, the Bahamas or Haiti or whatever, and they give you a day at a private beach.
36:01It's all set up beautifully with water sports equipment and so forth.
36:07Away from the crowded and expensive ports, cruise passengers experience, according to the lines, an exclusive unspoiled paradise, which they could not visit in any other way.
36:18Far from the competitive and overrun Caribbean, an ocean cruise has another meaning.
36:39And in the quest for their own market niche, some lines set out to attract more sophisticated travelers by offering voyages to isolated destinations that can best be appreciated from the sea.
36:54Essentially, the business of cruising is the interaction of the ship with land.
37:04There's nothing pleasanter than sitting on the deck of a ship and watching a mountain range go by.
37:09Cruising is now a global enterprise and more people are experiencing an ocean voyage than at any time in history.
37:24As diverse as the itineraries available is the array of ships, from sublime sailing vessels to superliners carrying up to 5,000 passengers and crew.
37:42In a sense, the high glamour of yesteryear, of the Lalique of the Normandy and the white dogs on the sun deck and the steamer trunks, that's gone.
37:58But the creature comforts are here today that are so wonderful.
38:02You have to remember that the Queen Mary, for example, even in first class, they were in private bathrooms in all the cabins.
38:08You had to go down the hall. Today you've got television in your room, you've got vacuum flush toilets, you've got bars and hair dryers and climatically controlled air conditioning.
38:20The ships today are more creature comfortable than the ships of yesteryear.
38:27Unlike the giant transatlantic liners of yesteryear, cruise ships are slow, calm water vessels, not built for speed or the rigors of a pounding sea.
38:36But like the liners of old, today's cruise ships could still find themselves in dangerous waters.
38:48As recently as 1982, when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, the British government seconded passenger ships for use as troop ships.
38:57At Southampton docks, soldiers and supplies have been arriving at the cruise liner Canberra, ready for the journey south.
39:07Filled with 3,000 commandos and a volunteer crew, Canberra sailed for the southern Atlantic still in her civilian colours.
39:15Hundreds of British liners had been used as troops in wars past, but this was the first time a dedicated cruise ship had ever spearheaded such a daring assault.
39:30After weeks at sea, Canberra sailed into the war zone and within striking range of the crack Argentinian Air Force.
39:36Our major fear was that we would be hit by bombs or an exoset.
39:45The ship's superstructure was built of aluminium and fire would have been our worst hazard.
39:53And that is what we worried about.
39:55It was only one night we didn't have a drink with dinner.
39:58Wine with dinner was the night we went into San Carlos.
40:01Admiral Woodward's daring in bringing Canberra close inshore paid off.
40:08Despite repeated air raids, the Argentine Air Force failed to get through as she disembarked hundreds of troops.
40:24More than 10,000 British troops were transported to the Falklands on five passenger ships,
40:29one of which was the most prestigious liner afloat.
40:33At precisely four o'clock the QE2 slipped her moorings.
40:37By now thousands were there to wave an emotional farewell.
40:43Unlike his counterpart on the Canberra, the QE2's captain sailed for the Falklands in the knowledge that his ship was not to enter the war zone.
40:51She couldn't really be exposed to danger. The thought of risking losing the ship that had the same name of the sovereign was more than the politicians could bear.
41:04The fact that the Canberra was exposed didn't really matter. After all it was only the capital of Australia.
41:08Despite the dangers, Canberra came through the war unscathed. The Great White Whale, as she became known, along with the QE2, would join the honour roll of legendary British liners that had sailed into battle for Queen and Country.
41:26But if those two big ships had not been available for requisition on the British Register, it would have been a very, very different operation and might not even have succeeded.
41:35The Falklands War was a potent reminder that even ships built for the gentle art of cruising could find themselves embroiled and even sacrificed in future conflicts.
41:49We are part of the backup fleet for the NATO forces. If there was a need ever again, it's our, our fleets, our container ships and our big passenger ships, which will be immediately swing-swing into action.
42:02If it's a war of any magnitude, people are not going to be thinking about cruising. And, uh, but the reality, I think, is that we're, we're looking at more isolated occurrences like we had in the Falklands.
42:12And, uh, and, uh, and, uh, if the United States was involved and if they needed our assistance, we would do everything in our power to help.
42:25The days when national jealousies saw countries build liners for war, as well as peace, are over.
42:32But today, cruising is one of the fastest growing and most profitable sectors of the world leisure market.
42:38And many of the old rival maritime nations have become embroiled in this new race for dominance of the seas.
42:47In the 70s, there were 17 new ships built. In the 80s, there were 34. And in the 90s, over 50.
42:55The Royal Caribbean Line's 77,000-ton Rhapsody of the Seas was built at the same French shipyard as the elegant liner of the 1930s, Normandy.
43:10And the country that first challenged Britain's stranglehold over the ocean liner trade a century ago, Germany, has now some of the most technologically advanced shipbuilding facilities in the world.
43:28Old antagonisms long forgotten, British P&O's cruise ship, Oriana, was constructed at the Meyerwerft shipyard at Papenburg.
43:42But the country that dominated shipbuilding from the earliest days of steam, Britain, is out of the race.
43:55The nation that gave the world some of the greatest ocean liners ever built hasn't constructed a passenger ship since the QE2.
44:02It didn't take very long in not building them before they lost the capability to build them.
44:08And with a 20-year gap between the traditional liner market and the emergence of the new cruise liner market, by the time that came on stream,
44:17the British shipyards had changed the product mix and their skills and their expertise in a direction that made it really quite impossible for them to get back into the new liner market in any meaningful way.
44:32Today, the world's preeminent cruise shipbuilder is Italy.
44:36Fincantieri Shipyard near Trieste has alone captured more than 40% of all new building orders, including two spectacular ships for the entertainment giant Disney.
44:47The Disney ships will embrace the traditional lines of the classic ocean liners of yesteryear, and their interiors will be unlike anything ever to go to sea.
45:02The Disney ships, which have two smokestacks, look like popular mechanics of the 1950s.
45:18That was a magazine that had a lot to do with what the future was going to look like in the 60s.
45:22Well, they have that sort of futuristic look about them.
45:25And I kind of like that. I think that works. And I think that Mr. and Mrs. Public likes that, too.
45:34In its first foray into cruising, Disney promises to redefine the experience of an ocean voyage by extending its theme park empire onto the largest playground on the planet.
45:45In the annals of maritime history, the last decade of the 20th century will be remembered as a watershed, a time when cruise ship construction outstripped the traditional ocean liner, both in output and size.
46:08In 1993, Finn Cantieri began construction on the most extraordinary cruise ship of the century.
46:21The central idea is the size of the ship. It's the scale of it.
46:25When the 101,000-ton Carnival Destiny entered service in January 1997, it marked a new era.
46:40For the first time, a cruise ship had eclipsed in size the largest transatlantic liner ever built, the Queen Elizabeth.
46:55I don't know, it's a few dozen 747s at one time. I mean, it's just a massive, it's a city at sea.
47:02And it's going to be a city that people are going to have an absolutely fabulous time.
47:12For its 3,000 passengers, Destiny is a place on the high seas where ship and destination merge.
47:18But its sheer size has generated both a heightened mix of expectation and skepticism.
47:27The lights you see on the wall are handmade Venetian glass panels that are...
47:33To market Destiny, Carnival invited press and travel agents on a pre-maiden voyage of the $400 million ship.
47:39What they discovered was that the market leader had brashly forced the boundaries of cruise ship design yet again.
47:53The ship is fine, it's a little bit garish, it's a Vegas theme, Orlando theme, orange, purples, young crowd.
48:00It's a 70 million person market in Vegas and Orlando every year.
48:04That's what they're trying to catch and they do a very good job of that.
48:06Their mindset is that it's like a city self-contained.
48:12The bigger the better as far as the public is concerned.
48:21In its first year, Destiny overturned industry perceptions of how big is too big.
48:28It proved such a spectacular success that the company ordered two more ships in the series.
48:33But in doing so, it is set into play a game of one-upmanship for size, unparalleled since the heyday of the ocean liner.
48:42Carnival's fiercest competitors, Royal Caribbean Lines and P&O's Princess Line, immediately announced the building of cruise ships larger than Destiny.
48:56Royal Caribbean's billion dollar Project Eagle will see the construction of not one, but two 130,000 ton mega liners.
49:02We're in the period of the largest big liner construction of all time, far greater than ever happened before.
49:13Next year, the Queen Elizabeth will no longer even be in the top 25 largest liners because there are so many big cruise ships coming out.
49:20But I think ships will get larger and there will be more amenities and there will be more choice that are offered to the travelling public.
49:27Where it will end is difficult to say.
49:35Already on the drawing board are vessels that will dwarf even the largest cruise ships
49:40and propel the evolution of passenger ships into a new realm.
49:47This ship would be 250,000 gross registered tons and that's well over twice the biggest ones on the drawing board
49:55and more than three times larger than the biggest ship operating today.
49:59Be a quarter of a mile long, she's taller than the Statue of Liberty.
50:02This is not a race for size, it's not an effort to set records or anything of that sort.
50:09This is distinctly a new generation, market-driven product, which is designed not as a cruise ship.
50:17It goes past that evolution in the use of passenger ships to a new stage.
50:23This is a city ship and it is designed to appeal to any market that a city would appeal to.
50:29Probably the cost of the ship will be on the order of $1,200,000,000.
50:41The America World City project is the concept of Knut Kloster,
50:45the pioneer of the contemporary cruise industry who proved the skeptics wrong
50:50when he took the France and turned it into the world's first super cruise ship.
50:54In America World City, Kloster has created a ship that will accommodate 8,600 passengers and crew,
51:03a vessel two and a half times the size of destiny,
51:07and possibly the most dramatic development on the high seas since steam took over from sail.
51:12What we're saying now is that these oceans can be used for development.
51:20And you'll find that after you use a ship, for example, as a floating city,
51:25there'll be multiple floating cities.
51:27This is the precursor.
51:29This is the first step in what will be a further evolution of the use of the seas by manmade objects.
51:36It was once thought that the jet airliner would bring the end for the ocean liner.
51:47But today, a new breed of passenger ship is plying the oceans of the world,
51:53carrying more people than ever before.
51:55And in a highly competitive race to win over the hearts and minds of future voyagers,
52:03a new generation of ship owners and designers is pushing human ingenuity and technology to their limits.
52:09Think about all of the massive buildings of the present and the past, the pyramids and the Sphinx.
52:17Cruise ships are still absolutely the largest buildings devised and developed and constructed by man.
52:25The largest things that we're going to see for a long time to come, I believe.
52:28Thank goodness the cruise ships are about, because the world would be certainly an older and a colder place
52:33if the big old superliners weren't around. Long may big ships continue.
52:36We may see that now is just the beginning of the Great Liner instead of the end of a Great Liner period.
52:46In the era of the giant cruise ship, the ocean is no longer considered merely a highway, but a destination in itself.
52:56And from over the endless horizon, new wonders of the world are certain to appear.
53:00In the wake of those great ships that changed the world, the liners.
53:03In the wake of those great ships that changed the world, the liners.
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53:08The Liner's.
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53:10The Liner's.
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53:12The Liner's.
53:13The Liner's.