Lost At Sea

In our era of instant everything, there is something to be said for taking the long way home. Stephen Heyman makes the Atlantic crossing on the newly revamped Queen Mary 2.

- Stephen Heyman

I am drinking a martini in a cocktail lounge on the bow of the world’s last ocean liner, admiring the courage of the man across from me who wears his black tie with a Scottish kilt. “Good evening,” he says, and for some reason I bow slightly in reply. It’s almost dinnertime. Balkan waiters in Nehru jackets buzz around us delivering potato crisps, Rob Roys, canapés. It’s the roughest day at sea so far, but considering that this boat is bigger and heavier than a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, the pitching actually feels pleasant, like being rocked in a massive cradle.

My wife, Yana, and I have taken a week to cross the Atlantic Ocean, traveling from Southampton, England, to Red Hook, Brooklyn, on the R.M.S. Queen Mary 2. It’s an old-school voyage—analog, unhurried. For this week, my smartphone has been reduced to a camera; my world to these 14 decks; my body to a repository for beef Wellington, lobster thermidor, crêpes suzette, black pudding, 20 types of consommé, caviar, champagne, scones, clotted cream, Dramamine, and the whitest variety of melon I’ve ever seen.

As I expand, I feel more expansive. Unlike on dry land, I want to make friends, to get to know my fellow passengers, called Cunarders in the ship’s lingo. We are sitting in blocky white armchairs, ignoring the blue glow from the LED accent lights, peering out the windows as the sun sets over the bow and the ocean takes on a ghostly pallor. At the baby grand, a Hungarian pianist keeps time with the swells, his bushy eyebrows moving to the maudlin music. I take another sip, and try to plug in to this atmosphere of slightly embalmed glamour. I feel that I am living out not my own fantasy, exactly, but someone else’s, maybe that of the adorable woman to my left in a flapper dress with fuchsia feathers in her hair and a Chanel headband.