Cunard’s newest ship, the Queen Victoria, christened in December, has finished its maiden voyage in Europe and is on its second in the Canary Islands. In a few days it will commence a transatlantic crossing along with the Queen Elizabeth 2 and both will meet up in New York with the Queen Mary 2. The January 13th gathering of the three ships in New York Harbor will be heralded with fireworks. The Queen Victoria will then depart on an around-the-world cruise, and the QE2, scheduled for retirement in 2008, will leave for its final world cruise (the QM2 only gets to go to the Caribbean, but as the biggest of the three it has enough to gloat about… even if it can’t fit through the Panama Canal).