The Big Boat

For many children, their first memory of Walt Disney World is Mickey Mouse or fairy tale princesses but mine was "the big boat."

A snapshot of that moment pictures me in a red t-shirt standing against the anti-fouling paint of a monumentally scaled model ship. Made by Bassett-Lowke Ltd for Cunard's Queen Elizabeth, the mahogany, gunmetal, and brass "big boat" (as I called it) was commissioned to promote bookings on the luxury liner it represented. The not-so-miniature copy was intended to impress travelers- and it certainly wowed me.

How this model came to be in Florida was likely with the real Queen Elizabeth's retirement to Port Everglades twenty-five years earlier. Unfortunately, tourism plans failed and she was sold at auctioned to a Chinese shipping magnate in 1970. Bassett-Lowke's work was evidently left behind and subsequently brought to Lake Buena Vista where my photograph was taken with it.

“The big boat” absolutely fascinated me. As a ship of state, the Queen Elizabeth was more than a luxury liner, she was a promotion in and of herself for the British Empire's capabilities. She was not just an engineering feat; the Lizzie was an architectural and artistic achievement. Although I did not know that as a small child, I nonetheless understood this was something extraordinary. It mattered and I was passionate about that.