Queen Bea of the QE2
By Steve Read
WHEN the QE2 retires at the end of this year, Bea Muller will have to find a new home - for she has lived on the ship for the last eight years.
Bea, 88, has travelled a million miles on the QE2.
And she has no intention of leaving the sea. She is deciding whether to move to the Queen Mary 2 or the new Queen Victoria.
She says: "It's hard to know what to do - I have to have a home and I'm not going back to housekeeping, I can tell you!"
Bea became the QE2's only permanent resident after her husband died during a world cruise.
She says: "Robert died in April 1999 on the ship - it was his choice - and my son said, ‘Mother, you and dad have done five world cruises, why don't you stay there?'
"In the next ten months I sold practically everything I owned - houses, cars, junk - and came to live on the QE2 in March 2000."
Her cabin - number 4062 - is an inside twin. One of the beds has been removed, and replaced with a desk and chairs.
It costs her £40,000 a year. "That includes absolutely everything, all the travel, everything," she says.
"Compared to living in a senior citizens' residence on the Atlantic coast of America this ship has been value for money.
"I live in one of the least expensive cabins, I eat in the Mauretania - not the Grills which go with the top-dollar cabins - and even there they will get you almost anything you want.
"Someone once asked for rattlesnake for dinner. They couldn't find one of those, so they gave him an eel!
"I have enough money to keep doing this for a few more years, and my sons are very successful - so if I do run out of money, they'll pay to keep me here and out of their hair."
"It's been quite a wonderful life, and this is the right time of my life to do this."
Bea spends only a few weeks ashore every year.
She says: "I have a little outhouse - a pied a terre - at my son Alan's place in New Jersey so when they put me off the ship, either for dry-dock or bad behaviour or whatever, I have someplace to go.
"I have kept a house that I owned in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, just in case I don't stay here for ever.
"But I'd rather stay here for ever. In this ship.
Bea Muller
→ Next Page: Search for a new home
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