November 16, 2003	Sunday	Ramazan 20, 1424

SAINT-NAZAIRE (France), Nov 15: Thirteen people died on Saturday when a dockside gangway to the world’s biggest and most expensive cruise ship, the Queen Mary 2, collapsed at Saint-Nazaire, in western France, a shipyard official said.

As up to 50 visitors were walking onto the liner across a gangway, the structure collapsed under them, the official said.

The Queen Mary 2 is undergoing final stages of construction at the Chantiers de l’Atlantique shipyard, owned by French heavy engineering firm Alstom.

The ship, which is being built for Carnival Corp’s Cunard Line at a cost of around 800 million dollars, has been conducting sea trials in recent weeks.

The largest passenger ship ever built and Cunard’s flagship, Queen Mary 2 stretches the length of four football fields and stands as high as a 23-storey building.

The original Queen Mary entered service on Cunard’s prestigious Atlantic route in 1936, becoming one of the best known ships of the golden age of liners.

A spokeswoman for the shipyard said the visitors were family members of workers involved in the ship’s construction.

The liner completed its final sea trials off the Brittany coast last week. Its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is set for Jan 12.

The ship has an onboard planetarium and art gallery and will carry about 3,000 passengers on its 15-day maiden voyage.

The accident is the latest blow for struggling Alstom, which nearly collapsed earlier this year due to a cash shortage before the French government saved it with a controversial bailout.

The company has been forced to sell its core businesses to shore up its finances and the marine unit, which has suffered in recent years from a sharp decline in orders, is one of the assets it has said it could unload.—Reuters