FOR decades, it was hoped that Cunard Line would bring its two great superliners Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth into their home port of Liverpool.

Instead, they stuck resolutely to Southampton as their UK base, the official reason being that the liners’ draft was too deep to cross the Mersey Bar.

It was only in 1990, long after these two great ships had left service, that their slightly smaller replacement, Queen Elizabeth 2, finally visited Cunard Line’s birthplace.

Now the biggest transatlantic liner of all time, Queen Mary 2 will finally achieve what the two original Queens failed to do: visit Liverpool.

QM2, which has replaced QE2 as Cunard flagship, will call at Liverpool during a round-Britain cruise a week tomorrow, on Tuesday, October 20.

The megaliner will officially celebrate her fifth anniversary while in Liverpool, although her maiden voyage was actually in January, 2004.

But then, as with Her Majesty the Queen, birthdays are movable Royal feasts.

With a gross tonnage of 148,528, she is considerably larger than the previous largest liner to visit Liverpool, Crown Princess, 116,000 gross tons.