She pressed the launching button and a bottle of champagne shattered against the huge bows of the world’s most famous cruise liner QE2.

After a pause, Cunard’s £29 million ship slowly began her downward journey, gathering speed to 22mph before entering the water stern-first to a jubilant roar from thousands of well wishers.

Her 1,000 feet length inscribed a two feet high wave on the calm Clyde that coursed across the river; a premonition of her exalted life on the ocean wave.

Six million nautical miles later, QE2 is on her way to Belfast.

“I regard her total mileage as 12 round trips to the moon,” one of her former masters Roland Hasell told the News Letter.

“When she was launched she was called the greatest ship in the world, and she was. She has a tremendous profile.”

Captain Hasell was using both meanings of the word profile.

“She is so beautiful,” he said, “she rides magnificently well.”

Having carried almost 2.5 million passengers and crossed the Atlantic over 800 times, been commanded by 25 different Captains, QE2 arrives here on October 4 with 3,000 passengers and crew on board.

The seagoing celebrity is one of 39 cruise ships brought to Belfast in 2008 by The Cruise Belfast Initiative, a partnership between the Belfast Visitor and Convention Bureau with the Port of Belfast, and supported by the Northern Ireland Tourist Board.

Belfast is one of a select few UK cities playing host to the QE2 during her year-long farewell tour, it will be the last time the public can see the liner in port before she retires permanently to Dubai to become a floating hotel later this year.

By securing her visit, the initiative team has given Northern Ireland people a rare chance to view her from an ideal vantage point across the River Lagan at the Paint Hall, Queen's Road, Belfast. Also marking her retirement, the Lagan Boat Company’s tour boat MV Joyce is making nine special sailings with commentaries on the day. Alongside the QE2, Joyce’s tour guide Derek Booker will impart the vast vessel’s intriguing statistics and specifications.

She had the largest cinema afloat and the only Synagogue at sea. QE2’s electricity generators could easily light up the whole of night-time Belfast; sailing 49 feet burns a gallon of fuel, which she consumes at the rate of 433 tons a day; her rudder weighs 80 tons. She survived Hurricane Luis on a westbound Atlantic crossing in 1994 when she was hit by a 95 foot wave.

“It was like the White Cliffs of Dover,” said QE2’s master, Captain Ronald Warwick, “and it was white knuckle time too”.

Her former chief officer Roland Hasell told the News Letter that he’d been in a storm with 80 foot high waves all around him but there had been “no problem, no excitement”.

Captain Hasell knew every inch of QE2.

“I’ve been to the top of her mast,” he admitted, “She’s a ship in which you have full confidence.

“She’s not a cruise ship.