Fate of Rusting Queen Mary in the Balance

In its heyday as the world's grandest ocean-going liner it provided a luxurious passage across the Atlantic for royalty, film stars and world leaders. Fred Astaire would dazzle passengers in the RMS Queen Mary's ballroom and Winston Churchill would swap stories with the captain in the state dining room that later came to be named after him.

Now the future of the 73-year-old former Cunard vessel will be decided this year after its 40 years moored to a California quay as a floating hotel.

The once majestic cruise liner lies rusting and run down among the oil tankers, container ships and dockside cranes of Long Beach, with its owners in bankruptcy and the city council seeking bids for rights to the vessel and the 22-hectare (55-acre) site surrounding it.

Politicians and tourism chiefs say they want the Queen Mary to remain as the focal point of a commercial redevelopment of the area, but will listen to proposals without it.

"The bottom line is everybody wants whatever is best for the city," Howard Ehrenberg, the court-appointed trustee who is handling the sale, told the Long Beach Press Telegram. "It is important to me that the city approve the buyer."

So far, Mr Ehrenberg says, 17 bids have been received, with a final decision due by early summer. The price for the remaining 58 years of a 66-year lease for the ship and surrounding land is a minimum $40m (£20.4m).

Councillors hope that the winner will spruce up the Queen Mary, which was once the world's fastest liner and had a capacity of almost 2,000 passengers.

Among those watching closely is a Glasgow property developer, Adrian Pocock, who announced in November a £5m plan to bring the 80,774-ton Queen Mary home to Scotland, where it had been launched in 1934. "It would be a fantastic and exciting addition to the Clyde," he said.

Long Beach residents, however, would be reluctant to say goodbye to the ageing liner, which also served as a troop carrier in the second world war and was greeted by a million spectators when it arrived in California in December 1967 after its final transatlantic voyage.

"It is an icon of our city," said Bob Maguglin, of the Long Beach Area Convention and Visitors' Bureau. "While you can never say never, it would be unlikely that the city would accept [such] an offer."

Earlier plans by the owner, Queen's Seaport Development Inc, to turn the Queen Mary into a Disney-style theme park, came to nothing, but it still averages 1.2 million visitors a year, many of whom are drawn by its reputation as the most haunted liner in history.