PAIR FIND WORK FIT FOR A QUEEN

In its heyday, the Queen Elizabeth 2 was considered the last of the great transatlantic ocean liners, with service and accommodations fit for royalty.

It wasn't a bad place to work, either.

"I think I'd been around the world three times by the time I was 27. Not many people can say that," said Henderson resident Anthony Smith, who worked as a bartender on the ship for two years in the late 1980s.

Declan O'Toole, also of Henderson,

spent seven years as a waiter on the QE2. He took something special from the ship when he left in 1994: his wife, Edel.

"I followed my heart basically. The rest is history," he said.

Right now, the QE2 is steaming toward its final port of call. The 41-year-old vessel is scheduled to reach the Persian Gulf state of Dubai on Wednesday, where it will enter retirement as a floating luxury hotel and retail complex docked permanently at the Palm Jumeirah, a man-made island chain shaped like a palm tree.

"It'll be a fitting tribute to a great ship," O'Toole said.

"At least it won't go to the scrap yard," Smith added.

Though they both joined the ship's 1,000-person crew in 1987, they never really knew each other back then. They connected on the social networking Web site Facebook about a month ago.

Smith now works as a bartender at the Ritz Carlton at Lake Las Vegas. O'Toole is a server at Daniel Boulud Brasserie at Wynn Las Vegas.

The two men live less than 10 miles apart.

They were both in their early 20s when they applied to work on the QE2, which had just undergone an extensive retrofit to replace its steam-driven power plant with diesel engines.

At 14 stories tall and more than three football fields long, the vessel seemed impossibly huge to Smith. Until then, the largest boat he had been on was a cross-channel ferry.

"The first time I saw the ship I was blown away," he said.

O'Toole worked his way up to a job as a waiter in the Queen's Grill, the ship's finest gourmet restaurant, where wine was served in cut-glass crystal and "caviar was in abundance," he said.

His famous clientele included Dean Martin, Rod Stewart and Tom Clancy.

When he and Smith weren't working, they would relax with co-workers in crew-only bars or on deck. They also got to leave the ship to explore whatever exotic port city they happened to be in, though sometimes only for a few hours.

O'Toole's favorite stop was the Pacific island of Moorea, "next door to Tahiti."

He said he can still smell the tropical flowers. "It had beautiful sand beaches and lovely people."

Smith's most memorable moments were having his picture taken on the roof of the World Trade Center -- the ship had docked in New York City -- and watching from the deck as the vessel passed through the Panama Canal.

"There was five-foot clearance on either side," he said.

O'Toole's home on the QE2 was a small, two-berth cabin he shared with one other crew mate.

"Somebody compared it to a little bit bigger than a prison cell," he said.

Smith was stuck in a cabin with three other guys.

Crew members usually would spend three or four months at sea followed by a month off work.

"It was an easy job to go back to," O'Toole said.

And it was fairly lucrative, since room and board were provided for them, and there aren't too many ways to blow your paycheck on a ship at sea.

"It wasn't the money you made; it was the money you couldn't spend," said O'Toole, who met Edel when she worked as a waitress on the ship in 1993.

Today, the couple lives in Green Valley with their three kids. Smith and his wife, Donna, live in Anthem.

Since QE2 left its home port of Southampton, England, for the last time on Nov. 12, Smith and O'Toole have been following the ship's final voyage through news accounts on the Internet.

"It's big news in Britain and all over Europe really," O'Toole said.

Dubai World, the investment arm of the Persian Gulf state, reportedly bought the aging ship for $100 million. It was a relative bargain compared to Dubai World's other noteworthy purchase last year: more than $5 billion for half of CityCenter on the Las Vegas Strip and a 9.4 percent interest in MGM Mirage.

By the time it reaches Dubai, Britain's most famous ocean liner will have sailed more than 6 million miles, carried 2.5 million passengers and completed 806 transatlantic crossings since Queen Elizabeth launched it in 1967.

"Forty years is a long time for a ship," O'Toole said.

Smith nodded in agreement. "It's kind of sad, but it had to come."

Contact reporter Henry Brean at hbrean @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0350.