FOUR luxury passenger liners - including Southampton's Queen Mary 2 and Queen Elizabeth 2 - will abandon Manhattan and begin docking in Brooklyn from next year for their arrivals in New York.

The berths of the four ships will be moved by Carnival Corporation to a huge pier, which is being redeveloping in the Red Hook district of Brooklyn.

The change is also expected to bring 250,000 more passengers to New York each year on top of the current 900,000.

The pier will accommodate Queen Mary 2 - the world's largest passenger ship - in addition to QE2, Star Princess and Crown Princess, which makes its debut next year.