THEY had assembled by royal appointment. And for hundreds of Cunard staff, the day the Queen and Prince Philip stepped on board Queen Mary 2 for the first time was one to remember.

The Queen was met by Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire Mary Fagan and escorted on her 45-minute tour of the huge vessel by the president of Cunard Line Pamela Conover.

As the Queen and Prince Philip stepped into the plush interior of the ship's aptly named Grand Lobby, scores of excited waiters, chefs and ship's officers lined the spiral staircase at the very heart of the £550m vessel - all anxious to catch a glimpse of the royal party.

Dozens of flashes from cameras recorded the moment for posterity as the Queen was introduced to the engineering staff for the 150,000 ton vessel including chief engineer Ronald Keir and the ship's hotel manager, Thomas Rennesland.

From there, the royal party split into two with the Duke of Edinburgh being taken on a tour of the engine room and the ship's hospital while the Queen visited the ship's library, theatre, and planetarium.

The Queen, wearing a full length cerise coat with a cerise and purple hat, was first taken to the ship's Royal Theatre before being ushered into the spectacular planetarium where she spent ten minutes chatting to catering staff recruited from countries around the world who will serve the passengers on the superliner.

The Queen - walking with a stick following her recent knee operation - chatted to staff about their work on board the giant vessel and where they had served before coming on board Queen Mary 2.

Executive chef Karl Winkler, 51, from Austria, said: "She asked me how the kitchens were going and if everything was going well."

Guy Sharpe, food and beverages manager, from New Zealand, added: "She just exchanged pleasantries really. I told her I enjoyed working on the ship very much."

Sylvia Mazur, 31, a wine stewardess from Poland, had joined QM2 from QE2. She said: "The Queen asked me about my impressions of QM2 compared with QE2. It was an excellent opportunity to meet a person like her."

Escorted by ship's captain Commodore Ron Warwick, the Queen was taken to the ship's library where she was presented with a pen made from the original Queen Elizabeth's propeller.

She signed QM2's visitor book and a portrait of herself before being escorted to the ship's bridge where Cdre Warwick sounded the horn.

From there the Queen was taken to one of the ship's giant swimming pools where she was presented with a model of the ship's funnel by representatives of the St Nazaire shipyard in France where QM2 was built.

Prince Philip was clearly in skittish mood as he went on a separate tour, taking in the engine control room, rubbish incinerator, bridge and hospital.

But he may have preferred to have been in one of the liner's many watering holes if his conversation with purser Claudette Kirkwood was anything to go by.

"He said 'there are a lot of bars on board. You could have one big pub crawl'," confessed the 31-year-old from Bedfordshire.

"The bar manager answered 'yes, we've got 21 bars on board'."

Shortly afterwards the duke was shown QM2's mortuary fridge in the ship's hospital by senior medical officer Dr Martin Carroll.

He told Prince Philip how there are normally only three or four deaths on board Cunard liners each year - and they were usually the terminally ill, who decided to live out their last days to the full and die in style.

Gazing into the opened mortuary - normally kept at a temperature just above freezing - the Duke of Edinburgh mused out loud: "So they book one of these in advance, eh?"

He also watched as senior nursing officer Lorraine Hughes-Smith was lifted by electric chair into a bath, designed for the disabled.

The 36-year-old, from Doncaster, south Yorkshire, said her husband of seven months was meeting the Queen that day in his capacity as QM2's service's manager.

"Jason and I met on QE2," she said.

"I can't believe we're both meeting different members of the Royal Family on the same day."

As an admiral of the fleet and a former serving officer in the Royal Navy, Prince Philip was clearly fascinated by the workings of QM2, lingering the longest during the tour in the engine control room and on the bridge, with its panoramic views of the Solent and Southampton.

Here he listened with painstaking care to the answers of his numerous questions about the ship's gas turbines, computer systems and radar.

The duke, who rose to the rank of commander over a decade of service, appeared especially interested with how the officer-of-the-watch gained access to a regular beverage on the bridge - and seemed comforted on being told there was a coffee percolator nearby.

Then, as the tour finished he signed the liner's visitor book beneath his wife's swirling autograph, for which he whipped a gold-topped pen out of his jacket pocket.

"The Queen has been here already has she?" Prince Philip observed.