What may have seemed to many a minor news story - that the Queen Mary 2 cruise ship has fallen slightly short of international fire standards - loomed up on me like an iceberg. It's a fortnight since I docked in New York after a week of giving lectures on the QM2 as she crossed the Atlantic.
In a time of fear, it's tempting to over-dramatise narrow escapes. But my reaction to the reports of the ship's emergency refit yesterday - fire-sprinklers in all 1,300 cabins, a less flammatory panel for the bathroom vanity unit - was less "phew!" than "what!". In a week at sea, conflagration was one of the few things I never feared. What kept me awake - apart from the two nights when the foghorn sounded for hours - was the thought of icebergs, illness or terrorism.
My reason for taking the trip was the desire since childhood to see the view - once the province of the immigrant poor, now of the tourist rich - of Manhattan from a boat sailing past the Statue of Liberty. And this old dream must account for some of the recent expansion in the cruise ship business. (The Queen Mary 2, only three months old, already had a sister ship in preparation.)
But conversations on board suggested that many people are drawn aboard by a much more modern reverie: safe travel. Several passengers admitted that, since 9/11, they now chose to float rather than fly, even though the passage takes six days instead of six hours.
This surprised me, as I was personally much more frightened on the waves than than in the clouds. It's true that an explosion on a boat is theoretically more survivable than a blowout on a plane, and the reassuringly visible lifeboats offer comfort until you start to think about being lowered on to the ocean in the dark.
And, in comparison with air travel, the sailing trade has a notably more relaxed attitude to the welfare of their passengers. While pilots flash the seatbelt sign and suspend the drinks service the moment they hit a bump, captains leave passengers at liberty even in a tempest. In the middle of a gale, the QM2 gymnasium remained open, although the treadmills had a sideways camber which the manufacturers never intended.
Even so, frequent flyers take some time to adjust to the thought of being days away from land: a fear which the success of the film Titanic can only have increased. The QM2 seems to take on directly any Winslet-DiCaprio paranoia. Unless my ears were clogged with sea salt, the elevator music (the ship is big enough to have three banks of lifts travelling 13 floors) seemed to include the soundtrack from Titanic.
Convincing myself that modern radar must be able to detect large arctic masses - and that the foghorn that stopped sleep was also preventing collisions with other vessels - I fretted most about ill-health or terrorism which, unexpectedly, turned out to be related.
You don't need to be a hypochondriac to worry about what would happen if a bone broke or an organ burst in the mid-Atlantic. What happens, we discovered on the fifth day, is this. A passenger beyond the treatment of the QM2 sickbay needed hospital. The ship diverted towards Nova Scotia, then trod water as a Canadian coastguard helicopter hovered above and lowered a pallet, on which the patient was raised.
Reassuring to sickly passengers, this manoeuvre became alarming to general sea-trippers when it was announced that a Canadian Air Force Hercules would provide aerial cover throughout the airlift. A member of staff told me that, since 9/11, it is standard to assume that any incident in which a boat stops and gives or receives assistance might be an opportunity for terrorists.
Although, looking out to sea with a glass of wine, I had imagined ships or torpedoes hitting us, it had never occurred to me that a patient might put us in danger.
And none of my nightmares featured flames. Despite having read books by Patrick O'Brien and William Golding in which sailors battle blazes, this seemed to me a risk of wooden ships. There is also a stupid psychological consolation in being surrounded by so much water.
At its worst, the QM2 was like being in a giant shopping mall with severe subsidence. At its best, it's a miracle of engineering and catering. And sailing past Miss Liberty's navel towards a Manhattan backlit by the sunrise was one of the rare occasions when the picture in your camera matches the image long developed in your mind.
The thought of another passage is even more appealing now that the risk of the bathroom vanity panel catching light will be gone. But it's a real shock, living in the tense present, to realise that I failed to be paranoid enough.
