For several decades the HMS Queen Mary was one of the largest ships in the world, cruising the oceans between London and New York and catering to a who’s who of European and American elite. Its largest-ship status was then eclipsed by the Queen Mary 2, built by the Royal Carribean cruise line. The QM2 had a much shorter reign than its predecessor, replaced by the unfathomably large MS Freedom of the Seas, the largest passenger ship in the world, by gross tonnage, at the time of its launch.

On this day, June 4, in 2006, after a 17-month, $800 million construction effort, the Freedom of the Seas made its maiden voyage, across the Caribbean. Its crew of 1,100, comparable to the first Queen Mary, served more than 3,000 passengers, a third more than QM.

In size, the Freedom was not much larger than QM1, but it was almost double the weight in tonnage, representing all the traveler-friendly amenities, from whirlpools to mini golf courses, built into it. The Freedom itself would be supplanted by newer Oasis-class cruise ships weighing in at a cool quarter of a million tons and sporting the first ever Starbucks at Sea.