The Duchess of Cornwall took on a role usually reserved for queens this afternoon when she named the Queen Victoria, Cunard's new 90,000-tonne, £300 million ocean liner.

Accompanied by her husband, the Prince of Wales, onto the ship in Southampton Docks, Camilla became the first non-monarch to launch a "Queen" in the Cunard’s fleet, in a possible sign of the her rising status in the Royal Family.

The Queen launched the Queen Elizabeth II in 1967 and was in Southampton to name the Queen Mary II in 2004.

Before that, Queen Mary launched the first Queen Mary in 1934, while Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen Mother, launched the first Queen Elizabeth in 1938.

But unfortunately for Camilla - and for the ship's future passengers - it was a less than auspicious start. The champagne bottle refused to break.

At the end of a two-hour ceremony in front of hundreds of guests, including the former hostage Terry Waite, the actor Derek Jacoby and John Prescott, the former deputy prime minister who famously once worked as a Cunard steward, the Duchess pressed a button to release the bottle, suspended on the ceiling. It fell, bounced, and remained disappointingly intact.

The interiors in the new Queen Victoria are largely Art Deco - they breathe an air of a colonial past. Entering onto the second deck, passengers are confronted with sculpted balconies and a sweeping staircase that plunges through three levels against the backdrop of a bronzed, stylised cast of the ship crossing the globe beneath a metallic sun.

At the front of the ship, at the end of narrow corridors lined with crushed velvet and photographs of Noel Coward, there’s the first ocean-going theatre to accommodate private boxes. Actors were rehearsing the play Victoriana to be staged this evening, though the props and stage scenery would not have looked out of place anywhere else on the ship. Even the slot machines are styled after the 1930s.

Carol Marlow, Managing Director and President of Cunard, told guests: "This is our newest ocean liner, soon to be one of the most famous ocean liners in the world."

The television presenter Alan Titmarsh asked guests to make a donation to the Prince's Trust, which Cunard is supporting. He said: "I'm sure it has been a great pleasure to be on one of the first on board this wonderful, wonderful ocean liner."

Richard Churchill, 41, a company director from Portsmouth and a guest on the ship, said: "I have been on a couple of cruises - the Oceana and the Aurora - but this ship is excellent. It's got such style."

The Queen Victoria will leave Southampton tomorrow for a ten-day maiden voyage across northern Europe.

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