Large cruise ships have been talked about for a long time, but their true enormity hit home in the artists renderings of the City of Hamilton's plans for the waterfront published this week.

Although the drawing on the front page of Tuesday's Royal Gazette exaggerated the length, it accurately depicted the height as the ship towers over Front Street.

The size of the ships, known as Panamax ships because they are the largest ship still able to get through the Panama Canal, led the Corporation to decide to only cater for one such ship as it still tries to go after the high-end niche market ships.

Assistant City Engineer Patrick Cooper said: "Government asked us to look at our port infrastructure to house at least one Panamax ship."

The ships are due to come to Bermuda in five years time as the smaller cruise ships are phased out.

Scaled at 950 feet long and 160 feet tall, the new ships will span the length of the Birdcage to The Beach pub. Capable of carrying up to 3,000 passengers and 800 staff, they are the equivalent to two of the current ships which are around 650 feet long and 100 feet tall.

Mr. Cooper said it was not deemed necessary to go after more than one of the new ships as they could also be located elsewhere on the island and those on board would still visit Hamilton which was the preferred location for visitors.

Tourism Minister Ewart Brown said he didn't think the new ships would scare off people.

"In the end we hope to have a situation where we can accommodate the ship but not destroy the vista."

Asked for his reaction to the City's waterfront plan he said it had merit, as did another plan put forward by the winner of the competition run by Sir John Swan.

"We anxiously await the consultant's opinion as to what he thinks is best from a technical standpoint for Bermuda."

Sir John's plan has a jetty coming out at an angle rather than parallel so views of the harbour are not obscured by the large ships.

It also has room to house two large ships in case St. George's is unable to take one as often happens in bad weather.

Asked for his response on the Corporation plans, Sir John said: "It's different.

"At the end of the day they have a lot more authority, all we can do as private citizens is put our opinion forward."

He said the Corporation plan also involved a lot more land reclamation to create a large infrastructure.

"There's no point in taking shops from one side of the street to put it on the other. All that does is make the shops on the other side less viable."

Sir John has pushed for the container docks to be moved off Front Street but the Corporation plan does not tackle that issue.

Government will set up a small taskforce to decide which scheme should be taken forward.

Dr. Brown said he hoped the taskforce would be selected before Christmas but he did not have a deadline.

Chamber of Commerce president Charles Gosling said the contentious debate on cruise ship size would have a major impact on the future of the island.