[BITList] Fwd: A ship for her times - Lloydslist.com

[Michael Feltham]

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From: Michael Feltham <mj.feltham at madasafish.com>
Date: 12 November 2008 08:39:19 GMT
To: Michael Feltham <mj.feltham at madasafish.com>
Subject: A ship for her times - Lloydslist.com


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A ship for her times
Wednesday 12 November 2008
LAST night, the departure of the cruiseship Queen Elizabeth 2 for its  
retirement on a permanent berth in Dubai marked the end of an era. If  
a ship can be a symbol of its times, QE2 was, for the British merchant  
marine, all of this and more.
Designed at the very end of Atlantic passenger shipping, the ship was  
the subject of huge argument within the board of Cunard, as the  
traditionalists managed to hold their own against those who believed  
there was no possible comeback against the aircraft, which had come to  
dominate the North Atlantic. The clever thing was that the design of a  
traditional western ocean shuttle had been amended to produce a ship  
that could be a viable cruiseship, while retaining the speed,  
endurance and seakeeping of the earlier type.
The ship was hugely symbolic for the doomed British shipbuilding  
industry, racked by bad management and appalling union troubles, and  
remorselessly headed for extinction. There would be very few ships of  
any distinction to follow QE2 down the Clyde — or indeed from any of  
the other British shipbuilding centres, which just a few years earlier  
had been constructing two-thirds of the world’s ships. As the workers  
and management at John Brown’s famous shipyard watched her departure,  
did they realise they were seeing the start of their own demise? Not a  
bit of it. They were to blunder on into the various revolutions,  
reorganisations, nationalisations and denationalisations that were to  
see the end of merchant shipbuilding in the UK. Did they see why the  
new yards of southeast Asia and Germany were different, and why they  
needed to change if they were to survive? No sign of that revelation.  
All they could do was whine about “unfair” foreign competition.
QE2 was the last ship that somehow, throughout all manner of  
challenges, entered the hearts of the nation. Through all the highly  
publicised events that were to characterise this ship’s long life, all  
somehow contrived to secure the vessel’s name in the public  
imagination. The engine breakdowns, the bomb threat, the groundings,  
the occasional bad voyage with grumbling passengers demanding their  
money back; it was all a perfect example of no publicity being bad.  
The trooping voyage to recover the Falklands was, if one might  
describe it as such, the icing on the cake, and possibly the most  
potent reason why Cunard would never have trouble selling cruise or  
transatlantic berths on this fine ship.
Stop a man or woman in the street and ask them to name an existing  
British merchant ship — any merchant ship. The qualification of  
currency was because of the wretched Titanic! But it would be QE2 that  
would be named.
Forty years is a long life for any merchant ship. It will be sad to  
see QE2 go, but memories live on, and Dubai will doubtless treasure  
its new artefact.


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