RMS Queen Elizabeth History of the British Ocean Liner
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Загружено: 2022-06-21
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History of the British ocean liner RMS Queen Elizabeth
The Queen Elizabeth is an ocean liner built for the shipping company Cunard Line. Among other things, she also carried mail, for which she received the index Royal Mail Ship. The ship was named in honor of Queen Elizabeth. From 1940 to 1972, the ship was the largest passenger liner in the world.
In May 1936, after another Cunard Line liner, the Queen Mary, set off on her maiden voyage, it was announced that the development of a follow-up ship, the Queen Elizabeth, had begun.
The liner was laid down in December 1936 at the John Brown and Company shipyard in Clydebank, Scotland. The new ship differed from the Queen Mary in its improved design. In addition, the Queen Elizabeth was equipped with twelve steam boilers instead of twenty-four, as on the Queen Mary, which allowed one smokestack to be removed. This significantly increased the size of the deck, as well as cargo and passenger capacity.
The length of the liner is 314 m, the width is 36 m, the ship's service crew consisted of 1000 people, and the passenger capacity is two thousand two hundred and eighty-three people.
The ship was launched on September 27, 1938, in the presence of the wife of the King of Great Britain George VI, Queen Consort Elizabeth.
While the Queen Elizabeth was in the fitting-out dock, special licenses were issued on the suitability of the ship for navigation. On December 29, engine tests were conducted.
After some time, it was decided to send the ship to Southampton and complete the fitting out there. This was done in order to prevent German spies from observing the ship. By early March 1940, Queen Elizabeth was ready for her secret voyage. Her Cunard colours were painted battleship grey and on the morning of 3 March she quietly left her moorings on the Clyde, emerged from the river and sailed further along the coast where she was met by the Royal Herald who handed sealed orders directly to the captain. While waiting for the messenger, the ship was refuelled, adjustments were made to the ship's compass and some final tests of the ship's equipment were carried out before she sailed for her secret destination. Captain Townley discovered that he had to take the untested ship straight to New York without stopping, without disembarking the Southampton Harbour Pilot who had boarded the Queen Elizabeth from Clydebank, and to maintain strict radio silence. Later that day, as she was due to arrive in Southampton, the city was bombed by the Luftwaffe. After a crossing lasting six days, Queen Elizabeth zigzagged across the Atlantic at an average speed of 26 knots, avoiding German U-boats, where she arrived safely in New York and found herself moored alongside Queen Mary and the French Normandy Line. It would be the only time that all three of the world's largest liners would be moored together.
On arrival in New York, Captain Townley received two telegrams, one from his wife offering congratulations and the other from the ship's namesake, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, thanking him for the safe delivery of the ship named in her honour.
The liner left New York Port on 13 November 1940, bound for Singapore to undergo her troopship refit. After two stops to refuel and replenish supplies in Trinidad and Cape Town, she arrived at the Singapore Naval Docks, where she was fitted with anti-aircraft guns and her hull was repainted black, although her superstructure remained grey.
In 1968, the Queen Elizabeth was sold to a group of Philadelphia businessmen who planned to convert the ship into a floating hotel and tourist center in Florida, but in 1970, due to financial difficulties, the Queen Elizabeth was sold to a Hong Kong tycoon. He decided to turn the liner into a maritime university to conduct a training program called "Semester at Sea".
Some time later, the ship was renamed "Seawise University" and painted white.
On January 9, 1972, a large fire broke out on the liner, as a result of which she capsized and sank in Victoria Harbor in Hong Kong. Between 1974 and 1975, most of the ship was broken up for scrap. However, the liner's keel and steam turbines still rest on the bottom of the bay. On local nautical charts, the wreck of the Queen Elizabeth is marked as dangerous for anchoring ships.
It is estimated that between 40 and 50% of the wreckage was still on the seabed. In the late 1990s, the last remains of the wreck were buried during land reclamation for the construction of Container Terminal 9. Queen Elizabeth held the title of "largest passenger shipwreck" until the Costa Concordia disaster in 2012.
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