jimpeel
Well-Known Member
A sad end to this great ship. Like the Queen Mary, in Long Beach, CA, she will become a floating hotel and entertainment venue in Dubai. The Queen Elizabeth (I) burned and capsized in Hong Kong harbor during the reconstruction to make her into a floating university some years back. She was scrapped.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cruises/luxury/2204603/QE2-Farewell-to-the-last-great-liner.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cruises/luxury/2204603/QE2-Farewell-to-the-last-great-liner.html
QE2: Farewell to the last great liner
The QE2, grande dame of the Cunard fleet, will be retired to Dubai at the end of this year. Gavin Bell, who joined one of her final voyages around Britain, reflects on what we stand to lose
Gavin Bell
Last Updated: 10:57AM BST 22 Jul 2008
When the Queen Elizabeth 2 was launched in September, 1967, she was destined to become a ship of superlatives. Four decades later she is still the fastest non-military ship afloat (she can travel faster backwards than most cruise ships can move forwards)and has travelled farther than any other ship. At the last count she had logged more than 5.6 million miles, the equivalent of 12 journeys to the moon and back.
In the process, she has become an icon of a lost age, when Britain made the finest ships in the world. The last in an illustrious heritage of transatlantic liners, she has barely six months left as the grande dame of the Cunard fleet before retiring to Dubai as a floating hotel and entertainment venue. A measure of the esteem and affection in which she is held is that her final voyage from Southampton in November sold out in 36 minutes.
A 40th-anniversary cruise last September — billed as “a lap of honour” around Britain — was also fully booked months in advance and, from a rousing send-off at Southampton by the band of the Royal Marines to a celebration concert at Liverpool’s Anglican cathedral, it was a voyage of pride, nostalgia and sadness.
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