30 September 2009: RMS Queen Elizabeth

On 27 September 1938, the world’s largest passenger vessel was launched from John Brown’s shipyard in Clydebank.

Weighing over 80,000 tonnes and with a capacity to hold over 2,000 passengers and 1,000 crew, the RMS Queen Elizabeth was a larger, redesigned version of her sister ship, RMS Queen Mary, which had been launched three years earlier from the same shipyard.

The Queen Elizabeth first entered service as a troopship in the Second World War, and it was not until 1946 that she began her intended role as an ocean liner.  Recognised as a target for German bombing, her maiden voyage on 3 March 1940 saw her leave her anchorage at Gourock under secret orders to sail directly to New York.  On arrival, she berthed alongside the Queen Mary and the French Line’s Normandie – the only time three of the world’s largest liners would be in port together.  In November 1940 she left New York for Singapore to begin her conversion to a troopship.

After the war, the Queen Elizabeth maintained a weekly transatlantic service from Southampton to New York via Cherbourg, until her retirement in 1968.