Tagged With "QE2"

Beautiful photos of a classic beauty!

A sad story, but not unusual. People get attached to ships, maybe why they're called "she" instead of "it". My son was in the Navy, on the magnificent aircraft carrier USS Ranger, CV61, one of several of that name, the first in 1777, commanded by John Paul Jones. The end of his tour was also Ranger's last, after a voyage to the Persian Gulf for a goodbye battle. Retired just afterward (1993) and stored in Bremerton, WA, I read yesterday that as I write this, Ranger is sailing under tow...

I read some years ago of extensive ship-breaking on the Bangladesh coast, where labor is cheap and regulations scanty...an immense amount of dangerous work, but because the labor is cheap, the scrap profits are high, or higher than they would be if the cost of recovery were high. Which leads me to wonder: what would be the economic value of that long tow to Brownsville as opposed to scrapping the ship on the West Coast? Ideas, anyone?

There must certainly be profit to the company, International Shipbreaking, that was paid 1 penny US by the Navy to tow Ranger to Texas where they do the work and, presumably, don't do in WA. I toured Ranger but, even so, it's hard to comprehend the size of a ship where 6,000 men (and a few women) work and live, plus 2 decks for airplanes. Lots of steel there, lots of razor blades. I saw an amazing piece, probably on 60 Minutes, about the place in Bangladesh where the work you mention is done...

A sight you won't see anymore, Ian Cook shares these photos of the QEII sailing into the River Tyne just before her retirement in 2008.

This past week, Cunard celebrated its 175th anniversary, and stage a show of its Three Queens (Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria and Queen Mary 2) in the Mersey at Liverpool. But one of its storied Queens was in distress, half a world away. The QE2,...