"THE NOBLEST VESSEL EVER BUILT"

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 79, 30 September 1938, Page 8

"THE NOBLEST VESSEL EVER BUILT"

In her speech at the launching of the Queen Elizabeth on the Clyde, the Queen spoke of this great Imer as "the noblest vessel ever built in Britain." The Queen Elizabeth is not exactly a sister-ship of the Queen Mary, which last month won the record for the fastest double crossing of the Atlantic, but rather a companion vessel. Since the Queen Mary was built four years ago it has been possible to learn much from experience with her and also with her great rival, the French liner Normandie. Advances have been made in naval architecture in the interval and these are embodied in the design of the Queen Elizabeth, a longer and larger Queen Mary. Thus the new Cunard-White Star liner becomes the last word in the design of great ocean express passenger liners. She may be faster than the Queen Mary, whose speed seems to improve with time, but she is certainly the world's largest ship. It may be that these two majestic vessels and the Normandie will the last of the high-speed ocean liners which race across the Atlantic at over thirty miles an hour. Already on the horizon are the new great flying-boats with a speed four or five times as great, capable of crossing the Atlantic in one day instead of four. Thus if time is the object, the ocean liner will have to yield to the air liner, and the surface craft will have to be content with the charms of comfort and leisure. Meanwhile, Britain stands supreme in the achievements of these noble vessels.