THE QUEEN ELIZABETH

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 April 1940, Page 11

THE QUEEN ELIZABETH

“FASTEST SHIP AFLOAT.”

LONDON, March 12

“I have not the slightest doubt that when the time comes the Queen Elizabeth will show herself the fastest ship afloat,” Captain .1. C. Townley is reported to have said at New York, at the end of the liner’s secret voyage across the Atlantic. According to the Sunday Express, 7000 experiments were made before the shape of the liner was determined. Models were tested in an experimental tank at John Brown’s Clydebank yard, and they travelled a distance equivalent to twice the length of England.

It was not just an empty shell of a ship that sailed across the Atlantic, the article continued. The interior decorations are practically complete and all the ship’s furniture is on board. Settees and easy chairs in the lounges and drawing rooms are covered with dust sheets.

The Queen Elizabeth is 1031 ft. long —l3ft. longer than her sister ship, Queen Mary. Her gross tonnage is 85,000, compared with the Queen Mary’s 81.235. There are 14 decks in the hull, connected by 60 goods and passenger, Gifts. Some of the hull plates are 30ft. long; together they could pave the road from London to the Midlands.

After months of secret tests, John Brown and Company evolved a new type of marine boiler for the Queen Elizabeth. The Queen Mary has 27 boilers in five compartments. Her sister ship has 12 boilers in two compartments, and the space saved is valuable for cargo. Steam can be raised in a fraction of the normal time, with the highest pressure ever used in a passenger ship.

LUXURY AND SAFETY.

The Queen Elizabeth’s power station would supply all the electrical requirements of a town of 200,000 inhabitants. The 2G Diesel engine lifeboats are a miracle of simplicity and safety. Each can hold more passengers than the first Cunarder, Britannia, yet a single man can launch them. He presses a button and the lifeboat is brought electrically to deck level. Another press of the button lowers it to the sea.

Accommodation for the 2410 passengers in peace-time will be on a new scale of luxury. The ship has a sports arena almost half as big as a full-sized football ground. There are three cinemas, a theatre, swimming pool, shopping centre, banks, tourists’ bureaux and gymnasiums for each class of passenger.

Altogether, the cost of the Queen Elizabeth will be about £6,000,000, of which £4.000,000 will have been paid out in wages, indirectly, to nearly a quarter of a million people.