THE NEXT CUNARDER.

Manawatu Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 4414, 6 November 1934, Page 4

THE NEXT CUNARDER.

POSSIBILITIES OF SISTER SHIP TO THE QUEEN MARY.

It is cheering news for the people of Clydebank, now that the Queen Mary has been successfully launched, that for the next 18 months employment will be found for fully 3,000 men in fitting her out. The ship is safely settled in the fitting-out basin to the West of John Brown and Co. Ltd’s shipbuilding yard, and the work of preparing her for her passenger service will be started almost immediately. It is hoped that the Queen Mai-y will leave the Clyde for Southampton early in the spring of 1930.

There is still plenty of work for the black squad, as the riveters are termed, and even when they have finished on the Queen Mary the cruiser which is being laid down in the yard awaits them. When the work of fitting out the Queen Mary is in full swing there will be nearly 500 more men employed on her.

What is now absorbing the interest of the workpeople is the prospect of a sister ship to the Queen Mary occupying the stocks which have been vacated by the former 534. Officials of the CunardWhite Star Co. state that a sister ship is contemplated, but that they are not in a position to say anything at the moment. Mr David Kirkwood, the Clydeside Labour M.P., who did so much to get work on the new liner restarted, says he is confident that John Brown and Co. will get a repeat order. He summed up his reasons as follows: —“The berth where the Queen Mary was cradled is a live slip; the current is laid on for the cranes and the various machines; the slip is built to a mathematical exactness so that thousands of pounds would be saved in this direction alone if the order for a sister ship came to Johnßrowne’s. At Clydebank they have all the drawings, mouldings, patterns, special tools, etc., which would materially cheapen the cost of a second ship.” It has been estimated by Mr Kirkwood that over £300,000 would be saved by building the sister ship at Clydebank. The possibility that the sister ship may be larger still than the Queen Mary, was referred to by Mr Kirkwood, in an intervieAV. It must not be thought, he said, that the Queen Mary represented the last word in the size of oceangoing liners. “I can let you into a little secret,”Mr Kirkwood added. “I know that the experts have derived such an immense amount of new experience in the course of the building of the Queen Mary that there is a possibility of the next ship being larger still. It is, at any rate, safe to say that the new ship will certainly be as large as the one just launched.

Mr Kirkwood was among those presented to the King, who had some difficulty in following his broad Scottish accent. “It will possibly not surprise you to know,” said Mr Kirkwood, “that this was the first time I had ever come into personal contact with the King. I found him in a very happy mood, and a most delightful man.” “ ‘I am delighted to meet you, Mr Klr|k|wood,’ was how the King greeted me with a twinkle in his eyes. ‘Of course, I have heard a lot about, you. Indeed, I am well acquainted with the great efforts you made to get work resumed on this ship when she lay idle on the stocks. You should be a proud man in the knowledge that you not only helped to obtain employment at a very critical moment for many men, but in seeing to-day what that work has accomplished.’ ”