Queen Elizabeth will be the third Cunard liner to bear that name. The first was launched in 1938. She formed a transatlantic partnership with the legendary Queen Mary. Together the two ships dominated the route for forty years. The second Elizabeth, christened QE2, entered service in 1969. They were all built in Britain. ibid.
Queen Elizabeth’s hull and super-structure must be finished in six months. ibid.
In 1967 the venerable Queen Mary was sold to Longbeach in California, and became a floating attraction and hotel. The Queen Elizabeth ended up in the hands of a Chinese businessman, who planned a floating university. But in January 1972 the ship which had been the pride of Britain’s merchant fleet mysteriously caught fire in Hong Kong harbour. ibid.
Sink me the ship, Master Gunner – sink her, split her in twain!
Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain!
And the gunner said ‘Ay, ay,’ but the seamen made reply:
‘We have children, we have wives,
And the Lord hath spared our livs.’ Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Revenge, 1878
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing;
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn, 1874
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Building of the Ship l375
The side of the ship made an opaque belt of shadows on the darkling glassy shimmer of the sea. But I saw at once something elongated and pale floating very close to the ladder. Before I could form a guess a faint flash of phosphorescent light, which seemed to issue suddenly from the naked body of a man, flickering in the sleeping water with the elusive, silent play of summer lighting in a night sky. With a gasp I saw revealed to my stare a pair of feet, the long legs, a broad livid back immersed right up to the neck in a greenish cadaverous flow. One hand, awash, clutched the bottom rung of the ladder. Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer
When the Great Eastern was launched its paddles were driven by the biggest marine steam engine of its day. Great Railway Adventures with Dan Cruickshank: Brilliant Brunel, Channel 5 2010
After a journey of just fifteen days and five hours his Great Western steamship made a triumphant entry into New York harbor. ibid.
Brunel had produced two of the finest ocean steamers in the world, but the city of Bristol failed to take advantage of his genius. ibid.
The Lancastrian went down in under twenty minutes ... The loss of the Lancastrian was still Britain’s greatest maritime disaster. Thankfully about 2,500 were saved. Great Railway Adventures with Dan Cruickshank: War Heroes
HMS Ark Royal is over two months into what would turn out to be her final deployment. She is birthed in the foggy port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. HMS Ark Royal, Discovery 2013
A daring expedition makes its way to one of the most remote places on Earth: Bikini Atoll. It’s here to explore the world’s most extraordinary ship graveyard: giant Japanese and American warships rest side by side on the ocean floor. These once proud ships were sacrificed in one of the most spectacular experiments of all time. Ghost Fleet of Bikini Atoll, 2011
Goats, sheep, rats and pigs were placed aboard the target vessels. ibid.
But few of the large ships well known had sunk. The disappointment was enormous. Especially for the Air Force who had hoped for much more spectacular results. ibid.
It was on the good ship Venus
By Christ, you should’ve seen us
The figurehead was a whore in bed
And the mast was a mammoth penis
The captain of this lugger
He was a dirty bugger
He wasn’t fit to shovel shit
From one place to another
[Chorus:]
Friggin’ in the riggin’
Friggin’ in the riggin’
Friggin’ in the riggin’
There was fuck all else to do … Sex Pistols, Friggin’ in the Riggin’
May 7 1915 2.10 p.m. 1 torpedo. 2 explosions. 18 minutes. 1,198 dead. Dark Secrets of the Lusitania, National Geographic 2013
One of the twentieth century's worst war crimes – the sinking of RMS Lusitania – is still shrouded in mystery. ibid.
Was it the Germans for sinking a helpless passenger ship, or the British for allowing civilians to sail into a war zone on a vessel possibly loaded with munitions? ibid.
The Lusitania lies around twelve miles off the Irish coast. ibid.
Expedition: first the team has to get inside. ibid.
4 million rounds ... in the cargo area. ibid.
Stacks of copper ingots. ibid.
Test 1) Aluminium v Test 2) Coal Dust v Test 3) Gun Cotton v Test 4) Boiler Rupture. ibid.
The torpedo blast could have created a breach in the hull as large as twenty to thirty feet across but no smaller than six feet. ibid.
A deadly warhead packed with 350 pounds of TNT expertly delivered. ibid.
The campaign to save the yards from commercial annihilation gathered momentum ... Clydeside solidarity prevailed over commercial viability. Kirsty Young, The British at Work: Them and Us 1964-1980, BBC 2011
And the shipyard workers did what they came to do – they carried their campaign to the streets of London. Martin Bell, BBC news
A black vicious ugly customer as ever I saw, whale-like in size with a terrible row of incisor teeth. Charles Dickens, re HMS Warrior
The Hunt for Red October – the Hollywood tale of a rogue Soviet commander who steals a nuclear submarine and heads for the West. But the film is not pure fiction. In 1975 at the height of the Cold War a Soviet naval officer started a real-life mutiny just as ambitious and equally dangerous. Instead of a submarine called Red October he stole a state of the art warship called the Century. He sailed the ship out of Soviet waters and risked triggering a Third World War. The True Story: The Hunt for Red October
With the captain imprisoned, the first stage of [Valery] Sablin’s plan was complete. ibid.
It was the political officer, not the captain, who stole the ship. ibid.
Every once in a while a home-movie can become part of history ... The anatomy of a disaster. The Sinking of the Concordia: Caught on Camera, Channel 4 2012
In 2005, Scientists discovered a distant planet believed to have a climate nearly identical to Earth. In 2006, Nasa built a transmission device five times more powerful than any before it, and a program to contact the planet began. It was known as the Beacon Project. Battleship 2012 starring Taylor Kitsch & Liam Neeson & Rihanna & Alexander Skarsgard & Broolyn Decker & Tadanobu Asano & Haish Linklater & Peter MacNicol & John Tui & Gregory D Gadson et al, director Peter Berg, opening caption
Five distinct objects that are moving in formation. ibid. English bloke
We’re looking at an extinction level event. ibid.
The ship was named the Bounty: I was appointed to command her on the 16th of August 1787. William Bligh
Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ileum? Christopher Marlowe
She walks the waters like a thing of life,
And seems to dare the elements to strife. Lord Byron, The Corsair
She bears her down majestically near,
Speed on her prow, and terror in her tier. ibid.
For centuries one of the greatest mysteries surrounding the Knights Templar had been the fate of their fleet. Documents from around 1207 indicate that the Templars already had their own ships and were starting to build up a fleet. One account from October 1307 reports the presence of eighteen Templar ships anchored in the port of La Rochelle in western France. The next day they were gone. One likely escape route to the North, to one of the longest held Templar strongholds. The Scots were unlikely to have heeded the Pope’s suppression order ... But those hunting such evidence and other Templar secrets are drawn to one particular spot: it stands on the estate of one of Scotland’s oldest and most powerful clans, the Sinclairs. Or as some interpret the name: St Clair. Decoding the Past s1e17: The Templar Code, History 2005
The first freighter four hundred years ago built with those same characteristics [as a 747] changed the world. James Burke, Connections s1e7: The Long Chain, BBC 1978