The queen of the seas and the queen of the skies both made their maiden voyage in 1969. Same year as the first moon landing and the year when ARPANET, which would grow to become the Internet, was launched. What a year in engineering 1969 was.
Time back we had the fight in the dog ,nowadays that's not the case. We are too stuck up with tradition and the past ,thinking it will pave the roadway into the future.But really life is about the confidence and will to succeed,and in my opinion (2024) its all gone. Shameful.
The MAN engines were not British built but German and therefore far superior to anything that ever came from Britain. I’ve sailed for 43 years as a captain of large yachts and heard this from nearly every captain.
The Brit’s can’t engineer anything that’s easy to maintain. Idiotic British design is also found in cars. Unfortunately I speak from experience. I’ve worked on British ships and cars and those built in Germany and Holland. It’s world of difference.
I myself, through my career have seen how corrupt and incompetent management can rapidly bring to ruin very capable industries with highly talented workers. It is sad.
If ever you wanted confirmation of how utterly useless the nationalised industries were, this is it. From the moment anything is Nationalised it becomes someone els's problem not mine. Who gives a toss when you have the bottomless pit of money from the taxpayer? Why work hard when you still get paid if you don't. Nationalised industries do not need to even try. Apathy and inefficiency reign supreme and this documentary provides the proof.
The worst part of all of this is, we didn't try to a be competitive on price, work a solution out . Management and unions of British ship yards lost this. The Germans won the contract using good engineering, and thinking. Not going on strike, the management not trying to work out a solution.
I can imagine that many of the Germans working on these British ships were laughing the whole time saying, “ Yeah, we sunk a bunch of these and killed many thousands of people, and now we’re rebuilding them and making money.” Idk.
They interview the General Secretary of a union, that perfectly illustrates to you why there is no British Ship building any longer. After WWII Britain elected basically socialists and nationalised industries Willy Nilly, it turned Britain from Industrial and manufacturing superpower, into what it is. A nice spot to holiday, that sells a bit of insurance and banking on the side.
An interesting and depressing documentary. EU 'state aid' directives hadn't yet come into force at that time. Had the repowering project been tendered a few years later, the German and Italian governments would have had to cease policies protecting their heavy industries, and no doubt a Japanese, Korean, Indian or other Asian yard would have got the contract instead.... Reminds me also of a (pre-refit) boiler breakdown which stranded QE2 off Falmouth for a few days in September 1982. Friends of my family in Falmouth who were among the passengers lived down the road from them and were grateful to be taken ashore; the weather just before the start of their holiday had been too wet to mow the lawn and they had an unexpected opportunity to pop back home and do it🤣
According to the excerpt linked bellow, this German refit did run behind schedule and seems to be according to this brief excerpt have been done not very well as the ship was impounded due to safety concerns upon docking in New York apparently ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Bbo4u47EVZs.html Perhaps the British shipyards were right in instance not to have done the work.(That is not to invalidate anything that Sir David Price said or that industry didn't need better management or investment. I'm simply commenting on the end result of this refit)
You see that's what happens when you have these unions in the shipyards or elsewhere they get too big for their pants. An eventually business goes elsewhere not because they want to, but because economically they have to! And Consequently those union jobs are gone forever never to return! Would those union ship yard workers take a pay cut to keep ship repair in Britain 🇬🇧 , I doubt it! So instead of something they have nothing but a bunch of self pity and anger! I feel sorry for the English but they with their unions have priced themselves out of the shipyard market and fallen behind in shipyard technology!
The truth is plain enough in all honesty. When she was built by John Brown she was the last gasp of a dying ship building tradition in Great Britain. While the big yards in Italy, France, Germany and Finland were all investing heavily in the future and reinventing how they built ship the British shipbuilding industry simply didn't have the money nor the inclination to do the same nor were they backed by a government that was either inclined to or capable of that investment either. So by the time the great revival in passenger ship building kicked of in the 80s with the first of the new breed of mega cruise ships all those other yards were well positioned to compete. Where in the UK a generation of knowledge and industrial muscle had passed from the scene. The UK never really recovered from WW2 and the loss of her Empire and while none of the other European Nations necessarily had more resources than the UK coming out of that war they all seemed to adapt better to the post war world than Britain did. Perhaps it's because so many of them had already gone through a terrible downturn in fortunes before WW2 even started and so were ready to reinvent themselves while Britain was not. It's a rather sad state of affairs for a nation that built some of the greatest and grandest passenger liners to ever cross the Atlantic. But adapt or die is the name of the game.
I was there as an employee of MAN Company, during commissioning the MAN Diesel engines and the sea-trials. An exciting time! And afterwards I did many trips as a service enginer the following years. Still proud have been a part of it!
Agreed. And honestly she came out of the refit looking even better IMO. The new larger funnel with the traditional Cunard color scheme was entirely more fitting for the ship then her original thin pipe.
It's almost like privatising everything has consequences. Can't even blame the EU/ EEC for this... the work got done in another EEC country. Embarrassing.
Yes they did. And her new engines worked flawlessly for the next 20 years. When she was retired in 2008 it was more about lacking the modern features that the cruise industry was after (lack of balcony cabins were a particular downfall for QE2) than about her no longer being serviceable. Sadly the British couldn't even get it together to turn her into a dockside attraction like was done with Rotterdam or Queen Mary and she is now in Dubai operating as a floating hotel.
Why would they want any work done in Britain? The workers at John Brown's Shipyard, where QE2 was built, vandalized, stole and went on constant strikes to delay the ship as long as possible. John Brown's was too embarrassed to bid. Check the following video. QE2 The Worlds Greatest Cruise Ship S01E01 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-S8P4dJ8ee6U.html
At war which each other 50 years prior, stupid, made no difference within human existence, look at us now, Europe has learnt its lesson, I love every person from every nation
It makes me sad but it's true the uk has lost its balls when it comes to engineering 30 years now they still cannot decide about a runway the third runway at heathrow the french have full now in paris charles de gaulle where are we going
now that Britain is OUT from the EU what are you going to do, or better whee are you going to go for your next service? To Korea or Japan? Hongkong or Shanghai? Or back to Germany once more?
Only bad officers.verry true.i used to work for a engineering company.management went on strike for a week.during that week production went up by a third.
Given the anti Catholic bias in harland and Wolfe during the building of the Titanic and for 75 years after I'm not surprised they ran out of good luck.. karma is a bitch
I remember watching a documentary on British TV, sometime around the early to mid '90s. As far as I can remember, it stated that Germany had a policy of subsidising both coal-mining and shipbuilding, as both industries were deemed to be vital to the German economy. I distinctly remember one shipyard owner saying he was able to take advantage of closure of British shipyards, by employing British craftsmen who were highly skilled, and who were willing to work for less than German labour.
For a time i worked at Vospers in Portsmouth (Broad Street) now a housing estate, i recall a foreman Bill Love in the plate shop who`s nick name was PIGGY every time he spoke he grunted another prime example of incompetence was a foreman Colin Darton at Porchester in charge of the welding department the fact that this idiot could weld was typical of Vospers making up people from the shop floor who could`nt even pick there nose without help it`s know wonder the company went to the wall with shitheads like these two examples in charge.
I remember the time well............. just remember the Thatcher government were in power ? she the bitch that was Thatcher did`nt like nationalization ie British Shipbuilders were ordered not to bid for the work........... Thank goodness the Bitch is dead........... let us rejoice at that news.
