Queen of Queen’s Island Of all the Queen’s twenty-one visits to Northern Ireland one of the most significant took place exactly sixty years ago. On that date in 1954 Queen Elizabeth was on Queen’s Island for a very different reason. She was there to perform the launch of the £3.5m passenger liner Southern Cross (see On This Day Link - TitanicBelfast/Discover/On-This-Day/August-17/Southern-Cross ), the first occasion a reigning British monarch had launched a merchant ship. Unlike the glorious weather that greeted the Queen’s arrival yesterday, 17 August was a wet day with pouring rain and a heavy overcast. Not withstanding the typical Belfast weather, the Queen, flanked on either side by Sir Frederick Rebbeck, Chairman of Harland & Wolff and on her left by Basil Sanderson, Chairman of the shipowners, performed the christening ceremony faultlessly: ‘I name this ship Southern Cross. May God protect her and all who sail in her.’ With that, she operated a lever which released the launching triggers and simultaneously a bottle of Empire champagne struck and smashed on the bows of the great liner as it started to move down the ways. No one on the launching platform, or any of the thousands of spectators in the yard, realised they were witnessing a closing chapter in shipbuilding on Queen’s Island. Southern Cross was the last passenger liner launched from the slips beneath the Arrol gantries. The first liner launched from the very same Slipway No. 2 was Olympic, Titanic’s older sister, in October 1910. One of the spectators at that historic event was Harold Sanderson partner with J. Bruce Ismay in the White Star Line. His son Basil joined White Star, rose through the management of the Company and in 1927 married Ismay’s eldest daughter, and eventually retraced his father’s footsteps with the launch of another flagship, this time for the Shaw Savill Line. Discover more at - TitanicBelfast/Discover/On-This-Day/August-17/Southern-Cross.aspx
Posted on: Wed, 25 Jun 2014 08:00:03 +0000
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