Daily Echo reporter Keith Hamilton argues famous Southampton liner QE2 should have scrapped and not left to rust

The legendary Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth 2 was simply a sublime symbol of elegance and style – in a class all of her own.

On a cold night a little over six years ago I and many thousands of Southampton people gathered on the city’s waterfront to say a sad, fond farewell to an old friend of almost 40 years as she slipped away into the darkness and disappeared for the last time, never to return again to her home port.

At the time I argued against the plans for her to be turned into a floating hotel and instead suggested she should be scrapped so we could remember her as she was – magnificent, powerful and unique.

No, said the spin doctors who claimed QE2 was heading for a bright new career in the oil rich state of Dubai, her future was assured, she would live on, attracting new guests far into the future.

I was sceptical at the time and I’m sad to say my doubts at the time seemed to have been proven correct.

The QE2's fireworks send-off six years ago

Now years later this once great embodiment of Britain’s seafaring tradition lies abandoned, forgotten and, many fear, rotting away beneath the fierce Middle Eastern sun.

The much vaunted scheme to transform her into a world class tourist attraction, boasted about at the time of her departure in 2008, has disappeared like a mirage in the deserts of Dubai where QE2 now languishes in a remote backwater.

Plans have come and gone; one minute QE2 was going to be the centrepiece for an extravagant, millionaires’ holiday resort, then she was off to Singapore but no sooner as that idea surfaced it all changed and she was going to Hong Kong.

But nothing happened. It seems money for such ambitious plans is now thin on the ground and so she was moored up, closed down and there QE2 has stayed ever since.

On that November night she disappeared from South-ampton I said ships were meant to go to sea, they come alive as they voyage the oceans of the world, they are designed to visit distant shores and when their days come to an end they should go, and go with dignity.

Of course scrapping is a brutal process as a ship is torn apart but isn’t this better than a slow death by abandonment?

Over the years I have seen many ships arrive and depart and just occasionally some stand out from all the others with a life and charisma that somehow sets them apart. The old Queen Mary had it, so did Canberra, the “Great White Whale” of the Falklands campaign, as well as the chicest of ships, SS France, but over and above even those soared QE2.

A workman roasts a pig on the deck of the QE2 in a Dubai dockyard

Royalty, world leaders, Hollywood stars and countless passengers walked those wonderful wooden decks throughout her long and distinguished career based in Southampton.

For years our careers ran side by side. Her initial arrival in Southampton came as I joined the Daily Echo in the late 1960s. In the years that followed I wrote many stories about QE2. I was on board when she faced a giant 96 foot wave in mid-Atlantic and I was there when she took her leave.

QE2’s public rooms were warm and welcoming, afternoon tea was served, tartan rugs produced to protect guests as they took the sea air, her renowned Grills served some of the finest haute cuisine and her crew had the knack of remembering whether your favourite tipple was a gin and tonic or a glass of champagne.

To experience the Cunarder at her very best was to be aboard her in the middle of the Atlantic, powering her way through the swells and rollers with sea spray and the taste of salt in the air as she set a course on the passage from Southampton to New York.

I know this sounds indulgent, perhaps shallow to many, but for those who experienced QE2, and that is exactly what it was, an experience, that today’s modern cruise ships, with all their gimmicks and high-tech gadgetry, will never be able to replicate, it was just so special.

I still have those memories and they will never dim so when photographs emerged on the Internet this week of a member of the skeleton crew, which now is supposed to be looking after her, roasting a pig over coals in half an old oil drum on her open decks my heart sank.

An existence, chained to permanent berth, is not what QE2 deserves in return for a career which gave so much to the British merchant marine, and, it must not be forgotten, to the port of Southampton.

QE2 deserves better than this, she was once the most famous ship in the world.