THE QUEEN SAILS FORTH
It’s squeaky bum time for Captain Kyd as his £3bn carrier creeps out of dock ..with only inches to spare
SHE’S 920ft long and weighs 65,000 tonnes. The Royal Navy’s brand new aircraft carrier is a big girl, all right.
And nerves were jangling at Rosyth Dockyard yesterday as HMS Queen Elizabeth, the largest warship in British history, eased her way ever so carefully out into the Firth of Forth for the first time.
She’s so massive that there was only a foot to spare on either side of the dockyard’s basin – and 19 inches under the ship.
Eleven tugs painstakingly inched the £3billion carrier around. Her skipper, Captain Jerry Kyd, admitted with some understatement: “It’s quite tight.”
He told before the launch how he had to factor in the wind – and whether there was low or high pressure in Scotland that day, before deciding when to go for it.
When she’d finally made it out of the dock, Queen Elizabeth sailed under her own power for the first time, chugging gently down the firth at 3-4 knots.
But then she had to drop anchor and wait for low tide so she could creep under the Forth Bridges.
Captain Kyd said: “If I tried to go under at high water, we’d rip the masts off and I wouldn’t be very popular.”
Queen Elizabeth will spend her first few days at sea anchored off Kirkcaldy while her crew assess how she handled her first journey.
She’ll then head to the Moray Firth for her first six weeks of sea trials before going back to Rosyth for engineering work.
It will be next year before her first
major voyage – across the Atlantic to America.
Then there will be even more sea trials, this time with her strike force of F35B fighter jets. The trials programme is not due to be completed until 2020, and it will be 2021 before she’s ready for active duty.
Work is continuing at Rosyth on Queen Elizabeth’s sister ship, HMS Prince of Wales.