HMS Illustrious

[Keith Tindell]

Today HMS Illustrious leaves Portsmouth for Turkey where she has been purchased by a recycling company. Hope the Turkish company are not people smugglers with big ambitions, kt

[Captain Kong]

I think it is a disgrace, another piece of Maritime History consigned to the foreign scrapyards.
Sold for a mere £2million.
In San Diego Cal. they have the USS MIDWAY, every day full of thousands of tourists paying $15 each to look around
. She is full of aircraft of all types, more than we have in our entire air force and Navy. They have Jet fighter simulators, where people and kids can sit in there and "fly" a jet at Mach speeds, doing all kinds of actions, People queueing up to get in. You can tour from the bridge down to the engine room and accommodation.
That ship is a Gold Mine.#]
Why can we Not do something like that,
I am surprized that No one cares in UK anymore. £2 million is only a few months wages for a footballer.
Brian

[John Pruden]

I took my grandson on lusty when she visited Liverpool last year I was not imp rest for a ship of the line very grubby oil stains on the deck not very ship shape at all.. jp

[John F Collier]

#2 Hi Brian, I agree with you that certain ships should be saved but it seems we can't afford these things after we've
thrown millions upon millions in unwarranted aid to other countries. I went aboard the light cruiser HMS Belfast moored
at Tower Bridge a few years ago it was a great experience and a couple of years ago at Chatham Historic Dockyard I went
on the 1944 Destroyer HMS Cavalier, these ships are a part of our history and like you, I think people should be able to see them. cheers JC

[Ivan Cloherty]

Also a pity we haven't saved an 'Empire ship' the forerunner of the Liberty or an SD14 the replacement of the Liberty, but of course the MN didn't contribute to the saving of the UK, Europe, Russia etc etc. silly me!

Incidentally the first ship of the Empire class (1938) was called 'Empire Liberty' so the name was well established before Roosevelt allegedly coined the name

[Fouro]

The "Empire Liberty" completed in 1941was the inspiration for the American EC2-S-C1 Liberty ship but they were not built from the same plans. The Empire Liberty was an all-riveted, coal fired ship built piecemeal from the keel up. The New York naval architectural firm of Gibbs&Cox provided plans for a prefabricated, all welded, oil fired ship with two deckhouses instead of four.
The simplified hull design remained essentially the same as did the size and tonnage of the vessel. The Empire Liberty was scrapped in Osaka, Japan, in 1960.
It's a pity not many people seem interested in Liberty Ship history.

FOURO.

[Captain Kong]

I sailed on SAM boats, Fort boats, Empire Boats, Park boats and so on. all built for WW2.
The hull on all of them was very similar.
Some of the Empire boats differed in design.
Brian

[eric fisher]

Sailed on Harrison's Specialist 1950the Specialist.jpg

[Captain Kong]

SAM boat , I liked those, very handy on deck.,
Cheers
Brian

[Ivan Cloherty]

The "Empire Liberty" completed in 1941was the inspiration for the American EC2-S-C1 Liberty ship but they were not built from the same plans. The Empire Liberty was an all-riveted, coal fired ship built piecemeal from the keel up. The New York naval architectural firm of Gibbs&Cox provided plans for a prefabricated, all welded, oil fired ship with two deckhouses instead of four.
The simplified hull design remained essentially the same as did the size and tonnage of the vessel. The Empire Liberty was scrapped in Osaka, Japan, in 1960.
It's a pity not many people seem interested in Liberty Ship history.


FOURO.

I think there are a lot of maritime historians interested in the Liberty ships, I have a number of them, a good starter is 'The Liberty Ships' by L A Sawyer and W H Mitchell by Lloyds of London Press ISBN 1-85044-049-2. I became interested in them whilst at sea and hearing so many differing stories about their origin, my father sailed/served on them and his version turned out to be correct, which pleased me no end, as sons always want to believe their fathers.

The Empires (built UK), the Forts (built Canada) and the Liberty (built USA) all used the same hull form designed by J L Thompson Shipbuilders of Sunderland, main visual differences Empire Ships had a raised foc'le and split accommodation, Fort vessels had a flush deck with split accommodation, Liberty ships (SAM SHIPS)had one block of accommodation, over 80% total of all three types built were fitted with NEM designed engines. SAM stands for 'Superstructure Aft Amidships' and has nothing to do with being supplied by Uncle Sam another myth dispelled, nor did they break in half because of faulty welding, the majority suffered structural failure because the wrong formula had been used in plates supplied to the most northernmost building yards in the USA and the steel proved too brittle for North Atlantic conditions becoming more brittle in the extreme cold weather encountered in that area