I remember that early morning well as at the time I was the Technical Manager for her construction in St. Nazaire.... it was foggy, the sides of the river close to the building dock were lined with people eager to get a sight of the ship that had dominated local news and business for a year or more... she was pulled out of the dock by tugs to form a ghostly image on the water, a cluster of lights in the upper levels at either end of the superstructure still under construction. As daylight came she was cajoled into the finishing dock and positioned on the blocks so the process of pumping out the dock could be started. Normally there would be no need for the ship to be sitting high and dry but in the QM2's case she had yet to be fitted with her podded propulsion units which had been delayed because of "quality" issues during their fabrication. For a while, without any pods, she was the largest barge or vessel without propulsion in the world.
Before her arrival into the fitting out dock (which had been the dock in which supertankers were built) the shipyard had to drain the dock so they could assess the amount of silt in its bottom.... the silt covered the entire dock floor to height of several meters. It took some time, weeks, for it to be removed using various pieces of earth moving machinery and dump trucks.
