The Final Edition

[skilly56]

Have just found a copy of The Daily News, dated 26/11/2008, making this the Final Edition!
Hope I am not repeating this post.
Enjoy
Skilly

[cunardqueen]

It makes you wonder just how much of a push there was to get rid of onboard stuff in the way of Food, drink, Shop stuff, giftware, Photos etc  before arriving in Dubai And what about below decks with the crew bar or was it drunk dry the last night. The simple things like table cloths or bedding, cutlery and glasses, crockery, staff uniforms. Just how did you get QE2 ready for the new owners.
 
It must be one thing to get a ship ready for service, quite another for a ship to get ready for a whole new life .
When l was fortunate to visit onboard on the 11th November l met my old cabin stewardess from the farewell crossings, Hindsight what it was l should have taken a suitcase for what she was trying to off load on me that day.   

[Thomas Hypher]

It makes you wonder just how much of a push there was to get rid of onboard stuff in the way of Food, drink, Shop stuff, giftware, Photos etc  before arriving in Dubai And what about below decks with the crew bar or was it drunk dry the last night. The simple things like table cloths or bedding, cutlery and glasses, crockery, staff uniforms. Just how did you get QE2 ready for the new owners.
 
It must be one thing to get a ship ready for service, quite another for a ship to get ready for a whole new life .
When l was fortunate to visit onboard on the 11th November l met my old cabin stewardess from the farewell crossings, Hindsight what it was l should have taken a suitcase for what she was trying to off load on me that day.

Apparently quite a bit of cleaning and a lot of sorting had to be done as part of securing the ship in her warm layup. I presume this would've included dealing with quite a few perishable items no longer needed. If I recall correctly Commodore Warwick talks about this in the latest edition of his QE2 book, as he was employed by Nakheel to be her captain again upon her arrival in Dubai and for the first months of the warm layup.

A reasonable bit of crockery and other serving items (namely the wooden drinks mixers) have survived and are used onboard today - Dubai using one of her old (no longer) refrigerated compartments below the waterline to store all the crockery from the old days as shown in the most recent documentary.

The library books have survived too, mostly being in her lobby building but some are back onboard. The library books back onboard seem to be from the maritime section from the book titles that I've spied in photos on Instagram, and are the library books that I tried to find amongst the others during my visit last year but couldn't as they must've been in storage somewhere - perhaps in that A/C'd warehouse the catamaran tenders are said to be in too?

[Thomas Hypher]

An end of an era and of something special. A remarkable career and very good "innings"!

[skilly56]

The clean-out of QE2 started almost immediately the flag-change had taken place.
The 3rd officer and the bosun were still aboard for a number of days to smooth the handover.

The attached photos show paraphernalia from the ship has already been ditched, or is being boxed up for storage or shipment.
I will only attach four photos initially as a test of a system change that has just been made.

Skilly

[Lynda Bradford]

Thanks for posting these photos and how sad to see many items in skips.

[June Ingram]

Thanks for posting the photos ! Very sad to see !