Reader relives her big day out at launch of QE2

The Queen, in blue coat, passes the QE2 and huge crowds as she launches the liner in 1967

When Catherine Sweeney picked up her recent copy of The Sunday Post, it was like stepping into a memory.

The retired teacher was reading The Post’s feature about the 185th anniversary of cruise line Cunard.

The story included a colour photograph from nearly 60 years ago showing many people gathering to witness the launch of the QE2 at Clydebank – and Catherine instantly knew that somewhere in the vast crowd was her younger self.

“I was absolutely astonished,” she said. “I saw that photograph and I frantically tried to find me and my mum and brother, both now gone, and another friend in the photograph. I am someplace in that crowd!”

Seeing the photograph brought back memories of a historic day on Clydeside and special family ties to the grand ocean liner.

“In 2019, I decided I’d go out and stay on the QE2 in Dubai. I have a photograph taken from roughly the same place where I was standing on the day of the launch.”

On September 20, 1967, thousands gathered in Clydebank for the launch.

Catherine, 86, remembers taking the day off work to go to see the ship her father had helped build and that had created a real buzz around the area.

The Princess Royal on the MS Queen Anne on the River Mersey, Liverpool, as she visits Cunard to mark its 185th anniversary last week.

“I don’t know what it was that day,” she said. “I was teaching in a secondary school in Castlemilk and when I asked for the day off, there was no question of why, it just seemed to be accepted this was special.

“I had been to a lot of launches. I don’t know why this ship was creating so much interest. Maybe it was because the Queen and Prince Philip were coming to launch it.

“People kind of knew that shipbuilding was coming to its end. You could see the ship towering over the place, so it was very much a part of the community.

“It was our local priest at the time, Father John Gallagher, who said he wanted to go. As far as I know, he had no connections with shipbuilding, but he drove us to the yard. As he went in, he turned round and said to me rather gruffly: ‘And where is this ship?’ to which I said the inevitable: ‘Look up!’ because we were right underneath it!”

Catherine Sweeney with the QE2 in Dubai in 2019.

Catherine recalled the moment of the launch: “The drag chains did drag, but there was a pause and people wondered, is it going to go or not?

“I spoke to a woman who was across the river and she said she was one of the people who got drenched when the ship finally went down!”

Her father Hugh was a shipwright foreman and, having worked on the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth, stayed on past retirement, hoping to complete a hat-trick of Queens.

A dancer on board, one of the stunning pictures of the QE2 in the new exhibition.

“My dad was not a royalist, but like many people in the yard he was hoping that the ship would also be named a Queen,” Catherine said.

“He worked on these ships, but never said much about it. Nobody did. He was Clydebank born and bred but when he got married, he moved to Rutherglen. We lived in a tenement there and I remember the night of the Clydebank Blitz, I was only three or four at the time. We looked over and a neighbour said to my dad: ‘Hughie, someplace is getting it tonight.’

“There was a man who worked with my father who was down at the Tail O’The Bank at Gourock that night. He came back and his whole family had been killed. He then went and joined up for the Army or Navy. I remember my dad being really affected by that.”

New exhibition celebrates luxury Cunard liners and makes appeal for stories about the QE2 on the Clyde

Catherine would continue her family’s link to the ship many years later, watching the QE2 sail away from Scotland for the last time at South Queensferry in 2008.

In 2019, she rekindled the connection further by jetting out to Dubai for a stay on board the liner, which now sits as a floating hotel.

“I had to keep remembering when I looked out of a portal, it was not the Clyde. It was lovely. I travelled out on my own and became quite friendly with the security man. I asked him if I could go up on the bridge but he said no because it was being refurbished!

“I had a friend living in Dubai at the time, and it was her birthday, so she and her husband and daughter came on board and joined me for dinner. The crew did a special birthday cake.”

Catherine was delighted to share her memories of the ship with the organisers of the Sea of Glamour exhibition, which runs in Liverpool’s Liver Building until June 17.

Curated by photographer Mary McCartney, daughter of Beatle Sir Paul, it transports visitors to life on board Cunard ships through the stories of guests past and present.

The exhibition will then move on board the Queen Mary 2 for a special 185th anniversary voyage from Southampton to New York, commemorating Cunard’s historic first transatlantic crossing.

“Other ships may have faded from memory but not the QE2,” Catherine added.

“She’s still remembered with such pride and affection. Maybe I’m biased, but I think she was always something special. At this great age, goodness knows how long I’ve got to go… but it’s nice to have had all of this come back.”