II for Tea and Tea for 2!

There is only one passenger ship that can rightly claim to be “iconic”.  Named after a reigning monarch, the Queen Elizabeth 2 recently retired after 41 years of service with Cunard to start a new life as a floating hotel and conference center in Dubai.  Since launch, she has traveled over 6 million nautical miles while sailing to fascinating ports around the world and hosting 2.5 million guests on 1,428 voyages.

Classic ship historians can spend hours recounting stories about this most famous Cunarder.  One particularly interesting tidbit is how the ship’s name was decided upon.  Without a doubt, the British have a strong sense of tradition and protocol and the naming of the ship in 1967 represented an interesting challenge.  The ship was designed by the Cunard team in Liverpool but built at John Brown’s shipyard in Glasgow, Scotland.  She  was to be named at the launching ceremony by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and also carry her name.  But after the launch things became more complicated.  Cunard’s chairman, Sir Basil Smallpiece determined after consulting with Royal aides that the ship should be named Queen Elizabeth 2 with the Arabic letter and not the Roman numerals “II”.  Why?  Because until that time only Royal Navy vessels had carried a reigning monarch’s Roman numeral suffix.  And, Her Majesty was also Queen Elizabeth I of Scotland, where the ship was built.  Therefore, she was named QE-2 instead of QE-II and went on not only to be the most famous ship in history but the one whose name was misprinted most often.    

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