Cunard's Queen Anne is AFLOAT!

Cunard’s new Queen Anne has just been floated out at the Fincantieri shipyard where she is being built. This is a major milestone for the new ship, but with so much excitement around this event, you may be wondering – what exactly is a float out? — 🚢 My Cunard History Website: https://www.chriscunard.com/ 📚 Buy my books: https://www.chrisframe.com.au/books 👕 Buy cruise merch: https://chrisframeofficial.Teemill.com/ 🎶 Listen to The Big Cruise Podcast: https://thebigcruisepodcast.com/ 🛳️ Learn more about cruising at my Blog: https://www.chrisframe.com.au/ — Chapters: 00:00 Queen Anne Floats! 00:20 What is a float out? 00:36 Launch vs. Float Out 01:44 Side Slipway Launch 02:16 Outro — When a ship is built at a shipyard, for a large part of the building process the ship sits out of the water. This is to allow the shipyard workers to access and build the ship’s hull and superstructure, with it being important to keep water at bay while this stage of the construction process is underway. In days gone by, ships were commonly built on slipways. Great liners such as Titanic, Queen Mary and the QE2 were all built this way. Getting them into the water often involved a tricky and very impressive process known as a gravitational launch. Here, the ship would be ‘released’ down a lubricated slipway, and if all went according to plan, the ship would slide stern first into the water. The immense momentum of the launch required massive drag chains to help slow the ship down. While launches like this do still happen, these days, most ships are built in a dry dock. This is a watertight dock, generally sealed off from the ocean by large doors, that enables water inside to be pumped out. Large controllable valves can be opened to allow water in at a steady pace, enabling ships to enter and exit the dock. This controlled process means that a ship like Queen Anne can be built in a stable, dry environment. When the time comes to float the ship, it is undertaken in a far slower, more methodical way than a traditional launch. Regardless of whether the ship is launched gravitationally, or floated out, there is still much work to be done. Interior fitting out, engineering works and sea trails will take upto another year to be completed before a new ship is handed over to its owners. One last thing that you might find interesting is that Queen Anne actually had both a launch and a floating out. The forward section of the ship’s hull was built at the Troncone shipyard and launched in 2022 down a slipway. Because of the part of the ship being handled here, the launch took place bow first. It was then towed to the Monfalcone shipyard to be connected to the stern section where it was later floated out. Finally, there is another style of launch known as a side-slideway launch. This definitely looks the most dramatic as the ship enters the water on a sideways motion! These kids of launches are rarer for cruise ships but were used on some significant vessels including the former Holland America liner Westerdam which was launched this way for her original owner Home Lines in the 1980s. Image References: Cunard Line, PEPR and Christopher Ison as noted in the video. Homeric / Westerdam: Meyer Werft Press Office: https://www.meyerwerft.de/en/press/press_detail/25_years_of_cruise_ship_construction_in_papenburg.jsp Public Domain Licenses: Lusitania at John Brown / Public Domain: https://bit.ly/42eODI6 Titanic at Harland & Wolff / Public Domain: https://bit.ly/3nz1EgL Olympic at Harland & Wolff / Public Domain: https://bit.ly/3LznOHF HMS Queen Mary / Library of Congress / Public Domain: https://bit.ly/42q1SWf Baron Belhaven / Public Domain: https://bit.ly/3VAnWeH Coast Guard Launch / US Coast Guard / Public Domain : https://bit.ly/3HFYrD3 — Tags: #cunard #queenanne #cunardqueen #cunardqueenanne #cunardline #cruisenews #launch #floatout — Graphics: Subscribe Imagery from Pexels - Support the creator: https://www.pexels.com/@fahimg-1850128/