Queen Mary 2 & Queen Elizabeth 2
An exciting day in Southampton on the 2nd June 2008.  It was the 55th anniversary of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's coronation and she chose to mark part of the day paying a final visit to the ship she launched 41 years before, the QE2.  The weather was pretty lousy when both ships associated with the Queen arrived, with QM2 due to dock in Mayflower for 5.30am with QE2 at QEII half an hour later.  Mary emerged into my view at 4.41am, the mist making it a little hard to see.  Lizzie, with the assistance from Svitzer Sarah on her bow and Lyndhurst and our personal favourite Lady Madeleine on her stern, appeared half an hour later in worse visibility.  I hoped it would improve later.
It had been in the Echo that at around noon the Queen would give the orders to a cadet to blow Lizzie's whistle three times and it would be responded to by Mary.  We went to the marina to wait this event.  The wind whipped up and rain started leading to my umbrella just about living to see another day.
The Royal Standard was flying proudly from the top of Lizzie's mast at 11.45am signifying the Queen was aboard.  Now we waited.  There were a smattering of people with us waiting too.  11.56am there was one solitary blast and complete silence from Mary down the other end and we weren't the only ones looking in that direction.  How disappointing after all the hype!  So we went home to have lunch.
We'd decided to catch the 2.50pm ferry across to Town Quay, thinking it would be a lovely day and bring out the crowds so we needed to be by the fence.  It was drizzling by now and as we walked down the pier we heard another solitary blast from Lizzie at about 2.25pm which led to the lowering of the Standard.  The Queen was gone.
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			(C) Copyright Patricia Dempsey 2nd June 2008 Not to be reproduced without permission