QE2 - and The Pilots

[Twynkle]

Brave, and very knowledgeable!
All that leaping - and QE2 seemingly not reducing her speed - much!
Then the heavy responsibility - and sometimes watched by thousands...!
Any stories, images - anyone?

[Beardy Rich]

Hi Rosie,

Yes, those pilots. They used to board the ship via the shell door using a rope ladder suspended from the deckhead of one of the bunker stations on 5 deck and were escorted to the bridge.
It wasn't unusual for them to ask if there was any late mail needing to be posted shoreside when they departed.

Those pilot boats were fast too, cut through the waves like a hot knife through butter and the engines sounded glorious.

[Stowaway2k]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzghvfMDdFQ" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzghvfMDdFQ</a>

[Twynkle]

Hmm...and someone somewhere said that she wasn't called the Black Pig for nothing!

So what was it about QE2 that made her difficult to handle?
To add to her 'quirky steering' (if that's what it was?!)
were some harbours / ports more tricky than others?

[Rob Lightbody]

I don't think she had 'quirky' steering, just not much steering abiity at all when moving slowly!  She had weak bow thrusters, no stern thrusters at all, and her rudder was not as effected by the propeller wash as on some other ships due to its position in relation to them.  The 86-7 refit gave her variable pitch propellors which allowed her to switch between going astern, stopped, or reversing nearly instantly which must have made things a lot easier!

[Paul White]

Brave, and very knowledgeable!
All that leaping - and QE2 seemingly not reducing her speed - much!
Then the heavy responsibility - and sometimes watched by thousands...!
Any stories, images - anyone?

The usual speed for boarding a pilot is 6 knots and QE2 would normally reduce to this speed, on occassion it would be done at 8 knots.

The fastest I saw a pilot boarded was at 18 knots, but that was using special SWATH pilot vessels at the mouth of the river Elb.

http://www.maritimejournal.com/news101/a_and_r_pilot_tender_gets_fast_ballast_system


Paul