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Rosie,
The final selection of names had been decided in May 1967 by Sir Basil Smallpeice and his deputy Ronald Senior. They met in Cunard’s London offices on the evening of Monday 18 September where Sir Basil took three names from a safe. They then agreed on the final choice.
Later Sir Basil would confirm that the three names in the safe were Queen Elizabeth, Princess Margaret and Princess Anne with Elizabeth joining the list last after the decision to retire the Queen Elizabeth had been made.
When the choice was made, a message was sent by scrambler telephone to the Queen through her private secretary, Sir Michael Adeane, in Balmoral. They were the only four to know the name.
Afterwards when asked why all the secrecy, Sir Basil said:
“It just seemed rather fun. People seemed to having a marvellous time trying to work out what it
would be called. We decided to let them carry on. We were anxious to continue our tradition of royal
names for our ships. I did not, by the way, have a bet with the bookmaker”.
Princess Margaret became the 4-1 favourite on the eve of the launch when it was announced at the last moment that she would also be attending the ceremony. Workers had chalked Princess Anne on the liner’s hull – that was the name Captain Warwick liked. Prince Charles carried the shortest odds.
Captain Warwick said:
“I have already said in the past that I would not like the name ‘Queen’ to be given to this ship”.
Captain Warwick, when interviewed earlier in the year and asked about the name, stated: “I dare say they’re mulling it over in the boardroom, but if they’re reached a decision they certainly haven’t told me. Why should they? I’m not concerned with names. I’m a sailor.”
In January 1966 the Daily Mirror columnist, Cassandra, wrote:
“The next question for romanticists such as myself is to speculate on what they are going
to call the new maritime giant, which is known simply as No.736. I predict that there will be
enormous pressure to christen the new Cunarder a Queen. But which queen?
“we are short of reigning queens in English history. The Normans, the Plantagenets, the Tudors, the Stuarts,
the Hanovarians, the Saxe-Coburgs and the Windsors have only produced half-a-dozen in the past thousand years.
“Two Marys, two Elizabeths, one Anne and one Victoria. Queen Anne was a colourless nobody and Queen Victoria
was a colourful somebody.
“So RMS Queen Victoria is a distinct possibility for that dumpy little old lady was a real character who
ruled for sixty-four years at the height of British imperial wealth and power.
“The Americans who will be the main clients foe the ship would, I am sure, settle for RMS Winston Churchill.
They are very fond of that old Anglo-American party.
“My own suggestion doesn’t stand a hope in high water. It is that the new ship be called John Brown. A fine
solid British name that any commoner should be proud of.
“Nobody would know which John Brown. The chap who founded the firm that will build the ship. The whisky
drinking Scottish ghillie who for nineteen years dominated Queen Victoria. The John Brown whose soul goes
marching on. John Brown the celebrated Northumberland poet. John Brown who wrote the famous Dictionary
of the Bible. John Brown the celebrated Edinburgh theologian of any of the thirty eight John Browns who are
listed in the London telephone directory.
“It would provide endless argument as to which John Brown was meant that would rage in every bar in the
country, including the bars onboard RMS John Brown.
“I just want to be helpful”.
More than 15,000 bets had been placed with the bookmakers and a Glasgow bookmaker was offering the following odds:
3 – 1 Sir Winston Churchill
4 – 1 Prince of Wales
Prince Charles
Princess Margaret
5 – 1 Britannia
6 – 1 Princess Anne
John F Kennedy
8 – 1 Queen Victoria
10 – 1 Aquitania
12 – 1 Mauretania
14 – 1 Queen Elizabeth II
Prince Philip
Atlantic Princess
25 – 1 Clyde Princess
British Princess
Other suggestions: Queen of the United States, Great Britain, Ocean Queen, The Crown and Anchor, Rose of England, Twiggy, The New Elizabethan, Gloriana, Windsor Wave and Donald Campbell (he had been killed a few weeks earlier).
Housewife Helen Gormley suggested ‘Helen Gormley’.
Over 400 names were suggested with the last suggestion, Francis Chichester, arriving in the last 48 hours.
Of course The Queen named the ship ‘Queen Elizabeth the Second’.
In July 1967 plans had been put in place by Cunard to ensure the offices in Montreal and New York were advised of the name just as soon as it was known. Each office would have a model of Q4 and the company proposed to keep a hotline from Glasgow to Montreal and New York. The moment the name was announced by the Queen both offices would be informed of the name and perform a little ceremony round their own respective models. Staff in the offices would immediately place the name of the ship on her stern, crack a suitably miniature bottle of champagne on her bows with, the company hoped, the guests cheering!
The name ‘Queen Elizabeth the Second’ immediately caused controversy. “Unimaginative” was the typical English reaction but in Scotland: “insulting”, “provocative”, and “disgraceful”.
The Scottish Nationalists took it as an insult to the people of Scotland. To them the queen was Elizabeth the First. Mr Arthur Donaldson, chairman of the Scottish Nationalist Party, said: "It could not be a bigger insult to the people of Scotland”.
More than 500 calls were made to the various offices of Cunard in the UK to congratulate the company on the choice.
When asked about the other names, Sir Basil’s responses were:
Churchill?
There is already a schooner of that name. And Cunard has not forgotten the day it picked Queen Mary for a name only to find a Clyde steamer already owned it. The name had to be bought and the steamer became QMII.
Prince Philip or Prince Charles?
The tradition of merchant ships in this country is that they always take the name of women.
In his autobiography ‘Of Comets and Queens’ Sir Basil would later write:
“In thinking about the name for Q4, I could not ask the Queen to give it her own name, because only
battleships had ever been allowed to take the name of a reigning monarch. On the other hand, it was
to be a successor Queen ship, as the cipher Q4 indicated. I talked the matter over with the Queen’s
Private Secretary, Sir Michael (now Lord) Adeane. In the end we decided to recommend that it should
simply be named Queen Elizabeth - just as, for example, we had had two Mauretanias and two Caronias.
After all, the new ship would be coming into service almost immediately after the first Queen Elizabeth
was withdrawn, and the two Queen Elizabeths would not be in service on the high seas at the same time.
“Her Majesty had the same sure instinct about a name as her grandfather had had. As was customary at
all launching ceremonies, John Brown’s managing director, John Rannie, had handed the Queen a slip of
paper with the name
written on it – Queen Elizabeth. But those of us standing near noticed she never looked at it. I could
hardly contain my delight when, in launching the ship, the Queen announced without a moment’s
hesitation: “I name this ship Queen Elizabeth the Second”.
“It was what I wanted but had not dared ask for. No name could have assured the ship of more worldwide
renown. It remained only to decide how to write the name. I did not feel we should use ‘Queen Elizabeth II’,
which is the official designation of the Queen as sovereign; it would be wrong to use that style in all our
advertising and publicity. I thought the use of an Arabic 2 instead of a Roman II might make a sufficient
distinction, and I was pleased to hear from Michael Adeane that the Queen had approved the styling of
the ship Queen Elizabeth 2”.
On 1 February 1968 Cunard made its first public statement about the name using an Arabic 2 rather than
a Roman Numeral:
“The name of the new 58,000 ton Cunarder will appear on the ship as Queen Elizabeth 2 – not Queen
Elizabeth II.
“This decision, like other decisions about the design of the ship, was taken for sound practical reasons.
“As with motorway signs, for clarity at a distance it was necessary to use block lettering for the name on
the bow and stern of the ship. Roman numerals cannot all be successfully represented with block lettering
– in particular the Roma figure ‘II’ can only be represented by a repeated Arabic numeral 1 and then
unfortunately appears as a figure 11.
“The decision has the advantages of being in keeping with modern design trends (Roman numerals are
disappearing even from such traditional manifestations as clock faces, and the fly leaves of books), and
the popular contraction of the ship’s name is much more legible and attractive as QE2 than QEII”
.