The famous Clyde-steamer TS Queen Mary was safely towed to Glasgow on 9 November 2016, going up the Clyde for the first time since 1977. The vessel departed Greenock at 11.30am and arrived at Glasgow Science Centre shortly before 3pm.
The historic vessel, built near the Clyde in the 1930s, is being restored by a charity patroned by Scots actor Robbie Coltrane. The charity needed to find a safe place to berth the ship over the winter months as her short-term berth in Greenock was required for other commercial marine work.
TS Queen Mary is expected to remain in Glasgow until early 2017. Friends of TS Queen Mary is looking at options for a permanent home for the vessel, once she has been restored.
Iain Sim, charity trustee, said: “It’s great to bring TS Queen Mary back to Glasgow. We’re sure she will have many visitors taking a peek at her over the winter months.”
Charity Friends of TS Queen Mary was set up to rescue, restore and reopen the famous Clyde-built turbine steamship. The charity raised £300,000 and rescued her from almost certain demise, towing her 700 nautical miles from London to Greenock in Scotland. A £2 million fundraising campaign was launched in June 2016 to restore and re-open her as an arts and culture venue.
The Turbine Steamship (TS) Queen Mary is the last remaining turbine steamship to be built in Scotland. Built in 1933, she once sailed ‘doon the watter’ from Glasgow to destinations such as Dunoon, Rothesay, Millport and Arran.
Her place as a national treasure was secured in 1996 when she was listed on the United Kingdom’s official historical ships register and she’s now the last of her kind in the world.
In the spring of 1935, at the request of Cunard White Star Line, TS Queen Mary was renamed Queen Mary II, so as to release the name Queen Mary for yard number 534, then under construction at John Brown’s shipyard, in Clydebank.
