The historic vessel, built near the Clyde in the 1930s, is being restored by a charity patroned by Scottish actor Robbie Coltrane. The charity needed to find a safe place to berth the ship over the winter months as her current home in Greenock is required for other commercial marine work.<\/p>\n
The vessel has already had a fresh lick of paint in October and a clean bill of health, as the first stages of work to restore her begin.<\/p>\n
Charity \u2018Friends of TS Queen Mary\u2019 rescued the ship from almost certain demise after she was found languishing in a dockyard on the Thames Estuary, several years after serving as a floating bar and restaurant in London.<\/p>\n
Remarkably, the 1930s steamship was given a clean bill of health when she was inspected in dry-dock in September.<\/p>\n
The inspection highlighted just minor repair work required on the hull, a testament to the skills and engineering talent of Scotland\u2019s shipbuilders.<\/p>\n
Charity trustee Iain Sim said: \u201cTo think just six months ago Queen Mary<\/em> was languishing on the Thames and now she\u2019s been stripped down, carefully inspected, protected with a specialist coating and repainted. She looks bonnie, spectacular, just cracking. Specialists from Dales Marine and paint manufacturers AkzoNobel and Jotun have done a great job.<\/p>\n \u201cDespite all this work, there\u2019s still a tremendous amount to be done inside before she can be reopened as an interactive exhibitition and an arts and culture venue. That said, this is a fantastic milestone and we\u2019ve demonstrated just what can be done.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re very grateful to people and businesses across the country for their support and donations\u200a\u2014\u200aevery penny counts in our quest to raise \u00a32 million to restore this wonderful piece of Scottish heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u00a32 million fundraising campaign was launched in June by the charity\u2019s patron, Robbie Coltrane OBE. The charity has raised \u00a3300,000 towards its target so far, enabling this first phase of work.<\/p>\n The steamship will be towed from Greenock to Glasgow in the coming weeks. It will be the first time the ship has been on the Clyde, beyond her most recent docking in Greenock, since 1977.<\/p>\n David McQueen, Director of Finance & Operations at Glasgow Science Centre said: \u201cWe are delighted to be assisting the Friends of the TS Queen Mary in their efforts to restore another example of Glasgow and the Clyde\u2019s engineering heritage and we look forward to welcoming her to the Science Centre.\u201d<\/p>\n TS Queen Mary<\/em> is expected to remain in Glasgow until early 2017.<\/p>\n By Jake Frith<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Clyde-steamer \u2018TS Queen Mary\u2019 is to be towed to Glasgow, (Scotland, UK) for the first time since 1977, where she will stay over the winter, thanks to a deal struck with Glasgow Science Centre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":3154,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-3153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-shipyard-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3153"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3155,"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3153\/revisions\/3155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3153"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maritimejournal.com\/get-set-for-workboat-2050\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=3153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}