Queen to name UK's biggest warship
LONDON. KAZINFORM - The Queen is due to give her name to the largest warship built in the UK at a ceremony in Fife's Rosyth dockyard.
She will smash a bottle of whisky on the hull of the 65,000-tonne HMS Queen Elizabeth - the first of two new Royal Navy aircraft carriers being built. PM David Cameron and First Minister Alex Salmond are both due to attend, BBC News reports. Six shipyards in the UK - Appledore, Birkenhead, Govan, Portsmouth, Rosyth and Tyne - have been involved in building parts of the carrier. More than 10,000 people in more than 100 companies have worked on HMS Queen Elizabeth, which has been beset by construction and design delays. The estimated cost of the aircraft carrier and its sister ship is £6.2bn, well over the initial projected cost of £3.65bn. The warship - the largest ever built in and for the UK - is as long as 25 buses and can carry 40 jets and helicopters at a time. It will have a permanent crew of almost 700 when it enters service in 2020. The Queen will perform the naming ceremony at Rosyth with a bottle of whisky rather than champagne. The monarch will smash a bottle of Islay malt whisky, from Bowmore Distillery, against the ship. Bowmore was the first distillery the Queen ever visited in an official capacity. Read more