Monday, 12 June 2006

End of the Line

The BBC has a nice little tribute to the SS France, one of the last of the Atlantic liners, which is facing the breaker's yard in India. A pity they keep referring to her in the article as "it." Good copy editors are a dying breed.

There's a move on to save her, which is a nice sentiment, but a trifle misguided. Saving great ships is a laudable sentiment, and a few of the truly great ones should be, but there is always something sad about a magnificent vessel being reduced to a museum piece in a dry dock. It's wonderful that the first Queen Mary was preserved, but I can never look at her without feeling that she'd lost her dignity, like an aging actor who doesn't realise that it's time to leave the stage.

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