QE2 runs aground on final tour

With strong westerly winds blowing, the 70,000-tonne Cunard liner ended up running aground on the Brambles sandbank off the Isle of Wight.

Five tugs and a rising tide combined to get the liner, with 2,700 passengers and crew aboard, afloat with the ship docking more than an hour late at Southampton.

Luckily she arrived in good time for a visit from the Duke of Edinburgh.

Passengers aboard spoke of a large shudder when it went aground with some suggesting the vessel seemed reluctant to sail into her home port for the last time ahead of her final 16-day voyage from Southampton to Dubai.

"The boat rocked. We thought it had hit something," said Gloria Dunkley, from Poole, Dorset, who was travelling with her husband Tony. "We were not too alarmed as no bells were rung. Passengers were muttering about the ship not wanting to be taken out of service."

As the Dunkleys joined others in disembarking, hundreds more passengers were arriving in Southampton waiting to board the vessel for a sold-out last voyage to Dubai where she is to become a permanently-docked floating hotel and leisure attraction.

Shortly after Prince Philip started his tour of the ship, a Tiger Moth aircraft dropped one million poppies on to the QE2 as those aboard observed the 11am, two-minute silence on the 90th anniversary of the armistice.

The Duke, who was making his seventh visit to the ship, met QE2 crew members who travelled on the vessel when it was used as a troop ship in the Falklands War in 1982. He was also introduced to former captains of HMS Ardent, Antelope and Coventry - ships that were lost in the Falklands campaign.

Two divers were sent down to check if today's incident had caused any damage to the ship's hull, but Cunard bosses said later that the vessel was ready to sail.