Britains largest commercial ship for 3 decades takes to the water this Saturday
 

According to the BBC:

The newly built hull of the RRS Sir David Attenborough is now standing on the slipway of the Cammell Laird yard in Birkenhead, awaiting launch day.

Weather and tide permitting, she should slide into the River Mersey on Saturday.

The £200m vessel will replace the James Clark Ross and the Shackleton, which between them have almost 50 years' service in support of UK polar science.

She represents the largest commercial ship built in Britain in three decades.

Great news for British shipbuilding!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44780708

Well if they can build such a vessel, I'm sure they can manage the new MARS dry stores ships.

Sat outside my local yesterday and watched the launch on an Ipad in glorious sunshine. I would have gone up had I known about it earlier.

Very impressive exercise, the whole launch and docking in the basin completed inside an hour. Just in time for me to refill my glass. :sweat:

I must say, the regeneration of the facilities at Birkenhead and the way they have won the new contracts is all very impressive. (I think they have 2 more orders on the books both ferries...one for CalMac and another for Red funnel in addition to the refit work)
Like you Bob, I was quite impressed with the efficiency of the launch and berthing in the fitting out basin yesterday, lets hope that this is the start of a new chapter in UK shipbuilding!

https://youtu.be/XDwGS8t9BKo


Much of her build can be seen here - on time lapse.

I'm not quite sure where the Beeb gets the idea that she's the "largest commercial ship built in Britain in three decades". HARTLAND/ANVIL POINT were both turned out from Harland & Wolff in Belfast in 2002/3 and that's only 16 years ago, and they're much larger than the new BAS ship.
Laird's have an order with Red Funnel for a new freight ferry but nothing from Calmac at the moment.

Sorry Jim,
The CalMac contract was a duff lead on my behalf - purely speculative and based on some local intel - ever hopeful though!
Cheers,
Tom