HMS Queen Elizabeth is the largest warship ever built
for the Royal Navy - by far.
Stretching longer than the Houses of Parliament,
and standing taller than Nelson's Column,
an aircraft carrier so immense that different sections have had to be
constructed in different shipyards throughout Great Britain...
..and then transported by barge to Scotland for final assembly.
It has taken 10,000 workers eight years to build Britain's first supercarrier.
Putting the "great" back into Great Britain.
What a wonderful thing to be part of!
But as this gargantuan carrier takes shape and prepares for sea,
there is one vital missing ingredient.
A ship is just a metal box. It's a waste of time, it's useless.
It's only when you add in the human component - blood and flesh -
does it become a warship.
This is the extraordinary story of the men and women
who must breathe life into HMS Queen Elizabeth.
How will these Naval pioneers transform her
from floating building site to front-line ship of war?
They'll be embarking on perilous make-or-break sea trials,
in which everything must be tested for the first time.
From galleys to guns... GUNFIRE
..and from power plants to propellers.
One thing is for certain, it won't be plain sailing.
ALARM SOUNDS
Fire. Fire. Fire.
Flood. Flood. Flood.
Casualty. Casualty. Casualty. Everything electrical.
All the electrical panels covered up.
This is not going to be a bed of roses.
It's an absolute certainty that things won't go as planned.
This ship's company are training up to go to war.
That is what this is about - it's not about looking pretty.
If anyone thinks it's easy, then they're fooling themselves.
This is tough stuff.
This is the inside story of Britain's biggest warship.
After eight years in build,
HMS Queen Elizabeth ventures to sea for the first time.
We're doing what we should be doing now.
We're no longer a building site, we're a ship.
This is a culmination of...
..years of work from everyone, particularly in the last six months.
We just need to get out now.
A quarter of the ship's company have never been to sea before.
What a vessel to get to sea on! Absolutely fantastic.
But, untried and unproven,
she now faces six weeks of gruelling sea trials to test her propulsion,
endurance and speed.
OK, Roger. Check quarters.
Clear the port. Midships. Wheel is to midships. 435. 435.
As a prototype, Queen Elizabeth needs to be pushed, if not to destruction,
then certainly to breaking point.
And, if they need to break her, they will.
She must be proven for combat.
Still no movement. OK. Up to 45.
24 hours after leaving Rosyth dockyard,
she's in the Firth of Forth off the east coast of Scotland,
limbering up for the rigorous sea trials ahead in the North Sea -
her ultimate proving ground.
Wheel increasing.
Three, two, one.
Port 35.
On board, 200 construction workers still finishing off the build,
and 700 Royal Navy sailors,
for whom this will be a voyage into the unknown.
Many have never been to sea before and their great challenge will be to
help transform Queen Elizabeth from an embryonic prototype to a fully
functioning front-line warship.
Every man and woman must step up to the mark.
And you forgot the life jackets? Not a good start!
I don't want any mess-ups. BLEEP!
Everybody's got a job to do. Make sure you help your oppo out.
Trust me, if you don't,
you'll be getting my size seven up the crack of your backside.
Probably got, I don't know, between 40 and 50% of brand-new sailors,
you know, on board.
And then, also, you've got the other old hands,
a lot of people who haven't been to sea for a long, long time.
So, at the end of the day, it's a brand-new ship, brand-new technology.
So, really, you're resetting them back to zero again as well.
So, a steep learning curve for all of you?
I think we're near enough vertical.
This is Queen Elizabeth's nerve centre -
deep in the belly of the ship.
Here, teams monitor every part of the supercarrier 24 hours a day.
ALARM SOUNDS
And it's not long before they have to react to their first emergency.
Smoke alarm, smoke alarm, smoke alarm.
Attack party investigate. Fire. Fire.
Fire. Five man team ready in 5.1. Well done, mate. Well done.
Conn Huddle HQ 1. Flash reports only.
Conn Huddle. Keep the noise down.
A steam explosion in a cooling plant has misted up the closed-circuit cameras.
No-one quite knows what's happened.
ALARM CONTINUES
Dave Garraghty, Executive Warrant Officer,
is always one of the first on the scene in any emergency.
Hey, it's like a sauna in here. You guys working out?
It's got a lot less steamy. It has got a lot less steamy.
Flash. Boundary search complete.
There are no further incidents or hotspots.
The pipe we've got down there is a high-pressure saltwater pipe.
That's heated up and it gets blown off the pipe there, as you can see.
The ballast line has gone, hasn't it? It's over here then...
Blew then. We've got CCTV down here in HQ1.
When you look on the screen, you see all that and instantly go,
"Bloody hell, that's smoke."
So, you get down here and actually it's steam.
Never a dull moment at the moment.
RADIO: The suspected fire, we can confirm that's not a fire.
A gremlin in the system.
But at least no-one was injured.
RADIO: Therefore stand down and assess debrief.
But how many more gremlins are stored away on the mothership?
That's the question.
It's the purpose of sea trials to find out and it's
up to the ship's company to hunt them down,
not only to make Queen Elizabeth an effective warship
but also a safe place to live.
Royal Navy sailors often refer to their ships as grey villages.
Self-contained, close-knit communities floating on the high seas.
But HMS Queen Elizabeth is far too big to be a village.
If anything, she's to become the Navy's first grey city.
Hey, you need to move your eggs from here, man.
Vibrant, bustling, multicultural.
It's all happening. Curry night tonight.
Curry night. Poppadoms getting done.
Leading chef Mohamed Khan, known to all as Wes,
had been in the Navy for 16 years.
But this is the first time he's taken a ship on sea trials.
Oh, it's all a rush, the cooking.
You don't know what's going to happen.
There might be a flood or something.
Then we have to take off. It's all the excitement.
Hot tray. I get priority. Wes! What?
Is it better being at sea?
Definitely. I think it's about time we came to sea.
We've been alongside for a long time, and, er...
Oh! I felt that. Did you feel it?
I thought we wouldn't feel anything on here. It does move.
I've got Facebook.
I've got a Facebook which has got me in trouble at work a couple of times though.
Ricky Gleeson, an aircraft handler,
also helps run the ship's state-of- the-art rubbish disposal system,
known as the pyrolysis plant.
For him, it's almost a calling.
I used to be a bin man in Gateshead briefly, for a summer.
So, yeah, I'm all right with the rubbish.
What do you like about it? It's honest work. So...
Like this, it's honest work.
The rubbish needs to be got rid of, so you get rid of it.
If I could be a bin man again, I'd happily be a bin man for the rest of my days.
That'll stop... Stop the flies coming in, won't it?
Dave Garraghty is also responsible for morale and welfare on board
and ever eager to give the place his personal stamp.
Look at that! That works, doesn't it?
THEY LAUGH Charity shop - RSPCA.
Doing my bit for charity.
All life is here. A little Britain on the ocean wave.
For the sailors, a home from home.
At ease, gentlemen. Bit of Baywatch. Like that.
The mess decks, where the sailors live and sleep,
have been quickly personalised.
It looks completely different. You're really making it your own.
And a mirror, just to check yourselves out.
How're we doing? Tired.
So you're going to get your heads down tonight.
But this is still the military,
and everywhere is subject to daily inspection.
Oh, Master has found a pillow without a pillow case.
It's the bottom one.
A grey city then,
but ever surrounded by a hostile environment that takes no prisoners.
HORN SOUNDS Man overboard.
Man overboard. Man overboard.
Man overboard. Port side. Away starboard C boat.
Man overboard. Man overboard. Maintain red on the boats.
Man overboard. Starboard side.
Sea temperature is 13.5 degrees.
Away port C boat.
A man overboard in this area is not good,
because the sea stays quite rough.
So, it's very difficult to spot a man in the water.
C boat proceeding to the life buoy.
So, a life buoy has been released,
so we don't know if someone has gone over the side or not.
Therefore, we need to account for all our personnel.
Not an exercise. This is for real.
Keep your eyes on that...
From the bridge, they've spotted billowing smoke.
It's coming from a life buoy armed with a built-in smoke canister.
Is it an accidental release or is there someone out there?
No-one is taking any chances.
Another warship in the vicinity immediately joins the search,
and so does a helicopter.
Roger. Just make sure that you have a good search in that area.
UO speaking.
Commence operation Thimble Hunt.
All personnel not on watch are to muster in their respective nest eggs.
Operation Thimble Hunt is a full ship search.
All 700 sailors and 200 construction workers
must be accounted for as soon as possible.
So, the phase one is the critical piece,
which is actually just seeing if somebody is missing.
An important part of Dave's job is to be the eyes and ears of the captain on the ground,
so he always has to be where the action is.
It's a nice and slow time, nice and calm, mate. Happy.
So, what the team are doing now, these are our industry partners.
We believe it may have been a spurious alarm,
but we can't know that for sure until we've mustered everybody and see if they're there.
The search is fast and thorough.
Everyone is accounted for, and no-one is in the water.
But this is an early reminder that a warship is a dangerous place to be and people need to be ever vigilant.
Yeah, very pleasing, very rapid response. Sergeant came in very fast.
Lucky we were on top of that life buoy within, what, two minutes?
Alarm has stopped sounding.
Was there any evidence as to how they were released?
Why the life buoy ended up in the water is a mystery.
But probably a technical fault, another gremlin in the system.
I said try and steady her up!
Hold the boat rope!
Wheel coming on to starboards.
Stop pumps two and three. Stop pumps two and three.
Pumps two and three stopped, sir.
Pressure on us is quite immense at the moment.
Every morning, I normally wake up to around about 50 or 60 e-mails,
so before, before I do anything, I just have a little bit of,
a bit of white space, and, erm, just have a look at the fish tank.
Dave snatches a little downtime before the day explodes into action.
Keep going, guys! First circuits start at six.
Last 20 seconds! Let's go, let's go!
Lunges here with the cowbells! Change! Switch!
Ah, thank you.
In the galley, Wes, a devout Muslim, is known as a meat dish wizard.
I'm making a marinade for the pork.
Looks good. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I can't eat it, so...
So I... They'll let me know whether it's good or bad.
It's a bit hard, touching it.
When I joined up, I didn't actually think about that until training.
The first time when I was going to do a pork dish,
because I refused to touch the pork, I thought that was it.
We came to a conclusion with the imam that so long as I'm wearing gloves...
..it's fine. So I've got the gloves on.
And I can't taste it, though. LAUGHS
The ship's state-of-the-art pyrolysis plant reduces all rubbish and waste to a fine carbon residue.
But everything that goes into it has to be separated first.
No metal or glass in it, there's no metal or glass in it, is there?
Supposed to separate stuff and take the metal out and take the glass out and everything.
We get people coming, like some guy yesterday,
came along with these orange bags and dumped them down,
and as soon as he dumped them down, I heard a clang,
so I was saying, "Any metal in those, mate?"
And he was like, "No, no, no," and trying to get out of the room as quickly as possible.
I was like, "Hold on, I'll check." And then the first thing I pulled out was this.
See, like, "Well, clearly, that's metal, mate," and he said,
"Oh, I didn't know it was there, I didn't know it was there,"
so that's the problem is that people try and hide.
I mean, deodorant and that you can understand,
it just slips in without realising it, but when they put big bits of...
..sort of aluminium in it, you know they're lying.
Bastards, basically. Bastards.
What brought you in to the Navy?
Erm, I'd exhausted all other opportunities, pretty much.
I was, I was a typical naughty kid in school.
I was in and out of trouble. I was in and out of care,
then I was in and out of trouble, I was homeless for a long time,
so I started stealing from pizza shops, looking for food all the time,
and then we burgled one shop and got a load of cigarettes,
and the next day we made like £600, £700, and from there,
we stopped looking for food and started looking for money.
So, by the time I was 21,
I had 49 convictions for stealing things and fighting all the time and...
Yeah, nothing, nothing I'm proud of.
What's that? Is that just domestic? Domestic, yeah. There's no metal?
Cheers, Ricky. No worries, mate.
Queen Elizabeth has come back into the Firth of Forth for an important rendezvous.
Two Royal Navy warships and helicopters have come to pay their respects.
Lovely to see two type 23 frigates just sail past here.
HMS Sutherland and HMS Iron Duke.
Fantastic. Again, lots of Merlin helicopters around.
Queen Elizabeth will be a mobile airfield,
capable of launching up to 40 aircraft,
either jet fighters to deliver lethal force to an enemy,
or helicopters to bring humanitarian aid to the needy.
But she will never go to sea on her own.
She is too valuable and too vulnerable.
She will always be at the centre of a task group,
surrounded by escorting warships to protect her from enemy attack.
Whether from the air, the surface, or under the water.
This is the start of the journey now, the carrier's strike journey.
It's a strategic asset, and the very nature of it is about power projection,
it's actually the combination of all those different force elements -
ships, frigates, destroyers, submarines, and aircraft
coming together at once that really gives you that military potency.
Even just two days out from build now, we can already
see the culture of the Royal Navy coming back into task groups.
There's a sense of purpose and a bit of power.
It's great, isn't it?
HMS Queen Elizabeth will be Britain's main
conventional strategic deterrent for many years to come.
And will be the most closely guarded warship in our naval history.
Today, the escorts are only here for a couple of hours
but this is a glimpse into Queen Elizabeth's future...
..and the next small step towards that brave new world
will take place in a couple of days when a Merlin helicopter
will be the first aircraft ever to attempt a landing on her flight deck.
Three out of action. Are we in this? No, there's somebody in there.
Is there somebody in there, is there? We've got two out of action.
First lieutenant Bob Hawkins. 38 years in the Navy.
He was a naval clearance diver, a bomb disposal expert.
Now, amongst other things, he's in charge of the ship's heads.
Or toilets.
Well, once upon a time I used to blow shit up.
Now, I just clean shit up.
We're just beginning to learn our ship.
We've got, you know, all that harbour hassle that goes,
the build hassle, quite frankly, of us being alongside there,
we're away from that now.
While people are living in the ship,
you then get to understand how people are using the ship.
That includes things like general-purpose heads.
So, that's out of order. God knows what's in there.
Look at that!
I mean, that's BLEEP!
The next thing is, people are going to have to have a dump in here
and they're going to start putting brown paper down there
which is going to cause a blockage.
The important point here.
These can be a real breeder of disease so,
we've got to make these heads out of bounds.
It's for public safety.
A new ship is like a new house.
Were you just going to clean them? Good man!
There's always going to be some snags with the basics,
whether the toilets flush, whether the doors work.
Right. We've had a few minor injuries caused by the doors.
The problem we've been having with these.
That should clip back...
allow you to open the door.
That's been the problem. They should stay up.
They should stay up. Yes. Otherwise, as you walk through...
The doors are horrendous. Unfortunately, when I stepped through,
I literally had the door open and I took a step going out.
The door handle swung back on my face.
Hence, the nickname Rocky in the department.
So... It's your first war wound?
It's my first war wound. Yes.
Day two at sea, I've already got a war wound.
So... Quite... But, do you know what?
I'd still rather be at sea than alongside. So, it's worth it.
BEEPING That's the alarm.
ALARM SOUNDS
Fire danger. Fire danger. Fire danger.
Fire danger in location five kilo zulu four.
Fire danger in engine room. Support party investigate. Support...
Now, there's been a fuel leak in one of the engine rooms.
Casualty! Casualty! Casualty!
Casualty in eighth box run.
Come here, shipmate. Come on.
I've got you. Right. Let's get you out. Come here.
Let's get you out and there's the doc. There's the doc. There you go.
Come on, I've got you from behind.
A burst fuel filter has left diesel spraying across the engine room.
Striking a sailor right in the face.
Another foam blanket, guys.
The team spreads foam to smother the fuel,
now running free in the engine space.
It's a real fire hazard.
Keep that air lock thing going because if this goes, that's going to go straight up in the air.
Make sure the airlock's on.
Airlock discipline, fellas! Shot one door, open the other.
Firefighters get ready just in case.
Standby, just putting the team in position.
Now in the bilge well. Sunken bilge well now.
Fuel's gone up probably about two-thirds of the way along.
They race to shut off the fuel and soon a blanket of foam
covers the leaked diesel.
Do you need some more foam? No. We're good. OK.
Where did it go, man? Over Sobwick.
He would have been about this position. So, literally, copped it.
The seal popped directly in front of him and he got it all.
It's a thing that could happen every day.
You know, just unfortunate that fuel got on to somebody's face.
Like I say, we ended up with no fire,
got the foam blanket down so everything was made safe as quickly as possible.
For a ship that's only been at sea for, what, one and a bit days,
you know, very quickly, people went back to their being a matlow at sea.
Rather than being a civvy in a building site.
Is your man all right, do you know?
Oh, I don't know. Should be.
He ran past me at a rate of knots, so, yeah, he'll be good.
I need to go in sick bay and discuss him, anyway.
Another gremlin wrestled to the ground,
but it's meant Dave Garraghty missed his tea.
Are these doughnuts meant for sharing?
Cos I don't think I've had any scran today. Oh.
Is that...?
Can I have one? Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa! All right?
Hole in one!
Mm-mm-mm.
Dave's been run off his feet all day
and he's not finished quite yet.
All right, Ross? How's life, mate, all right?
I've got a new edition for the office.
Which is the, er, summer
collection now. 1940s vintage.
This came from the car boot for just under £15.
They are fire-retardant, having survived the Blitz.
HE GROANS And that's the second of two.
We're going to try and find the provenance of them.
They may have come out of a stately home.
There's been suggestions of itchiness.
I think it's all psychological.
I think these are fine vintage.
There's no fleas in these, honestly.
Excuse me, I've got the war wounds because of those chairs.
Er...itchiness, bites there, all over the place.
Charity shops, antique shops, paid a quid for it from car boot.
Car boot. £5. Car-boot sale.
£15. I think I've got quite a niche market, though. Yeah.
So, if you like '70s retro shit, then come and see me.
THEY LAUGH
Navigator speaking.
The focus for today, which is a historic one,
is the first landing of a helicopter from 820 Squadron
on our flight deck.
It's the day we become an aircraft carrier.
The flight deck teams have been training for this day
for nearly two years.
First, they must walk the length of the carrier,
bigger in area than three football fields,
to check there's no debris that could damage the aircraft.
No fuel contamination.
The only place that's taking fuel is North Sea.
Two helicopters are expected,
although right now they're running late.
The one thing, perhaps, I'd ring out is this morning we woke up in
what we would call red red, really poor conditions.
Cloud was on the deck.
No visibility whatsoever.
We probably wouldn't have been able to fly.
The good news about a carrier,
it's driven the 70 miles we need to drive and we're now backing into the
clearance again and we've positioned ourselves so that we can fly.
The thing that's holding the aircraft up is that bad weather
we've just left, so that's why they're late.
As big as she is,
Queen Elizabeth is still tiny compared to a land-based airfield
and she's moving, rolling and turning all the time.
Midships. Aircraft will be coming from approximately...
Well, from the port side.
The helicopter's approach and landing will be co-ordinated by the
navigation team in the forward island
and the air traffic control team in the rear, or aft, island.
En route. Roger that.
We run the flying programme with precision,
because we have to turn the aircraft carrier to wind.
It's a very complicated choreography between the hangar, the deck,
the bridge and the flying control,
to make this whole machine work in sequence,
to make sure the aircraft land and take off at the right time.
We haven't got the space,
like a land-based runway, to have any flexibility,
so timing is everything for us to make sure the plan goes smoothly.
And it's these rookie aircraft handlers who will be guiding
the aircraft on to the deck -
potentially very dangerous and for most,
this will be their first time.
There is nothing that you haven't done on the flight deck during
the last few training serials.
It's a walk in the park.
OK? We're ready to do this.
Everyone happy? Happy?
Right, guys, let's do it. Be safe.
Come on, then!
Have we got this aircraft yet?
Three...one, five, zero.
Well done. Happy.
Have we let them know about the sea birds?
Roger dodger.
Historical problem with sea birds flying close to the ship.
We're just monitoring the sea birds.
There's not a lot we can do about it other than go a bit faster and,
hopefully, leave them behind. We certainly wouldn't want one of
the helicopters flying into a sea bird and getting a bird strike,
cos that would cause some mayhem.
So just something we've got to manage.
In old money, we'd have probably got out a shotgun and just let them know
we were around, but we can't do that any more.
HMS Queen Elizabeth's flight deck is about to be christened.
Historic moment.
Air men, clear support.
A truly momentous day.
For... Not only for the supercarrier,
for the Queen Elizabeth class, but for naval aviation.
First naval aircraft landing on board the supercarrier.
Bloody marvellous. A portent of things to come.
Next year it'll be jets.
That's fantastic.
Well, you know, we're four days out
from seeing it from the builders' yard and here we are
with 820 naval escort arrived to aircraft.
Fantastic.
Aircraft two.
Aircraft two on deck.
Well, it's great for the ship's company to see aircraft on deck.
Not forgetting a lot of the ship's company have not been to sea before.
Let alone on an aircraft carrier.
So to know there's aircraft burning and turning on deck now,
it's just another part of the journey ticked off.
First flight-deck landing, followed by the first flight-deck take-off.
A small step for the helicopters but a giant leap for Queen Elizabeth.
Aw, brilliant. Fantastic. I've been up here for about a year now.
To see her, from day one,
from being pretty much a building site to where it is now,
it's just totally overwhelming, really.
We're part of history, innit?
Well done.
All right, Andy. Aye.
This is all chef and stewards' mess down here, so
there's no-one else.
Everyone's busy, night workers sleeping.
HE CHUCKLES
So, this is my prayer room here.
It's nothing, it's just same...
It's nice and clean.
So I can come here whenever, I do my prayers five times a day, you know.
I do have to pray to Mecca, but because the ship keeps on
turning and...
So I can't know where east is all the time.
So this is... My direction is...
That's my direction.
So this is my direction here.
So I just pray that way.
But it's not only for me.
It's anyone who wants to come in and pray.
Not just Muslims. It's for anyone.
When I joined the Navy it was 2001
and that was when 9/11 happened.
But then they soon realised that I'm not like, you know,
like the terrorists and all that stuff.
Allahu akbar.
So you don't have any trouble on this ship? No, not at all.
I have never had any trouble on any ship, so...
so far, it's been good.
Every sailor has a story to tell.
At one extreme, there's Wes and his search for a prayer room.
Oh, just police... When they're coming along, I just check...
At the other, there's Ricky, the ex-con who's done his time.
I've done a few sort of short sentences.
Reading.
The same one that Oscar Wilde went to.
Feltham in London.
Huntercombe.
And then Low Newton.
And what was that like?
Erm...
yeah, like this, but the accommodation wasn't as good,
like, but...
Er, I think, to be honest, I think it prepped me for going to sea
and things like that. But, yeah, it wasn't the best.
It wasn't the worst but it wasn't the best.
Not something I ever want to do again.
And how about the Navy, then? How's that treated you?
Yeah, it's been great. It's been great. I just went in and
spoke to the careers office.
I was really honest with them and just said,
"Look, I haven't been in trouble for a decade,
"is there any chance that I'll be allowed to join?"
And they applied for permission
and, yeah, I was given permission to join, so...
Well, it changed my life, changed the whole course of my life,
I joined at 32 and...
I was crap job to crap job, that had been my life, you know,
just always struggling,
sort of on the fringes of society,
and then all of a sudden, like, I'd say within about two years,
everything had improved.
I'd put on weight, eating properly,
bit of self-respect kind of thing.
Decent wage. That was the main thing, money, driving, house.
Yeah. So, yeah.
I said I was going to do four years.
I've ended up doubling it up.
The ship has now been at sea for one week.
GUNSHOTS
The upper-deck machine guns are being tested for the first time.
These will be used against terrorists or suicide attack
by small but fast incoming vessels.
Today is the first day that we've been able to get the weapons up on
the mounts and actually test them to make sure that they fire through
the right arcs, so that they go as far left, as far right, as far up,
as far down as we need them to,
to give us the right coverage.
For me, as a gunnery officer, for me
it actually caps off the perfect week.
On Monday we sailed, so we became a ship.
On Friday we landed two helicopters on board and launched them again
from our deck, so we became an aircraft carrier.
And as far as I'm concerned, on Saturday we fired live rounds out of
our weapons, so we've become a warship.
So it's not a bad first week, really.
Set both levers ahead 90. 90 ahead, 150 ahead.
Yeah, the navigating officer's speaking with the sit rep.
The big thing for today is to conduct the first of
our high-speed trials.
We'll be coming up to our top speed for the first time and doing some
stops in the water, as well.
That is all.
This is really letting her stretch her legs now.
We've got some clear space of water here.
Nice and quiet, not much traffic around, and here we are,
beautiful evening and we're letting her lift her skirts and see what she
can do.
Jez Brettell, the navigator,
is responsible for getting the diesel-powered supercarrier
from A to B.
Her propulsion comes from two gigantic propellers,
providing more thrust than a thousand family cars.
This aircraft carrier is all about going in a straight line to be able
to generate wind over the deck for aircraft
and to be able to go across the world projecting that power.
Queen Elizabeth's range - 10,000 miles on one full tank.
Current guess says that we'll move about 80 metres per gallon,
so not quite as efficient as your standard car.
20 knots.
It's 20 knots.
Both levers ahead, 120.
The bridge is working closely with the ship's control centre,
where a team of civilian and naval engineers monitor progress.
But I've no issues with going at 150.
Leading them is Scott McClaren for the shipbuilders.
You never know a ship until you take her out and I think we need to
bear in mind this is only the...
One week today the ship went to sea for the first time.
She really hadn't turned a blade in anger.
We've got a stable plant underneath us, a cracking team here,
guys at the top of their game.
It's Scott's job to keep his finger on Queen Elizabeth's pulse as the
captain piles on the power.
The two 33-tonne propellers will now be spun faster and faster by the
massive drive shafts,
each one generating 50,000 horsepower.
They're secured to the hull by thrust blocks,
sort of massive vices that hold everything down.
Without them, the shafts would spin dangerously out of control.
Speed increasing now.
It's 25 knots.
Right, to turn at 50 degrees.
Wheel increasing. Might get a bit more.
There's no vibrations, she seems really solid.
Certainly here in the SCC
she's as smooth as I've felt any ship at 26, 27 knots.
Erm, we haven't pushed her right up to her max yet,
in terms of hull speed, but all in all, a successful evening.
I'm quite content with the outcome.
Is there glass or anything? No, no, it's just like, erm, sort of rubbish
from the... Hey, Ricky, there seems to be a lot of rubbish today.
Yeah, there is. The machine keeps breaking down, so...
As much as we try to catch up with it, as we catch up with it,
more comes back. It keeps breaking down because people keep putting
overalls and stuff out.
It's like the civvies and that, they don't give a shit, do they, so...
Put their trainers and...
hide stuff and
then it goes through the machine and breaks it, yeah.
But I'd probably do the same if I was a civvy, to be honest.
I can't really complain.
Yeah, it's a never-ending battle.
OK.
We've done almost 18 hours.
18 hours? Yeah.
Since yesterday, we had the whole day and then this morning
we went to breakfast to do breakfast at half four,
finished at around half ten,
so we were just having a downtime.
The two lads up on top, they finished as well, same time.
Chef Elias and Chef Wright.
This is very long hours.
But we do get time off, so
it works out all right.
You still enjoy it? Yeah. We love it.
THEY LAUGH
Leading Chef Arai,
I first met him in Afghanistan,
in 2005, and the temperatures in the tent were going up to 75 degrees.
Wow. We never even used to cook pasta,
we just used to put in water and let it cook itself.
That's how hot it was.
THEY LAUGH
BIRD LAUGHS Prior preparation
prevents piss-poor performance.
We've got the training parrot.
BIRD CACKLES
If we look after it, we're going to get a real one for the mess,
an African grey, and teach it
some Jackspeak or some naval language.
Colourful naval language?
Yeah, I'm keen on colourful naval language.
Traditions I'm trying to bring back into the Navy.
We've got Generation Z joining the Navy now,
who are all PlayStations and things like that,
and I still think that you can't beat a good old mess quiz,
build that ethos and bring everyone together,
just to get people talking,
joining that ship's coming-together,
and you can't do that playing on a PlayStation.
Put your back into it, rusty.
Do yourself a favour. BIRD CACKLES
14.2 knots.
It's now at day eight.
The engineers still testing the ship's propulsion keep spinning
the drive shafts at different RPM, or revolutions per minute.
PHONE RINGS
But Jez the navigator has growing concerns.
That's not good news. Over the past couple of days,
as we've been doing the high-speed trials on the bridge,
we've been noticing a bit of a wobble
as the ship increases speed above certain RPM.
It's been noticeable enough that the coffee's been swilling from side to
side as we've been sat there,
as we've got up to those certain RPM.
Last night some of the officers who live down aft
heard some knocking on the shaft.
That knocking, coupled with the wobble, means that we're concerned.
And is that worrying?
It's very worrying. We shouldn't wobble that much
and we think it's something to do with a shaft,
but we don't know what's causing it.
Knocking aft.
That's at the back end of the shaft.
The engineers are mystified.
They're reporting down there that there is a bit more noise in the
starboard side. They said there is a noise, nothing significant,
but it's louder on the starboard side.
There's no whipping integrated but it is loud.
Reports suggest the knocking is worse on the starboard side,
on the right. We're still learning about this ship.
We don't know, it could just be a different...
Neil McCallum, nicknamed Scotty, is commander marine engineering.
Scotty and Scott put their heads together.
But I think what we need to do now is go to 120,
cos that's the magic number apparently.
Yeah, yeah, let's get up to 120.
120 ahead, forward.
They decide that there's only one thing for it -
ramp up the revs and listen.
Give Scotty two or three minutes back aft.
We'll just settle the now, OK?
All right, mate. Thank you.
If you go aft, you can get all the vibrations,
so you can get a much better feel of what's going on.
Deep below the water line,
immediately adjacent to the starboard propeller,
it sounds like a washing machine loaded with bricks.
Not much vibration. The starboard side's a damn sight noisier.
120 seems to be the worst and it seems to be a bit of
a sideways shuffle. Wobble. Yeah. But it seems to be,
really, just localised.
Two big old over-30-tonne propellers down there,
thrashing round at a fairly significant speed on a long lever.
Erm, there isn't a ship in the world doesn't make noise back aft.
But then someone notices that the brake disc on the starboard shaft
is sparking. We are seeing problems on the starboard shaft.
What you can't smell is the slight smell of burning.
Just behind this is the shaft brake,
which works exactly the same as the brakes on your car,
and there's a distinct smell in the air of burning where the pads are
just contacting on the disc, which, anybody who's had that in a car
will know, it's quite a distinct smell and friction, and we think
there's a problem with the shaft.
This gremlin is not going away.
The starboard shaft is immediately stopped and locked.
Queen Elizabeth proceeds on the port side, or left-hand, propeller only.
It's a big worry.
Could this scuttle sea trials altogether?
It's the following morning and the ship is stopped mid-ocean.
Whatever's wrong is probably lurking underwater.
Just looking along the shaft for any damage.
Almost immediately,
the diver identifies a sort of scarring on the starboard shaft.
And it goes anticlockwise over the top of the shaft.
It looks like there's maybe been something there.
There's spiralling that looks like...
I don't want to speculate on what it may be.
There's been some impact damage to the paint.
There's been some spiralling round the starboard shaft.
I'm not a betting man, but I think the odds are that it was probably
something as simple as a lobster pot or a creel or a mooring buoy or a
marker buoy that's maybe been wrapped round the shaft.
Right, does that look straight, Joe?
It looks spot on. Have you got that? Yep.
At the end of each shaft is a vast hub on to which
the propellers are bolted
and these markings between the blades and their hub
must line up exactly to the millimetre.
OK. That's fine, Joe. Carry on.
The five blades on the port, or left-hand,
propeller are perfectly aligned
and so are those on the starboard hub.
All, that is, except one.
Approximately 26.
This blade is a whole 26mm out of alignment.
In propeller engineering terms, that might as well be a mile.
I'd be lying if I said I'm not a little bit worried.
That appears to have been, subjectively,
a little more movement in that one blade.
Now, the reasons behind it we don't know,
we don't understand yet.
We need to open up the hub and have a look at it.
But this is the one that we need to resolve, and fairly quickly,
so that we can continue with our propulsion trials.
Even at that, if pressures across blades are purely consistent,
it still wouldn't force the blades one way or another. It just wouldn't.
Once again, the experts are baffled.
How could something as simple as a lobster pot or discarded fishing net
bring the most powerful ship ever built for the Royal Navy
to a juddering halt?
But then, inside the ship, engineers make another startling discovery.
There's a telltale crack in part of the thrust block...
..the huge loadbearing vice that anchors the driveshaft to the hull.
Can you see? There's a large crack running here.
This is replicated on the other side, and there's the start of
another crack on one of the other base mounts as well.
What's caused that?
I don't want to say precisely, because we haven't confirmed it yet,
but we suspect it's to do with vibration being caused from a misalignment
of a propeller blade. And that's causing a significant amount of vibration
to the ship, and now we believe it's also causing damage elsewhere
as a result. That's the most likely answer.
It's all very mysterious.
The engineers speculate that a lobster pot or something like it got
entwined around the starboard propeller,
dislodging a single blade.
This led to uneven spin that would have decreased efficiency and power.
The consequent vibrations, they think,
led to the knocking sounds inside the ship
and the wobble felt on the bridge.
The uneven spin must've led to sparking on the brake pads
and ultimately to stress overload, and cracking of the thrust block.
By the look of things, that lobster pot has a lot to answer for.
Ladies and gentlemen, Captain!
Sir, welcome. Yes.
As you're aware, things have been a little bit dominated by the
starboard shaft out of action.
The plan, at present, is to go alongside on the Saturday.
Divers will then do the change to the propeller,
so the specific blade which is now out of position will be put back into position.
I think that pretty much is the starboard shaft.
Well, that's got it. Yeah, thanks.
So, Queen Elizabeth must go in for repairs.
Luckily, she's already due a four-day stop in Invergordon,
to take on fuel and stores.
But now it'll be a pit stop, to try and mend a broken supercarrier.
But on the way in, an unexpected meeting.
Your commanding officer speaking.
An intake, the cruise liner Queen Elizabeth has just sailed from Invergordon.
All that's now aboard are encouraged to come up to the flight deck and to see our namesake.
It's the first time the two Queen Elizabeths
have been at sea together. That's all.
SHIPS' HORNS SOUND
Which Queen Elizabeth would you rather be on?
Um, well, with a gin and tonic, on that one.
But with all my men and my women, on here.
Good answer!
HE CHUCKLES
SHIPS' HORNS SOUND
After chatting in fluent foghorn,
the two ships of the same name go their separate ways.
Cruise ship, full steam ahead to the Norwegian fjords
and a lifestyle of unadulterated luxury.
And warship?
Well, put it this way -
the pyrolysis plant has now completely given up the ghost,
and the rubbish, or gash, as the sailors call it,
is piling up everywhere.
This is THE most advanced pyrolysis plant in any navy serving anywhere
in the world, which is great.
And we've got two of them. It would help massively if it worked.
I mean, it does actually work, it's just not working at the moment.
Just put it in a box please, mate.
Just domestics. There's no metal.
One hopes that, once we get through this prototype phase,
we in the first commission,
we're probably being challenged more so than other ship's companies that
will follow us, and that's fine. You know, we know that.
Invergordon, a stopping-off point to the Highlands
for luxury cruise ships, is both a repair yard
and a graveyard for old oil rigs,
and soon-to-be haven for its first-ever supercarrier.
Oh, look, the tug's putting on a spray.
Downwind.
SHIP'S HORN SOUNDS
There's a cruise liner in. It's like a block of flats, isn't it? Yeah.
The youngsters, many of them are brand-new to being at sea. I think
getting ashore and finding a hot spot for their Wi-Fi
will be in their minds, I imagine.
And then we'll just see how the repairs go and get out when we can.
So, hopefully, the divers will be in the water by this evening.
Work on the starboard propeller starts immediately.
They have to find out how a lobster pot, if that's what it was,
dislodged a six-tonne blade.
Inside the ship, the engineers continue to investigate that
mysterious crack in the thrust block.
Come on and toss again! Come on and...
But for everybody else,
it's time to rid the ship of rubbish.
Mountains of it.
Best bits of the Navy.
Hey, this is what I joined up for.
So, are you enjoying this, as well?
I wouldn't say enjoying it.
The sooner it gets done, though, the sooner we get to get off ship.
What is this stuff?
The pyrolysis plant, when working,
needs only a handful of sailors to man it.
But, broken, means hundreds are needed for human gash chains,
ratings and officers alike.
Hey, Scotty, everyone's a link in the gash chain.
Oh, yeah, well, we all eat it,
we all produce it, so, er, it's a whole ship,
all hands in to get rid of the gash.
I mean, some right stinkers go by.
Honking.
Over the next few days, the divers work round-the-clock.
Use the torque wrench.
By day, the sailors clean the ship and bring on stores.
By night, they're allowed ashore to enjoy one or other of Invergordon's two pubs.
Who's in? Who's in? 16.
But as investigations under water and on the shaft continue...
..the original four days stretch to one week.
And then two weeks.
THEY CHEER
They're, at times, noisy. I think that's fair to say,
but, yeah, no crime reported to us, which is a good thing.
It'd appear that one of the pubs ran out of beer last night,
so I'm sure they're very happy.
We've been here for 14 days now.
It would be nice to have gone a lot earlier than we have,
but unfortunately, the engineering issues have prevented that from happening.
Do you think morale's taken a bit of a hit,
because we've been here for so long?
Yeah, it does.
It absolutely does, yeah.
A sailor wants to go to sea.
And we're still learning how the ship operates
and we can only do that at sea.
Finally, a breakthrough in the investigations.
The divers had discovered a mangled rubber seal under the dislodged blade.
It must've slipped out of its groove
when the propellers were first assembled.
Because this would have prevented perfect contact between the metal
surfaces, it meant that the bolts were never quite as tight
as the engineers thought.
The blade would only need a nudge to slip out of place.
Enter the much-maligned lobster pot,
thought to be the villain of the piece.
Not any more.
For the shaft, it was exceptionally good fortune that this happened.
Because initially, we thought we only had a propeller issue.
It's only when we had the crack on the thrust block,
we got an indication that something wasn't right.
The thrust blocks themselves are attached to the ships
by these large bolts here.
Originally, there had been ten large bolts.
That had been reduced to four, and six smaller bolts.
From the original calculations, that was all perfectly safe,
but the engineers rechecked the calculations of the forces
that are going through, and that's when we discovered that
unfortunately, several years ago,
and I mean several years ago, a mistake was made,
the mistake had not been found,
it had been carried through as effectively a good number,
and all the checks thereafter had been on the basis that
the calculations done for that were good.
And as we found out, they were not quite as good as we needed.
They didn't have the safety margin.
It's like a Sherlock Holmes plot.
And the original suspect, a drifting lobster pot,
has turned out to be the hero of the piece.
If it had not dislodged the propeller,
causing the mysterious knocking sounds, the sparking,
that telltale crack, the engineers might never have noticed that there was a hidden weakness in
the thrust block before it was too late.
The guilty party, an historic error in calculations.
But the really big question -
what might have happened if the error had not
been discovered in time?
Now, the worst case scenario is, if the thrust block had failed,
it wouldn't be able to hold the shaft in place, and effectively,
the shaft would probably break free,
would probably have damaged the propulsion motor,
which could have caused a fire here.
Where the stern seal is,
we could have damaged the stern seal and caused a flood there.
This is the shaft turning and locking and braking mechanism.
Again, it could have pulled out free,
which could have caused a fire there.
The doomsday outcome then could have been multiple fires and floods,
probable casualties and the ship laid up for months.
Thankfully, for once,
a bit of bad luck has turned into a bit of good fortune,
so thank God for a lobster pot, or a rope.
Something simple has saved us a lot of time and a lot of money.
Sometimes, it takes a gremlin to catch a gremlin.
And the solution, after all that, is remarkably simple.
Steel reinforcements are welded in to strengthen the thrust block.
It looks very simple and it looks very agricultural, which in some
ways it is, but actually the design work that's gone into it
has been very robust, and they've done a lot of good work on that.
Pretty basic for a state-of-the-art ship.
Yeah, it... It is.
Um... For some things, technology sort of reaches a pinnacle and,
you know, and that's it.
This ship floats on the principle that Archimedes worked out
in his bath, several thousand years ago, so, that's how, just how it is.
All parts of ship, let go. All rise.
Lower rope!
70, up.
Flap's coming down. Excellent.
After an unexpected two weeks in Invergordon,
Queen Elizabeth can return to sea.
Having limped in on one propeller, she's going out on two.
The thrust blocks will be closely monitored from now on.
It wouldn't be sea trials if we weren't dealing with issues like this.
While she's at a fantastic level of maturity,
given that she's essentially a prototype,
so it's not surprising that we're finding issues that need to be dealt
with, but the level of engineering expertise that's on this ship,
I have no question that we'll deal with this in the appropriate manner.
The ship's company, after an extended run ashore,
are back where they want to be.
Bit of an epic last couple of weeks, trying to get things sorted,
but we're done. Engineers did an amazing job,
so I'm very pleased to be back out.
And have a lot of work to do.
A lot of work to do now, yes, we're going to just really get into the stride now of
really testing and putting her through her paces.
So, we're going the whole of the North Sea,
got 3,500 tonnes of fuel, full ship's company,
so yeah, we're good to go.
A real incentive now to just crack on and do it, get it sorted.
Tomorrow, sea trials resume,
but will that starboard propeller stay in place?
For ship and ship's company, there's unfinished business,
and a lot to prove.
Yeah, just stick it in the cardboard bit. There's none of that metal or glass, mate.
Half ahead, both engines, revolution 9-0.
Next time, a dramatic rendezvous with the US Navy.
British pilots in America fly the aircraft destined for Queen Elizabeth.
New sailor Kirsty struggles with weapons drills.
Oh, BLEEP it.
And old hand Bob Hawkins opens up his heart.