Margaret Quinnell: Attending a Launch

"When it came to the launch of the Type 21 I said 'We've got to go down and see it launched.' Now, we weren't allowed to because we were at Portchester and this was a Woolston ship - oh no, no secretaries allowed. So I went down as Mr J Smith and I got a ticket for it. But we actually watched the ship go down on a very snowy day in January, launched by Princess Anne and suddenly, that was the first ship that…a big ship, I'd seen little patrol craft launched at Portchester, but suddenly, your work meant something. And I said that was important because when you work for a shipyard, you are describing a huge, a huge vessel with lots of complicated parts. The girls had to know what the end product was."

Lord Louis Mountbatten and Princess Anne at the launch of HMS Amazon