MQ asbestos lawsuit

Paul Harvey time, eh? It's more tragic than we thought, note this statement:
"Cheery Way also had a company conduct tests and found asbestos in the ship’s walls and ceiling, according to the court documents.

Cheery Way was unable to find a dock owner to take the job over concerns about asbestos or to sell the boat"

I bold faced that sentence's end. So, although we were told that they would not sell the boat, but insisted on scrapping, that was not entirely true!?!
AUGH!!

*MQ Asbestos lawsuit: YIKES!*
Morning, Steamboating colleagues:
Thanks for Judy posting above the news with link to the MQ Asbestos lawsuit. First I have heard about it with this update but not surprised. Somebody way back on Steamboats.org wisely mentioned with prophecy, "No doubt the MQ steel will end up being shipped to China." I can only wonder if these cute named companies also had 'special status?' In cases like this somebody once said, "It's not so much what you do it's what you get away with." The serious asbestos health threat hit all of us like a hammer. Even the nearly 100% totally fire proofed liner S.S. UNITED STATES (1952) was built with asbestos. All of this later removed along with nearly all the ship's interior spaces down to the bare steel and girders.

More than a few on this site who were back there then when the MQ was just a dream on paper; then under construction at Jeffboat in Jeffersonville, IN. The project, with starts and stops, finally ended with her being built, finished inside and out. YIKES! Now I look back remembering being aboard crawling all around seeing the then asbestos insulation being installed with, I 'think,' a kind of bulkhead sprayer! Jim Reising and Chief Kenny Howe may know more.

Then later, when her finishing touches were being added inside with fancy silk screen panels etc., Capt. Alan Bates walked the boat with us at first not saying a word--until later. Alan looked all around, shirked his shoulders, "This boat gives me the itches," he said. "Itches" not meaning any real 'itch' but how the design hit him. We all have wondered what the end design would have been had Alan Bates been retained as the MQ's head architect. The then company went with noted James Gardiner from the UK who did the overall design for the then new CUNARD ship QE-2. We will never know now. Well, again, what do I know?

R. Dale Flick
Coal Haven Landing, Ohio River, Cincinnati

The sad part is that the "China Doll" and her Cherry Way co. will probably just get probation, that's if she has not already vanished into China. The real sad part is that the small contractor David Reidt and his company Argosy Boat were literally wiped out. Although not named in the lawsuit just to clean up the site was over 250,000. Hard to believe that "Doc" and Judy's visit could cause that much need to clean up.

Hey, I read that!

See if we had 'liberated' or 'acquired' some stuff for our collections, there wouldn't have been so much of a mess left! But we stayed outside the chainlink fence and obeyed the No Trespassing signs. For a change...

Sad that a boat of her (MQ) age she was when she was scrapped in toto. Most sad the loss of her steam propelling machinery.

Yes, I'm sure Alan Bates had unique and quite descriptive flowery language for her design; however she was unified in design theme upon completion whether any of us posters & or former members of her crew appreciated the Hinkly (sp?) brothers connection to the British design team.

I never saw the circular stairs of the double down room of the QE2; however her charms in the last couple years of her Cunard service smote me hard.

The same concept of the twin circular stairs was recreated in the forward two deck gaming area inflicted upon the now lamented former Steamer Admiral when she was consigned to a slow death sentence as a stationary "gaming" permanently moored "building" vessel in her town of birth.

*MQ design/Hinkley & ONA*
Morning, Steamboating colleagues,
Jim, I agree with you above summation RE: the MQ's "unified in design theme upon completion etc." Frankly, I was one who liked the MQ. Certainly not what the steamboating river world up to then was used too. And there were vocal critics galore both within the company and from veteran travelers. "But she's not the DELTA QUEEN," we heard. How could she be? Then comparison to "A Holiday Inn on a raft." In time there were some flaws appearing but that is the nature of something her size and complexity--internal house plumbing was one big issue. And how Betty Blake did grouse and grumble. "The worst enemies to the boat coming from our assumed friends," she grumbled with a drag on her cigarette.

Your mention of the Hinkley brothers and their then ONA [Overseas National Airways] made my ears perk up. ONA discussed here peviously a number of times. Basically what called a "fast start, fast finish" involvement in building the MQ, continual operation of the DQ. ONA failed when the company suffered two disastrous air crashes fortunatiely with no loss of life or injury. Hinkley himself had insured the aircraft only at their "present value" and not "replacement value" on the books or insurance coverage.

Several years in a row Albert P. Hinkley, Jr. RA and principal partner in HINKLEY, SHEPHERS, NORDEN, P.L.C., Warrenton, Virginia, attended the big annual meeting and 'ShiPosium' with Steamship Historical Society of America. We talked long hours with him filling me in. Indeed Albert was a well known maritime designer having done work on several of the CUNARD LINE later cruise ships but not the then new QE-2. Albert stated that working for CUNARD one of the most difficult periods of his career. The famous line not above contracting with a designing corporation; then play one off the other; then simply stop all work, dismiss the designers and walk off with the plans to another company. This after CUNARD had been sold. Last time Albert attended was aboard the hotel liner old QUEEN MARY in Long Beach, Cal. for the 'ShiPosium.' He's getting up in years now and didn't attend the last meeting in Newport, RI. Well, again, what do I know?

R. Dale Flick
Old Coal Haven Landing, Ohio River, Cincinnati