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Volume 2, No. 10. June 14, 2002

New Arrivals

It’s a swinging ship!
Crealy Adventure Park in Exeter, England, announces the arrival of the Swinging Queen Bess, June 1, 2002. Measurement: 8.5 meters high (28 feet), pendulum swings to 60 degrees, 38.5 km/h (25 mph), 24 seats. Delivered by Metallbau Emmeln.

Talk about relevance. Sir Walter Raleigh was born in the country house Hayes Barton in 1552. That house is now owned by the same family that owns Crealy Adventure Park. So when the park’s general manager and partner Angela Wright was choosing an appropriate “pink knuckle ride” for her park this year, she decided to link the ride to the 450th anniversary of Raleigh’s birth. Raleigh being a voyager, Wright settled on a swinging ship, but did not want a pirate ship. Thus, the Swinging Queen Bess, named for Raleigh’s monarch, Queen Elizabeth I, whose namesake, Queen Elizabeth II, is celebrating her golden jubilee this year.

Such relevance means little to a population currently focused wholly on the World Cup football tournament. “When we set the deadline (for opening the ride) we didn’t realize it was in the middle of the World Cup,” Wright said. “The World Cup hasn’t had a good impact on anybody’s visitor numbers.”

Nevertheless, the official launching of the Swinging Queen Bess drew a good turnout on a sunburn-inducing day. Queen Elizabeth I herself—actually impersonator Margaret de Cheyney—launched the ship with a big bottle of chocolate champagne, proclaiming “I bless this ship and all who swing in her.” She herself swung often in the ship that day, along with staff members dressed as Elizabethan lords and ladies and Malcolm Bell, the chief executive of South West Tourism, portraying Raleigh.

“She must have ridden it a dozen times,” Wright said of Elizabeth nee de Cheyney. “She was a very game queen. But as she said, ‘I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.’”