The forward island of the queen elizabeth class aircraft carrier being attached to the main body of the carrier

Goliath is a crane in

Rosyth Dockyard Rosyth Dockyard is a large naval dockyard on the Firth of Forth at Rosyth, Fife, Scotland, owned by Babcock Marine, which formerly undertook refitting of Royal Navy surface vessels and submarines. Before its privatisation in the 1990s it was fo ...

, Scotland, with a lift capacity of , the largest in Britain.

History

The Goliath was brought to Rosyth from

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

in 2011. The crane was used for the assembly of the

Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier The ''Queen Elizabeth'' class is a class of two aircraft carriers of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy which are the central components of the UK Carrier Strike Group. The lead ship, , was named on 4 July 2014, in honour of Elizabeth I. She was ...

s. The crane, which cost £12.2 million, is part of a £80 million investment at Rosyth to allow the assembly of the aircraft carriers. In 2016, it was announced by the Aircraft Carrier Alliance that the Goliath was to be sold. As of 2019 the decision to sell Goliath has been reversed.

Design

The crane was built by

Zhenhua Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries Company Limited (, ) is a Chinese state-owned multinational engineering company and one of the world's largest manufacturers of cranes and large steel structures. History The company was founded in 1992. It is ...

in China, and shipped to the UK partially assembled. After being delivered with the girder and upper sections of the legs assembled, the crane was fully erected on the deck of the ship on which it was transported from Shanghai, before being transferred complete onto its rails. The delivery vessel had to be ballasted considerably in order to ensure a clearance under the

Forth Bridge The Forth Bridge is a cantilever railway bridge across the Firth of Forth in the east of Scotland, west of central Edinburgh. Completed in 1890, it is considered a symbol of Scotland (having been voted Scotland's greatest man-made wonder in ...

. It stands to the underside of the main beams, with a span of . Its full lifting capacity of is provided by three hooks, two of which are suspended from an upper trolley (each hook having a 300 tonne capacity) and one from a central, lower, trolley with a 500 tonne capacity. While the three hooks have a greater cumulative lifting capacity than 1,000 tonnes, the total capacity is defined by the crane structure.

References

{{coord, 56.02499, N, 3.45089, W, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Individual cranes (machines) Shipyard cranes Industry in Scotland

Rosyth Rosyth ( gd, Ros Fhìobh, "headland of Fife") is a town on the Firth of Forth, south of the centre of Dunfermline. According to the census of 2011, the town has a population of 13,440. The new town was founded as a Garden city-style suburb ...

Rosyth