What they neglected to mention was the millions of pounds that local taxpayers spend each year so that Elizabeth Windsor (and two dozen or so little-known family members) can open buildings, launch ships and wave to schoolchildren around the country.
Even as arguments over the segregated yard continue, Yard No. 4 employees build and launch ships crucial to the war effort.
On Monday night the US for the first time launched ship-based Tomahawk cruise missiles against Isis targets in Syria.
Organized seapower was first used in England by Alfred the Great of Wessex, who launched ships to repel a Viking invasion.
Ms. McLaughlin's not terribly original contention in "Helen," which is directed by the playwright Tony Kushner, is that it's not easy having a face that launches ships.
'A History of Launching Ships' (Friday through Sunday) This interactive play is an American ghost tale, loosely based on the gothic short stories of Washington Irving and the life of Elizabeth Burgin, who saved rebel lives in the Revolutionary War.
The project is to bring 401,900 additional square feet of industrial space and a 60,000-square-foot supermarket to a complex that once housed Confederate prisoners of war and launched ships into battle.
Cunard, established in 1839 to carry mail between Britain and North America, grew into a storied line, launching ships like the Lusitania, Mauretania, Aquitania and the queens -- the Mary and the Elizabeths, first and second.
Whenever I'm lectured on my constitutional complacency by an upper-middle-class north London republican, I quietly wonder if they don't secretly fancy themselves launching ships or reading the "president's speech" at the opening of parliament.
