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 Royal Navy Dockyard, 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 i ...

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

History

The Goliath was brought to Rosyth from

Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...

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

Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier The ''Queen Elizabeth''-class aircraft carriers of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy consists of two vessels. The lead ship of her class, , was named on 4 July 2014 in honour of Elizabeth I and was ship commissioning, commissioned on 7 December ...

s. The crane, which cost £12.2 million, is part of an £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 engineering company and the world's largest manufacturer of cranes and large steel structures. In 2015 the company accounted for about 75% of the world-market share fo ...

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 () is a town and Garden City in Fife, Scotland, on the coast of the Firth of Forth. Scotland's first Garden city movement, Garden City, Rosyth is part of the Greater Dunfermline Area and is located 3 miles south of Dunfermline city cen ...

Rosyth