RMS Queen Elizabeth Queen Elizabeth to safely rest on the bed of the Intracoastal Waterway in Ft. Lauderdale harbour (Port Everglades) and remain open, but instead the vessel was towed out of the harbour to Asia to become a floating university. Losing money and forced to close after being declared a fire hazard, this was due to the ship being sold at auction in 1970 to Hong Kong tycoon Tung Chao Yung. Tung, the head of the Orient Overseas Line, intended to convert the vessel into a university for the World Campus Afloat program (later reformed and renamed as Semester at Sea). Following
RMS Queen Elizabeth and an outdoor swimming pool. With these improvements, Cunard intended to keep the ship in operation until at least the middle 1970s. However, the strategy did not prove successful due to the high fuel costs plus the ship's deep draught, which prevented her from entering various island ports, and the ship's width which preventing her from using the Panama Canal. Cunard retired "Queen Mary" in 1967 and "Queen Elizabeth" by 1969 and replaced them with a single, smaller ship, the more economical "Queen Elizabeth 2". In 1968, "Queen Elizabeth" was sold to a group of American businessmen from a company