IT'S the most famous ship in the world. It has sailed more than 5.6million nautical miles - and carried 2.5m passengers. Now the QE2 is coming back home, for one last time.

The liner will be at Greenock on September 20 - 40 years to the day since its epic launch upriver at Clydebank - on a lap of honour around Britain.

Next November it will leave the Cunard fleet and begin a new life as a first-class hotel and entertainment destination in the desert sheikhdom of Dubai.

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IT was the noise the workers remembered most - that, and the incredible, endless bustle as thousands of them swarmed round the vast hulk of the QE2.

Piece by piece, section by section, the most famous ship in the world was put together at John Brown's yard in Clydebank.

Dozens of different trades were involved. The work was complex and demanding. And it went on round the clock.

One former worker, John Taylor, recalled: "Wherever we worked, we had caulkers banging away, practically deafening us at times, welders creating smoke and dropping molten metal all around us and painters causing fumes that would chase away an elephant."

Former welder Alan Adams, 58, said: "We had the old two-handled welding pots and there would be a caulker working next to you, and the noise would be constant.

"We didn't have ear-plugs in those days - and there was no health and safety, either."

Alan, 58, is now back at the yard as a heritage guide on the reopened, 150ft-high Titan crane, Scotland's latest tourist attraction.

Plans for the ship had been laid at Brown's the moment the contract with Cunard was signed on December 30, 1964.

Cunard was keen to replace the ageing Queen Mary (launched in 1934) and Queen Elizabeth (launched in 1938).

The Clydebank-built ships could not go on forever. Cunard also needed a stylish vessel that would attract transatlantic travellers in the teeth of a growing challenge from jet travel.

What Cunard came up with was, in the words of Carol Thatcher, author of a new book on the QE2, a "fast ocean liner with the flexibility of a cruise ship."

The project was labelled Q4.

At Brown's, it was order number 736.

Construction was dogged by strikes, vandalism and other headaches - but the ship gradually took shape, thanks to the ceaseless toil of the workers.

Lachie McColgan, steelwork manager at the time, once told the Evening Times: "When we first laid the keel, we knew it was going to be a great ship, even then.

"I spent four years of my life working on her. We often worked seven days a week, long into the night. You were not expected to go home. While the QE2 was being built, I didn't have a social life.

"But she wasn't just a ship, she was the finest liner ever built. A lot of sweat from the workers of Clydebank went into building her."

Another former worker, a young man at the time, was impressed by the "amazing pulling-together of skills that went into building the QE2. Pipes and wires everywhere and somebody knew where they went."

Andrew Cameron, now 76, was employed in Brown's joinery shop, which made the liner's bedroom furniture, tables and chairs and other fittings According to Andrew, the workers were divided into black' and white' squads. "We were the finishers, the white squad - the electricians, the painters, the joiners. The welders and the platers were known as the black squad."

The Q4 was the last big contract at John Brown's, and there was a sense of occasion surrounding the project.

"I think there was," agrees Andrew. "The place was going down the hill then. Plus, you had passenger aircraft taking over from the sea-going liners."

But nothing can obscure the fact that, in Andrew's words, "it was a wonderful job - a lot of really nice work went into it."

John Taylor, whose grandfather had worked on the Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, is still proud of his QE2 claim to fame.

"A fellow apprentice was connecting the wires from the two horns on the funnel to two junction boxes, so I offered to connect the lower one, which I did, to save time'.

"I really wanted to do it so that I could say that I connected one of the horns up on the QE2.

"I then climbed up to the little ledge inside the top of the funnel and took in the view around Clydebank. That ship will always be part of our history, and I for one am exceptionally proud to have worked on her."

Andrew Cameron recalls the day the workers and their families were allowed to walk round the ship.

"You walked up one of the gangway and you were shown around all the different places on board and all its special suites. That was lovely, a great day.

"The launch was a massive day as well. I remember the Queen being there, and lots of press as well."

The Queen's visit on September 20, 1967, was a momentous day in the history of Clydebank.

A Glasgow bookie had been running a book on what the vessel would be called, and thousands of Clydesiders had put money on Princess Margaret at 4-1.

But the name was only revealed on the day - by the Queen herself.

The QE2's sea-trials were complete by December 1968. Cunard formally took delivery on April 18, 1969, and the QE2 made its maiden voyage on May 2 that same year.

The ship, built at a cost of £29million, was about to embark on a celebrated career.

All had not gone well at John Brown's in the meantime, however.

Towards the end of the Q4 project it had been swallowed up by the ill-fated UCS consortium, the Labour government's bid to save shipbuilding on the Clyde.

After Brown's shut, Andrew spent the last three years of his career working for a private housebuilder.

"One day, I was working on a lady's house when the man who owned the company came in and said, You worked on the QE2, didn't you?' "I told him that I had, and he said I should get myself down to the Tail o' the Bank, as the ship was there.

"I told him that I didn't want to see it - I'd seen it when it was being built. But he persisted and said I should go.

"So I went down to the Tail o' the Bank. There were thousands of people there that day in 1990, and my son-in-law sat my wife and myself down on a wall and took our photograph with the QE2 in the background."

The yard still holds special memories for Andrew, three decades after it disappeared forever.

"It was a great yard and a great job. I enjoyed my working life there. You met thousands of men in the yard, a lot of nice chaps.

"It was a great department, too - you had all the different timbers and veneers, all those different things. You couldn't get that anywhere else."

thinking back to the era after I served my apprenticeship, Brown's built ships not just for Cunard but for P&O, Fred Olsen, for the New Zealand Shipping Company, for Australia, and the Union Castle line in South Africa, plus tankers and Admiralty work.

"We never thought John Brown's would ever close. It was a big shock when it did."

The land once occupied by the shipyard is now being given over to new purposes under the banner of Clydebank Rebuilt.

The yard's most lasting legacy, the QE2, sailed into legend. Soon it will become a luxury floating hotel in Dubai.

Clydeside shipyard workers aren't an emotional bunch at the best of times. But one or two may get sentimental when the liner makes one final journey to the river where, 40 years ago, it first saw the light of day.