10 Dollars - Elizabeth II Launch of the Queen Elizabeth 1938

The RMS Queen Elizabeth — launched at John Brown's shipyard on the Clyde in September 1938 by the Queen consort herself — never served a single day as a passenger liner before the war intervened. She was secretly sailed to New York in March 1940 in an unannounced dash across the North Atlantic, still in grey primer, to avoid German aircraft and submarines. She spent the war as a troopship, carrying up to 15,000 soldiers per voyage.

Fiji's commemorative program of the 1990s drew heavily on Commonwealth maritime history. This 1998 issue marks the launch's 60th anniversary.