TODAY she is a sad sight, battered, beaten and dangerously close to sinking, but there was a time when the 41,900-ton liner Oriana was the pride of Southampton.

The once beautiful ship is now listing heavily and teetering on the edge of capsizing after being hit by storm force winds.

Oriana is being closely monitored but there are fears the vessel, once a familiar sight on the city's dockland skyline, will be lost beneath the waves off the coast of China.

Somehow the old Southampton ship escaped the fate of so many of her contemporaries, which were sent on the one-way voyage to the breaker's yard, to live out a busy retirement.

But disaster struck as gales swept through Dalian's Xinghai Bay where Oriana was berthed as a tourist attraction.

Huge amounts of water flooded in to three of her decks as Oriana dramatically keeled over on her port side as she was lashed by the powerful storm.

In the last two years her present owners have spent a fortune on Oriana, fitting out the former P&O liner as a floating theme park. Her rooms were transformed to look like a Chinese Emporer's Palace.

Southampton was the liner's home port from the time of the her maiden voyage to Australia in 1960 until November, 1981 when she sailed away for the last time to begin a new career as a cruise ship in Australia.

Oriana, a name that still lives on today in Southampton with P&O Cruises' present 69,153-ton superliner, was the last ship ordered by the Orient Line before its amalgamation with P&O.

Built by Vickers Armstrong at Barrow at a cost of £15m she was launched by Princess Alexandra in November,1959.

With her white superstructure and funnel just forward of midships and a half funnel-type of ventilator behind it, Oriana was a striking ship to herald the 1960s.

Oriana was designed to carry 2,100 passengers, as many as her two immediate predecessors Oransay and Orsova put together.

She steamed at 30 knots and there were those who said she could have made a worthy partner for Queen Elizabeth on the North Atlantic.

There were more than 2,000 passengers for the maiden voyage departure from Southampton 44 years ago and Oriana reached Sydney in 27 days - four days faster than other liners on the route.

Oriana proved to be a successful ship but the collapse of the Australian liner market meant she became a permanent cruise ship, operating in the summer from Southampton and from Sydney in winter.

In 1986 she was taken out of service and was sold for use as a hotel, museum and restaurant ship moored at Beppu Bay in Japan and her funnel was painted pink.

This venture failed and in 1995 she was again sold and became a government-owned accommodation centre and hotel in Chinwangtao, China.

Oriana was bought once more in 1998 when she moved to Shanghai. During 18 months of operation, and despite more than 500,000 visitors, the attraction did not make enough profits so the ship was closed until her move to the Chinese holiday resort of Dalian, on the southern tip of the Liaodong peninsula.