THE image of one of Southampton's great liners is back in port nearly 30 years after she was sent to the scrapyard.

The Royal Mail flagship Andes had a memorable career sailing the oceans of the world before being broken up in the 1970s but now memories have been rekindled with the presentation of an exact replica model of the liner to the city's Maritime Museum.

Performing the official unveiling of the 7ft model were two former crew members of the Andes.

Peter Stroud, 83, from Hythe, first went to sea at the age of 14 and was cruise director and deputy purser on board Andes for ten years while Captain Lionel Hall from Lyndhurst was the navigator on the ship from the late 1950s until the mid-1960s.

Andes is the first in a series of replica ship models, which hopefully will all be on show by the end of the year, to be donated to the city's museums by the Furness Withy organisation.

Known as the Queen of the South Atlantic, Andes was used as troopship during the Second World War after sailing on her maiden voyage as a civilian ship from Southampton in September 1939.

By the late 1950s Andes had been converted to Great Britain's first permanent cruise liner and in the years that followed she built up a faithful army of passengers who returned time and time again to her decks but in 1971 the ship was withdrawn from service and scrapped in Belgium.