The ship was constructed in the Albion Dockyard in Bristol at a cost of £207,000 () and named on 16 November 1964 by the
Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester. She was designed to carry passengers and cargo between
Penzance,
Cornwall,
UK, to the offshore
Isles of Scilly, complementing the service provided by the other company ship
Scillonian. After running her for the service between Penzance and Scilly from 1964 to 1966, the Isles of Scilly Steamship Company put
Queen of the Isles on a range of brief charters, including with
P & A Campbell. For two summers she was on charter to shipping firms and during 1970 was hired by a Plymouth company. On two occasions she took passengers from Torquay to Guernsey. In late summer 1970 she was sold for £153,000 (). The British Government made a gift of her to the Tonga Shipping Agency. After the installation of air conditioning, from 1970 to 1982 she operated as
Olovaha in
Tonga and from 1982 to 1987 as
Gulf Explorer as a casino ship in Australian waters. She was renamed
Queen of the Isles II in 1987 when cruising off the
Great Barrier Reef. Renamed
Island Princess in 1992 and
Western Queen in 1994, she ran aground at Ranadi beach,
Honiara, in the
Solomon Islands around 2001. In 2010 the hull was cut away to the waterline, the remainder still left there. ==References==